The

Art of Responsive Drawing

sixth edition
Nathan Goldstein

1
Gestural Expression
Deduction Through Feeling
pp. 1-7

A Definition

Responsive drawing is the ability to choose from an observed or envisioned subject
those characteristics that hold meaning for us and to be able to set them down in
concise and (to us) attractive visual terms. It is the ability to join percept to concept,
that is, to merge what we see in the subject with what we want to see in the drawing,
and to show this integration of inquiry and intent in the completed work.

To do this we must consider one of the most compelling features of any
subject its fundamental visual and emotive nature. The French painter Paul
Cezanne gave sound advice when he urged artists to get to the heart of what is
before you and continue to express yourself as logically as possible. An important
aspect of what is at the heart of any subject is the arrangement of its parts. And
seeing this arrangement is the necessary first step.

To often, however, beginners start at the other end of what there is to see.
Instead of establishing a subjects overall configuration and character, they start by
recording a host of small facts. Usually, they are soon bogged down among these
details and, like the person who could not see the forest for the trees, they fail to see
just those general conditions that would enable them to draw the subject in a more
responsive and telling way.

No wonder, then, that when confronted by any subject, whether a figure,
landscape, or still life, most beginners ask, How shall I start? The complexity of a
subjects volumes, values, and textures, and the difficulty of judging the relative
sizes and the positions of its parts, seems overwhelming. There appears to be no
logical point of entry, no clues on how to proceed. If the subject is a figure, many
students, knowing no other way, begin by drawing the head, followed by the neck,
followed by the torso, and so on. Such a sequential approach inevitably results in a
stilted assembly of parts having little affinity for each other as segments of the
whole figure. Regardless of the subject, the process of collecting parts in sequence,
which should add up to a figure, a tree, a bridge, or whatever, is bound to fail.

It will fail in the same way that the construction of a house will fail if we
begin with the roof or the doorknobs, or, realizing this is impossible, if we finish and
furnish one room at a time. Such a structure must collapse because no supportive
framework holds the independently built rooms together. Without an overall
structural design in place, none of the systems common to various rooms, such as
wiring or heating, can be installed without tearing apart each room. Without such an
overall design none of the relationships of size or location can be fully anticipated.
Every building process must begin with a general design framework, its

development advanced by progressive stages until the specifics of various

nonstructural details are added to complete the project. So it is with drawing.

But even before the measurements and layout of a building harden into a
blueprint, there is the architects idea: a conviction that certain forms and spaces,
and their scale, location, texture, and material will convey a certain expressive order.
An architectural structure, like any work of art, really begins as a state of excitation
about certain form relationships.

Similarly, all drawings should begin with a sense of excitation about certain
energies and patterns beneath the surface of the subjects forms. Seeing these
possibilities in the raw material of a subject, the responsive artist establishes a basis
for interpretation. The answer to the question, How shall I start? is provided by
the general arrangement of the subjects forms. Seeing the harmonies and contrasts
of large masses, the patterns of movement suggested by their various directions in
space, and their differing shapes, values, and sizes, gives the artist vital facts about
the subjects essential visual and emotive nature what we call its gesture.

Gesture drawing is more about the rhythmic movements and energies
coursing through a subjects parts than about the parts themselves. That is why such
drawings emphasize the essential arrangement and form characteristics of the parts
rather than their edges, or contours. In gesture drawing, contour is secondary to
urgings of motion among broadly stated forms. Such drawings tell about the actions,
tensions, and pulsations that issue from the general condition of a subjects masses
and their alignments in space they are about essence, attitude, motivating force,
quintessence, vivacity, energy, dynamism, spirit rather than specifics.

Samantha Jean Dixon student drawing

To draw a subjects gestural expression then is to draw the major moving
actions and general form character of its parts rather than their specific physical
characteristics. Like the example of the building put up without an overall
supportive framework, a drawing begun without the search for a cohesive gestural
pattern collapses. Likewise, to introduce gestural considerations after a drawing is
underway would require undoing and reworking nearly all of it.

That is why experienced artists, even before they ask themselves, What does
the subject look like? ask the more important question, What is the subject doing?

That is, how does the arrangement of the main parts of the figure, the flower, the
lamp, or the landscape allude to movement? What suggestions are there in the
subject of directed energies coursing through its forms? For virtually everything we
see implies some kind and degree of moving action. Such actions are inherent in the
subjects formation and structure (constructional, volumetric nature of a subject).
The gentle curve of a tree limb or a human one, the forceful thrust of a church spire
or a schooner mast, the graceful spiral of a staircase or a seashell all these suggest
moving actions types of animated behavior; in other words, they all disclose some
kind of gestural expression.

For experienced artists this is the case even when the subject is an
envisioned one. Picassos Guernica is a visual protest against one of the first
instances of saturation bombing of a civilian population, carried out in Spain by
German forces in support of the Spanish fascists during the Spanish Civil War. Yet
this arresting masterpiece had its origins in a hasty gestural sketch that captured
the essentials of the artists intended image.

PABLO PICASSO (1881-1974)

Guernica (1937)
Oil on canvas. 11 ft. 5 in X 25 ft. 5 in.
Prado Museum

PABLO PICASSO (1881-1974)

First Composition Study for Guernica (1937)
Pencil on blue paper . 8 1/4 in. X 10 5/8 in.
Prado Museum

Gestural expression should not be understood as residing only in the rhythmic
arrangement of a subjects parts, although such action is always a key part of a
subjects gestural expression. It is not to be found in any one of the subjects visual
properties of shape, value, or position, nor in its type or class, or even in its mood,
but rather in the sum of all these conditions. The moving, emotive energy of gesture
cannot be seen until it is experienced it must be felt. Empathy the ability to
identify and to feel with a person, place, or thing is needed to give expressive
meaning to our drawings.

In part, such empathic responses result from our kinetic sensibilities our
ability to identify through our senses with the various tension, movements, and
weights among the things we see. The golfer, after hitting the ball, who leans to one
side in the hope that the golf ball will do the same and make it to the hole, is
experiencing a strong kinetic identity with the ball. It is such sensory identification
that helps us feel the tension in the bending action of the woman (Lynn Trunelles
student drawing) and the energy of the great arc that runs from the figures hands
through to the feet.

student drawing
LYNN TRUNELL
Black chalk. 18 X 24 inches
Art Institute of Boston

In part, too, we identify with the behavior of our subjects in a psychological way. We
attribute human attitudes and feelings to a subjects condition in verbal expressions
such as an angry sea or a cheerful fire. In the same way, an artist responding to a
subjects gestural expression feels a drape as limp, a cave opening as yawning,
and a tree as stately or sheltering. The response to a subjects gestural
expression, then, is the understanding of the essential nature of its total behavior.

Not until we experience a subjects gestural expression do we really
understand why (and how) its parts carry those visual and emotive meanings that
attract us to it in the first place. For no matter what else about the subject excites
our interest moving energies are always one of the most attracting features.

The beginner who starts a drawing convinced that if only enough effort is put
into the careful rendering of each parts surface details, the subjects form and spirit
will somehow emerge, is sure to be disappointed. Good drawings do not result from
the accumulation of details; they arise from an underlying armature that suggests
the subjects basic design and structure. The essential form and spirit of any subject
must be first considerations in a work if they are to be found more fully realized in

its completed state. Good drawing, then, is deductive, not inductive. It requires
relational, comparative seeing. That is, seeing similarities and differences between a
subjects parts.

In Rembrandts studies of Saskia asleep, he uses gestural means to convey
the tired, resting figure of his wife, Saskia. Rembrandt feels (and consequently we do
too) the essence of her pose as an expression of limp weight. What Saskia is doing
and feeling is as important to Rembrandt as the delineation of specific forms and
textures. His felt perception of her relaxed body pressing into the pliant bedding is
intensified by the forceful speed of the lines in the pillow. Those lines enact as well
as describe the action. And directed movements are the chief means for expressing
the action in any drawing, even where, as here, the subject is one of repose.

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (16061669)

Two Studies of Saskia Asleep
Pen and brown ink, brown wash; traces of framing line
5 1/8 x 6 3/4 inches (130 x 171 mm)
Gift of J. P. Morgan, Jr., 1924
The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. I, 180

When the subject itself is in action, a gestural approach can intensify that
action further, as demonstrated in the dancing figure, where the artists attention
goes past the subjects surface state to extract the figures essential action and form
character.


Angel (Recto)
Anonymous, Italian or Spanish,
early 16th century
Red chalk on cream paper
6-3/4 x 5-5/16 in. (17.1 x 13.5 cm)
Gift of Cornelius Vanderbilt, 1880
The Metropolitan Museum of Art

That the enlivening energy of gesture drawing can animate drawings of subjects
other than the figure is evident in Claes Oldenburgs Bicycle on Ground. Note that
the gesture drawings we have been looking at show little concentration on contour
the beginners trusted device for drawing anything.


CLAES OLDENBURG (1929-)
Bicycle on Ground (1959)
Crayon on paper. 12 X 17 5/8 in.
Collection of Whitney Musseum of American Art
Gift of the Lauder Foundation Drawing Fund. Lund Acq. 76.31

GESTURE AND DIRECTION


Closely related to the search for a subjects gesture, and usually running
parallel with it in a drawings development, is the inquiry into each parts axial
direction the actual tilt of its long axis relative to a true vertical or horizontal
direction. Learning to see a parts exact orientation as it would appear on a two-
dimensional surface is one of the most important skills the beginner must acquire.
Just as we cannot give our drawings enlivening gestural qualities unless we respond
to them at the outset of a drawing, so we cannot draw any form in relation to any
other without consciously discovering its exact position in space.

Virtually every form, whether a leaf or a leg, a head or a house, has a length
and width of differing dimensions. Most form then can be imagined as having a
straight or curved centerline or long axis running in the direction of its longer
dimension. Additionally, the edges of all forms are made up of segments oriented at
various angles. Seeing a parts directions means seeing both its long axis and the
various turnings of its edges. The search for a subjects inner and outer directions

generally accompanies or is a natural outgrowth of the search for its gestural

expression, and that the need for seeing these two related conditions in our subjects
is necessary to any responsive drawings further development.