Draw ANY POSE With This Technique!

Drawing people is hard, we know! But if you take it one step at a time, you'll become a master of human anatomy in no time. This short art tutorial breaks down of the GSL Method -- a figure drawing technique which took Fei Lu, Creative Director at Winged Canvas, 20 years to develop! By simplifying the human body into gestures, then shapes, THEN lines, you're able to build anatomy from the inside-out. The best part is, you can use this method to draw ANY POSE! 🤓

🕓 Timestamps:
0:00 - Introduction
1:07 - Sketching the gesture
3:47 - Drawing the shapes/forms
8:30 - Adding the lines and details

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Winged Canvas is an online art school based in Canada specializing in virtual art programs. We are known for our Art Mentorship program and quirky art nerd culture. Our instructors are professional artists and designers with a passion for teaching and nurturing creativity, sharing our artistic skill sets and industry experience with others.

Music credits:

#figuredrawing #wingedcanvas #gslmethod

[TheMedievalman]

For years I've been drawing. I've used shapes to construct the body many times. And always, without fail, the body itself has taken the most time to do, because the proportions were always off. This is literally the first time I've ever heard that the rib cage is "one and a half times the size of the head." Oh, my god, did that ever make things so much easier for me!

[Frostfern]

This has helped me SO MUCH with gesture drawings! Everyone else seems to just be able to but it's the thing I've always struggled with the most. I didn't understand where the lines were meant to go or anything. It was always "Just draw these lines and boom! Perfect" but mine were always too squashed or just... wrong. So thank you!!

[adeptusjoker]

I appreciated that you included your slight mistakes or misjudgments.

[lindenbree]

Thank you, I finally understand the point to starting with a gesture drawing. I've taken drawing classes and it was always "don't overthink it, just capture the gesture and it shouldn't take long." So, I'd have quickly drawn, super inaccurate gestures, that I would then ignore during the next drawing step because they weren't accurate enough to be of any help. I never understood the point.
Taking the time to make sure the gesture drawing is actually ACCURATE makes SO much more sense! Thank you!

[milk-iimp]

I’ve been trying to draw more expressive poses so this is a really good tut for me rn😁

[VetsrisAuguste]

At 2:58 I was just thinking to myself “this rule of thumb won’t apply to balletic poses”, then… Bam! as if reading my thoughts. A ballerina flashes on the screen contradicting the rule.

Excellent tutorial. I’m always impressed when people who have skills are also able to speak about those skills clearly and effectively.

Thank you for sharing.

[ducksoff]

Yup! You invented it! Weird how these techniques are in Bridgeman and Loomis books but yup! you invented it!

[darrelmiller]

Just wanted to say, I've been drawing for 30+ years, and this solved my problem with static boring poses and made drawing fun again. Such a simple and powerful and effective way to create dynamic figures!!!! thank you!

[blakeblue]

I've been trying to learn more to do anatomy and different figures recently, so this is awesome! Thank you so much!

[kseanmcfarland]

Very cool. This is pretty much what I do for figure drawing, but I've always been confused by others seeming to treat gesture and anatomical construction as two separate exercises to be done as two separate drawings. Seems more natural to me to let one feed into the other when trying for a finished piece.

[travisnobleart]

Wow, great instruction. The Fei character popping up is such a great way to convey the emotion of the situation. Often instruction can be so clinical, but shared emotion between instructor and student is such an underrated but critical aspect to learning.

[dBradbury]

What's different between this GSL method and older methods that look very similar? You can see the same sorts of techniques in early Disney animation, and certainly using lines for marking of the gesture and proportions where used before then.

[THUNGUNS]

I'm reading the how to draw comics the marvel way and it teaches a similar method - building the 3d forms on top of the gesture really is a tough thing to learn, but damn well worth it.

[Starr.Fruitt]

This is Extremely helpful thanks so much!

[katpat]

Thank you SO MUCH!!
This’ll definitely help me with my poses! 😁

[Yaiinactive]

This was actually extremely helpful, thank you!

[Dachusttin]

Gesture - shape - line (different colors)

[Kino_Cartoon]

I love that you drew comparison at 3:11 with the ballerina when you say it looks like she falls over but you see her Head always be in the middle of her legs when she bends back:D

[turtlelearnsd]

Ohh, I love this! I've been doing something similar with the lines, shapes, then detail except yours is muuuch more structured and precise! I love that your method shows the structure's build-up in just 3 steps. I usually push back the opacity for the gesture and shape passes and leave my detail as the darkest line but it gets messy and I do a lot of back n forth. I'm gonna try the different colors and be more precise with my measurements. Thank you for the tips!😊

[RandomPodficMaker]

Thank you for this! I've been struggling a lot with anatomy and this really helped, thank you!