Brie Harriel

CTA Final Report: Gesture Drawing

My cognitive task analysis was on gesture drawing. Gesture drawing is a quickly drawn picture

that’s goal is to capture the most important aspects, or the essence, of a specified subject. Gesture

drawing also is good for increasing hand eye coordination and depth perception. My CTA

involved interviewing a local artist and learning their knowledge on gesture drawing and

analyzing some of the drawings they do themselves.

There are many applications for gesture drawing and there are quite a few articles that discuss its

importance in various contexts. One article called “Gesture3D: Posing 3D Characters via Gesture

Drawing” discusses the use of gesture drawing in animation. They draw the basic framework of

the characters and put them in storyboarding (Bessmeltsev 2016). They then use these drawings

as a reference and use 3D interfaces to conform the animations to the drawings (Bessmeltsev

2016). They then use these cues “to compute a plausible image space projection of the conveyed

pose and to imbue it with depth” (Bessmeltsev 2016). The next article, “Mastering Techniques of

Gesture Drawing” goes more in depth on what gesture drawing entails and the process. Gesture

drawing involves concentration and intense observation to create a physical image of a real-

world objective with a limited amount of time (Henkes 1972). The article states, “Time involved

remains brief whether the student wishes to express a moving object while remaining still or

express a still object while moving. Thus the student must accustom himself to a ‘speeding up’

process…” (Henkes 1972). The goal of gesture drawing in this case is to grasp the essence of

something before the desired subject that the artist is attempting to draw disappears. The article

also discusses on how to make a student better and more efficient at gesture drawing. It suggests

having the same subject but each time the student draws it, they should get their previous time
cut in half (Henkes 1972). The purpose of this is to show the student that originally, they may

draw way more than what is necessary and that as the time is cut down, the student will begin to

draw what is only significant (Henkes 1972). Also, relaxation is key to successful gesture

drawing (Henkes 1972). The article states, “It demands sensitivity and the will to tenaciously

cling to the process…Gesture drawing is the accumulation of several aspects of a single idea

within the mind, and visually comprehensible, expressed as a unification of all the parts”

(Henkes 1972). Gesture drawing, while it takes a short amount of time to complete, takes a

serious amount of cognitive processing for it to be successful.

I interviewed an expert in the field of drawing and painting. Lauren Cohen-Hogan has a

bachelors and masters from both ASU and University of Hawaii with a major pertaining to art.

She was a clinical supervisor at the ASU west campus, an artist for Creativeprojects, and a part

of Artery Artists at Artlink/art detour. Some of her experience includes taking life drawing

classes at 13+, she did art projects for her school, she worked in art therapy with special needs

children, and she has been featured in multiple art galleries. She started with life drawings of

people, later moved to doing landscape pieces, and more recently, she has incorporated her life

drawings with her landscape paintings to create all new works of art.

I asked her many questions pertaining to her work first and then went into her knowledge of

gesture drawing. One question I asked was “What previous experience do you have with gesture

drawing?” She at one point in her life was an art teacher who used gesture drawing and she said

her art class in high school required her to do gesture drawing before each class period, so she

knew quite a bit of information on the subject. She still takes classes now where she does gesture

drawing and those drawings she copies onto tissue paper to overlay on other paintings. I then

asked Lauren what medium she used and why. She stated she uses almost anything I could think
of. Some of the mediums she listed were ink, connie crayon, oil paint, pastels, etc. She doesn’t

have any specific reason for using one medium over another at a time, it is whatever she feels

like at that moment. The next question was, “Do you have any specific techniques you use or

process that you go through to complete these?” She stated that when she draws she doesn’t look

away from her subject and whatever medium she is using doesn’t leave the paper at all while she

is drawing. She said she also did the process of doing drawings at two minutes and cutting the

time in half each time she drew. Many of her pieces she showed me involved her doing basic

gesture drawings and then going back later to do more detailed work on top of them. She said

that one thing she makes sure to do is focus on her work; this is one of the biggest components to

gesture drawing. Lastly, I asked her if she had a specific life subject that she used for gesture

drawing. By this I meant does she prefer male, female, fatter, thinner, etc. and if one is easier

over the other. She stated that she has no preference over the person but instead is very open.

The main things I learned from this CTA is that gesture drawing is a useful exercise for any

artist. It helps them to learn better focus and to take only the important aspects of the subject and

to focus on those. Also, the whole subject doesn’t need to be captured, sometimes it can be just

parts of them. A key takeaway was the fact that even though gesture drawing is a simple activity

that has no exact rules to it, it does take a lot of cognitive processing in focusing, making sure

things are properly proportioned, and the essence of the subject is captured all in a matter of

seconds.

Gesture drawing has many real-world applications. Mainly it can be done by anyone who desires

to improve their drawing abilities and their drawing efficiency. Also, it isn’t just useful for

drawers or painters, but for those in animation. They allow for a quicker way for the animators to

animate their characters. Instead of doing all the 3D work using individual movements, all they
must do is overlay the animations over the drawings using computers. Another application is like

the type of work Laura does. Gesture drawing can be used in education to help students with

their depth perception and hand-eye coordination. This is included in therapeutic work, like how

it can be used to work with children with special needs. Overall this CTA was very informative

and it has caused me to have an increased appreciation for art and its ability to not only challenge

someone creatively, but to also make them exercise their cognitive abilities.

Works Cited
Bessmeltsev, M., Vining, N., & Sheffer, A. (2016). Gesture3D: Posing 3D characters via gesture

drawings. ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), 35(6), 1-13. doi:10.1145/2980179.2980240

Henkes, R. (1972). Mastering techniques of gesture drawing. Design, 74(2), 8. Retrieved from

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