The short gesture pose: some past favorites

"Acceptance." 6x6 ink, 2011

In my opinion, the purpose of doing 2- or 5- minute gesture sketches from life is to loosen yourself up, and to shift yourself from trying to accurately capture everything in front of you. No time for that! This is where I try to work on capturing movement, energy, something more fleeting and dynamic... or just shake off the jitters.

Most of my gesture sketches go right into the garbage, because the point is not to create lasting works of art from them. Although I got into a phase once where I'd do them on tracing paper and then cut them out and arrange them later, like paper dolls. Sometimes I will use these gestures as jumping-off points for other artworks. The above piece was a 5-minute gesture from a gesture, and was juried into a local art show in 2013. The juror told me he liked it for its simplicity. And then he instructed me to keep doing them.