Bust-a-move with your pencil!

I'm still in the composing stage for my Civil war painting. The patron wanted some changes made, as expected, and so now I'm finishing up those changes and will be posting the evolution of the drawings from start to finish as soon as I'm given the final approval.

For now I want to say a little something about references. For something like this project I'm on, it would be impossible to do it without taking reference shots. The aim for this painting is to capture a moment in time, the moment happens to be one of war, and that means lots of movement.

So instead of having my models pose, all of my first references are video instead of pictures. capturing someone walking by having them pose in a walking stance doesn't teach me about how a human walks. But studying a video of people walking, pretending to be in the scene I want them to be in, does.

Andrew Loomis shows a great way in blocking in
a gesture in action, when mapping a scene.

You capture movement by studying movement. What this does is give you a better idea of what is possible anatomically, in an action pose, or I should say a gesture that gives the impression of movement.

The gesture is crucial. It is the difference between a character looking bored, and a character about to act, or is feeling tense, or is about to fall asleep. Look at this screenshot from the movie Akira. Not only studying actual action, but going to the people who do it best, professional animators, to see how they solve the problems of capturing movement in gesture.

In this clip, look and ask yourself what makes each figure look as though they are doing and feeling a certain way, just in the gesture. It is far more than just a face that can tell you about the emotional status of the person you are trying to capture.

This is where it become very essential that as an artist you get into the mentality of the people you're trying to convey. Go and put yourself in the position, the action and mental state of the persons you're attempting to draw. This will teach you much more about how to capture a gesture in action than anything else I can think of.