Gesture drawing is the act of drawing a figure (live or photo reference) under a time limit, usually several poses over a period of time, sometimes as quickly as 10 seconds, or as long as 4 hours between poses.
The aim with shorter poses is to capture the "flow" of the pose as quickly as possible (often with as few lines as possible; line economy). The aim is to capture the movement, weight, and fundamental key features of the pose - not likeness. Exageration here is encouraged. With the longer poses, you can focus on the details and on things such as anatomy, proportion, value, likeness, etc.
Gesture drawing is great for learning anatomy intuitively, developing line confidence, dynamic posing, and building your visual library. With practice, you’ll be able to create dynamic, fluid, interesting, and accurate poses even without reference!
Pesture Drawing is a website designed for doing timed reference drawing (gesture drawing), using your Pinterest boards as the source material.
The major draw of Pesture Drawing (as opposed to other gesture drawing resources) is that you make your own reference base. Don’t care to draw people? No problem! make a Pinterest board for whatever you want to study, connect it here, and start drawing!
References don’t have to be “classic” gesture material. Trying to develop your own style? Create boards of favorite artworks and use Pesture Drawing for master studies. Studying composition? Build boards of film stills and paintings you love. Studying a specific animal/species? Create a board of just that subject.
The goal of Pesture Drawing is to create a structured, low‑friction way to study anatomy, form, and art while eliminating decision paralysis.
Use the following shortcuts on the Drawing Session screen:
The bell calls out time remaining at the marks you set (seconds). The default is
600,300,120,60,30,10,0 — that’s 10m, 5m, 2m, 1m, 30s, 10s, and the end.
Pick the voice/bell mode you prefer.
Voice uses your browser’s speech engine. If the site is muted or a voice isn’t available, it will fall back to the bell.
"Voice and bell" mode will use the voice if the time remaining is greater than 60 seconds and a bell when the time remaining is equal to or less than 60 seconds.
The point of gesture drawing isn’t to capture a perfect likeness. It’s about capturing the flow of the pose in as few lines as possible. Short poses are there to force your brain to find the most essential aspects of the pose, even if that’s just one line defining the spine or Line of Action.
Many classes start with 10‑second poses (the 15‑minute class starts at 30s). These aren’t expected to look “good”—they’re warm‑ups to switch your brain from thinking mode to drawing mode. You’ll often find that after these quick poses, a 1–2 minute pose feels much longer than if you had started with the longer poses!
As you move into longer poses, try to keep the same quick energy you attained from the short poses. Aim to suggest the full form in your first few lines (don’t worry about likeness—this should be closer to a stick figure than to a portrait or fully rendered piece). With more time, add in big shadow shapes and simple masses for major anatomy. Details and likeness can emerge if/when time allows, but they’re not the goal.
Most importantly: have fun drawing!
Pesture Drawing includes sample boards (15 random images pulled from my own reference boards) which can be utilized without needing to connect to pinterest at all. You may also feel free to visit my Pinterest and build your own from there: pinterest.com/penumbrialhexandroga.
You can literally save and copy these boards exactly, I dont mind! Pinterest is useful because you only have to add a few images of what you're looking for, and it'll start automatically suggesting similar images, allowing you to quickly and easily create large reference boards tailored specifically to your interests!
If you don’t want to make your own boards, try these resources instead: