How to Draw: Sport Gestures (Patreon)

I'm very excited to bring this tutorial to you today! Once I realised that the Olympics were this Summer, I knew I had to do a special focus on drawing athletes.

The wonderful thing about drawing athletes performing their specialised sports, is that we have a story, we have a lot of power and force, we have direction and we have emotion. It’s all in there!

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in this video, I’m going to begin with a quick recap of my process, which, if you’ve been here for a while, you will be familiar with but if you’re new, you may not have seen this broken down yet.

Then we will take a look at some football and tennis reference and see what we can do to capture the movement and power of the athletes.

You will have access to my Pinterest boards for this reference when you want to practice drawing sports too. 

Finally, I will go through some tennis and football poses, talking you through the things I'm looking for and the choices I am making.

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When drawing gestures, we always emphasise the importance of these three things:

• know your story

• Draw what you feel not what you see

• Lean into exaggeration

This is extra important when drawing sports action.

And what a better time to practice our sports gestures than the summer of 2024 when we have the Summer Olympics in Paris, Wimbledon Tennis tournament and the Eurocup Football tournament.

I’m not a mega sports person but I can get swept up in the excitement of these global sports events.

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it was actually because of my drawings that I did for the 2016 Rio olympics that got me my first job as a life drawing. Without those I don’t think I would have found a path in teaching and we wouldn’t be here right now!

Check them out down below:

Would you like to see more of these 2016 Rio Olympic Character Designs? 

Comment below and let me know!

Also let me know what sports you would be excited to draw or that you would like me to draw!

Gillian