Life Drawing: Some Gestures from the Week.

To create the illusion of depth draw on your knowledge of perspective.  You could help yourself in this type of pose by drawing a box in perspective representing the simple shape that the figure would be contained in.  Marking down the ground plane to weigh down your model and keep him planted.  In this pose, we also have overlapping forms (arms in front of torso, in front of legs) which further helps in creating depth or foreshortening.

You can slightly see my Line of action here in my light underdrawing.  It goes up the arm, down the back and swoops over the hips and down the leg. 

This is an easy line of action here(yellow line).  Figure is properly balanced.  You can see that if you drop a line straight down from the base of his neck, his weight is evenly distributed between both feet.

Woah, can you see the boxes?  I tend to shade two sides of my boxes, especially if that side of the box is in shadow(pelvis).  Simplifies my gestures in quick poses but adds form.  Notice the back of the knee caps showing the perspective/surface line in one stroke.  You can tell that the Left leg is coming towards us, Right leg is angled away.

Left figure is balanced.  Right figure showing form through boxes and a long line of action reaching up.

Can you feel the flow and rhythm of this drawing?

Boxes forming the ribcage and pelvis + flow down legs + balance and proportion = simple clean gesture