So to answer your question here is Steve Huston, explaining what makes it this way. This is who I learned this from. And then I added some imagery explaining gesture for others when I have attempted too.
"Gesture must accomplish two things:
- The gesture line must act as the fundamental design line.
- The gesture line must act as the connecting line, something to which the structure can attach.
Gesture=the long axis curve of any structure.
Always err on the side of the more dynamic. If the gesture is curved, make it more curved.
When you add all of the detail it stiffens up anyway, so go ahead and make it overcurved if you wanted.
If the sides oppose each other they can cancel out their fluid design. "
"The wave design-allowing movement and stillness. (he calls it a wave because we are made of a high percentage of water, and have a fluid motion)
Pent up. Relaxed. Or building pressure. "
CONTRAPPOSTO - COUNTERPOSE
As soon as the weight shifts, the pose becomes dynamic. It becomes asymmetrical. the pose has more potential energy, and that feels more alive to us.
It's the play between symmetry and asymmetry that's the real meat of good design. It implies change is about to happen. That's interesting. In storytelling, they call it drama, and it will keep you busy for the rest of your career.
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Anyway, sorry if I was confusing. I was up late writing all this original reply stuff and scrambling to remember it. Also trying to see how many words I could misspell apparently.
The lines on the first purple figure that I talked about being parallel is the top of the rib cage, and the bottom of the rib cage. The top of the hip bowl (iliac crest), and the bottom of the hip bowl (great trochanters). Landmarks, bones which touch the flesh, will always be related to the opposing side. See how they line up if you are confuse as to what a figure is doing. Abstraction Mannequins, connect to the major landmarks to define the height and width of a figure on your page.
The arm shoulders and can move. And have landmarks, so we cannot solely rely on them to line up the torso. That is why some people use floating balls, or pillows with pulled corners - to get the landmarks they need to be represented, which is the top of the collar bone on the acromion process.
Here is the steve huston book. It has a lot of figure drawing theory in it that I'm sure some anime books do not. It has explained in delicious simplicity the abstract theories that many students struggle with. You can you can make an account on archive.org and check it out or support the teacher and buy it.
Here is another talk I gave on gesture with the way someone else was wanting to use it.
cubebrush forum link on force and rhythm method
Also remember, that part of your issue is perspective. Your sketches in your sketchbook can be taken into the digital area and corrected to find the major and minor axis of the simplified forms of cylinders and cubes or spheres. Its important to do this when you are not using reference or a desk mannequin. So many people have to do this for a long time before they can skip it, and observe it in their mind before hand.
