I just realized from that second video that I've been publicly drawn before. I had the weirdest nonverbal interaction with an art student on the metro, and anyway I was very excited to get off the train at my stop. This explains a lot actually.
I would advise to anyone who live draws models in public, to consider the psychological effect of some random person's eyes scrolling all across your body while avoiding eye contact and being intently focused. Lol.
I do this almost daily- whenever I'm on the subway or streetcar. For anyone who wants to do it, or doesn't want to be subject to it- look into the actual laws in your area.
Where I'm from, at least, law is on the side of the artist.
In a public venue there is no 'expectation of privacy'. So unless you're drawing someone on their property or private property drawing is fair game.
Just like reporters can set up cameras and record pretty much anywhere -- I recently saw a camera crew spring out of the shadows when my friend was hit by a car.
Master these three types of drawing and you're more likely to be able to draw the character as you imagine them:
http://drawsketch.about.com/cs/drawinglessons/a/drawstructure_2.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrGnMar2pAI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SL3LiR_pvsU
I, personally, tend to use gesture to add or figure out movement, structure for volume and then contour for detail and highlights/shadows... I dislike contour, but it's a good skill to have.
While I agree that gesture, structure, and contour are important - I wouldn't rely on these three videos as source.
The structural blurb doesn't mention anything about perspective- which is the foundation of structural drawing.
The gesture study says nothing about direction of form, proportion, or ignoring detail- - he waists time fluffing around with her hair and dress frills- and doesn't include head direction- shoulder or hip angles. weight - balance - or pretty much anything about gesture.
No rules? .... my heart hurts.
From his other work I can tell this guy knows his stuff- but this video feels like he forgot how much of the fundamentals actually go into what he's drawing, and gestures in general.
Drawing aimless gestures is akin to writing random words on the page. Maybe you'll learn a bit about spelling, but not much else.
continuous line contour drawing is one of several different contour exercises and is quite fun. I would have liked her to talk more about overlapping forms, but I think her tutorial is the most informative.
/ end rant