Advanced Figure Drawing 1st Month

Latest Figure Drawings

Up Close: Portraits

The Lower Half (Legs and Feet Need Focus Too)

Giving a Hand

Headless Figures

Anatomy

This is a bad drawing.

The musculature and structure of the back is completely muddled in this rendering.

This is a little better... but we're still just guessing here.

Let's take a look at a master copy I did from a Da Vinci study 

with some muscular and skeletal overlays.

Sometimes it's better to just learn from the masters and practice fundamental anatomy.  Just because a layer of skin is covering up all of those muscles and bone doesn't mean we can ignore the architecture underneath the figure.

Line

The best lines in figure drawing I think are calligraphic.  Varying thickness, directional, and confident.

Even the quality of the lines you use to draw "through" the body to establish form is important

This was a good experience of not just resorting to faded chalky soft lines.  I reviewed with my professor about the portrait and he added a few of the distinct, dark lines.  I added the rest and it really made the whole composition more defined and more confident.

Poses

Going into these kind of classes, I was expecting nice stationary, simple poses for our sustained drawings.  But I soon found that being able to draw the body in all sorts of poses and tackling that beast of a burden we all know as foreshortening is an essential skill set.

In short, I hate foreshortening.  But I can handle it.

Outline

 

How the figure fills the page is as important as any texture or lighting contrast you might add later.

I found there are many ways you can give the figure a presence on paper.  

Some outlines are simply that - lines.  

But thicker slabs of value can also give a composition depth.

First Impressions: Gesture

Gesture drawing is capturing that first impression of the figure, how it inhabits the space.  It can be quickly scribbled down without worrying too much about details.  However, accuracy is still important.  Simply scribbling gets you nowhere.  Being able to quickly observe and interpret onto paper is a skill that takes years to master.

You can even just focus on practicing the basic shapes and forms of difficult body parts.


Mastering the figure limb by limb can be a useful way to add variety to your practice.

Also, if you have the time, adding a splash of midtone value and then erasing back some highlights can make even the most rudimentary gestures pop.

Cast Shadows vs. Form Shadows