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There are a variety of reasons you might like to pursue this wonderful art form, including:
A lot of figure drawing artists love a combination of a soft charcoal or pastel pencil on smooth newsprint. These pencils provide a wide range of tones and strengths of marks, especially on the smooth surface of newsprint. Using A3 or larger sheets is a good idea. As you progress, you can learn to sharpen your pencil with a razor blade and sandpaper to use it to even better effect.
We also have a PDF guide that helps you figure out where your skills are now and what skill to work on next which you can get here.
OBSERVATIONS
This is the ability to draw what you are seeing with natural looking proportions and shapes that aren’t distorted by your brain’s pre-conceived ideas of what things should look like. This is the skill to start working on first.
FORMS
This the ability to see and capture the 3D forms of the figure on paper. One part of this is about seeing the figure in terms of simplified forms and planes. The other part is about understanding some of the anatomy that makes up the figure.
GESTURE
This is the ability to draw the figure with life and energy.
VALUES
This is the ability to simplify down the light and dark we see into well designed shapes of.
We also have a PDF guide that helps you figure out where your skills are now and what skill to work on next which you can get here.
MEASURING DISTANCES
For example, you can compare how long the arm is relative to the head, and then replicate that relationship in your drawing.
MEASURING ANGLES
For example, you can check what the angle across the shoulder is by holding up your pencil to it and then ensure your drawing also has that same shoulder angle.
VERTICAL & HORIZONTAL ALIGNMENTS
For example, you can check what is lining up vertically with the ear and ensure your drawing replicate that.
ABSTRACT SHAPES
There are a few challenges that come with learning to draw:
OUR EYES PROGRESS FASTER THAN THE DRAWINGS
In other words, often you can envision what you want to draw long before you can actually put it down on paper. This can often be disheartening.
PROGRESS ISN’T ALWAYS VISIBLE
Quite often, drawings look better when multiple different skills come together. Sometimes, you might improve in a skill area, but it’s not yet clear in the drawings because you haven’t yet improved the other skills. So sometimes you are progressing but you can’t see it.
DRAWINGS CAN APPEAR WORSE BEFORE APPEARING BETTER
To learn more about what the learning process often looks like, check out this article.
SET YOURSELF UP FOR SUCCESS
Give yourself doable exercises with realistic goals, so that at each stage you feel like you are succeeding. The goal should not be big and vague like ‘I’ll do these exercises and then I’ll do amazing drawings’. If you are doing basic observational exercises about measuring proportions, then your goal could be to do drawings with improved proportions. The drawings might not look great because you still need to work on other skills like gesture, form and values, but that wasn’t the point. The point was, did your proportions improve?
DON’T AVOID THE HARD THINGS
Don’t shy away from important skills because you have struggled with them before or you find them off-putting. I avoided working on simplifying forms and also anatomy for a long time because I found them difficult. Once I actually got stuck into learning them with proper exercises though, it turned out they weren’t as scary as I had thought. And because I really needed those skills, my drawings improved so much.
– Understand the basic anatomy that is most important for figure drawing
– Understand the broad proportions of the figure
– Understand the building blocks of the gesture of any pose
– Understand the simple forms that comprises the human figure.
Learning to draw is a process that looks different to everyone. Below is a case study of Rogelio’s transformation and some words from Rogelio about his experience with Love Life Drawing
ROGELIO’S STORY
Rogelio was very new to drawing and did not have a background in the arts. Since going through the Life Drawing Simplified Course, Rogelio has remained a hard working and dedicated student whose work continues to go from strength to strength. Well done Rogelio!
HOW DID LOVE LIFE DRAWING HELP YOU ON YOUR ARTISTIC JOURNEY?
I had no artistic experience going into the program and it gave me the tools to even begin learning. Every day during and after finishing the course I spent about 5-15 minutes drawing poses with the method you showed us, that alone took me pretty far
WHAT WAS YOUR BIGGEST BREAKTHROUGH?
Being able to reduce figures to simple objects and manipulate them in my mind in order to draw 3D objects on a 2D surface, instead of just drawing contours
HOW HAS YOUR MINDSET CHANGED?
I used to draw really quickly and try to put a bunch of lines down until I found the right one but this made my drawing look kind of noisy. Now I’m trying to take more time thinking about the mark before I make it.
Every week or two, I send out useful tips and insights about life drawing. When you sign up, I’ll also send you our guide to the skills of life drawings so you can see where you are and what skills to work on next
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