The problem: complicated anatomy Have you ever been drawing the figure from a side or front view and become quite confused about what you’re seeing in the upper shoulder and upper back? You might find a variety of unfamiliar bumps and indents which don’t make much sense. This article is here for you! […]
It’s so easy to make the figure feel flat like it’s not three-dimensional. Why is that? Because the drawing surface is flat! The drawing is two-dimensional and so every time we’re trying to create a drawing that has depth to it, that has a third dimension, it’s always a magic trick, an illusion. […]
How you draw arms depends on your experience level. So let’s look at the process of drawing arms across 5 levels of experience. This is also an interesting example of how to tackle any area of the figure based on where you are in your learning journey. Total Novice If you just started life […]
DO #1: Do understand the role that anatomy is going to play in your figure drawings It’s not just a case of learning where muscles start and end, and then suddenly your figure drawings will all look amazing. Anatomy is part of a bigger machine of skills. There’s gesture, there’s simplifying your values into interesting […]
Something that never ceases to amaze me about learning art skills is how long it takes between understanding the idea and the principle and being really good at that thing. Probably one of the top three most important skills in art is lerning ) simplifying your values into a simple structure. This is one […]
“Ok so here’s how you shade, you get the blending stump and you carefully smoosh the tones around and add fine gradations and nuance, and boom! You have shaded your figure to perfection!” I downloaded the TikTok app and did everything i could not to get sucked in to the addictive dopamine vortex. I […]
Even though learning to draw and paint is one of life’s great joys, you’ll notice that most of the stages described below include some form of painful feeling, like you’re doing badly. As you’re learning any art skill, rather than thinking, ‘oh, there’s something wrong with me’, it might be more porductive to think instead, […]
This article isn’t about advice that’s obviously wrong and really easy to avoid, like to draw a hand just put your hand down and draw around it. We’ll focus on stuff where it’s more nuanced and difficult to see that it’s not great, because those are the ones that’ll catch you out. These are […]
You only realise how important these topics are when you’ve been practising and you’re serious about it. So you know how important weight is in figure drawing, let’s get the tools needed to succeed with it. Spot the difference in these two sketches of the same pose below. Hopefully you agree that the one […]
Most of the advice you’ve heard on this has probably either been impossible to implement or just wrong. A lot of figure drawings don’t have the figure balanced, I’ve done millions of drawings like that, and it feels weird for the viewer. So let’s get your figures balanced. The really cool thing is that often […]