Introductory Figure Drawing

  This past weekend I signed up for an Introductory Workshop to Figure Drawing . It was very intense because this is normally a full two week course condensed into just two days. Add to that factor that I have never tried drawing a figure or person before and you have an approximation of my trepidation to going through with this class. Everyone said that drawing people is hard, so that always put me off. They were right! So here my drawings are just my first attempts. At the end of the weekend my trepidations were borne out: I have a lot to learn and will need reams of paper to practice on if ever I decide to go further in this direction. Having said that, I learned a lot which will help me later on in future life drawing sessions.

  Our teacher is a very experienced artist who is highly regarded locally. She simply wanted to teach too many things in two days. I think a three day workshop would have been that much better. In two short days there was too much information to take in and process. It was definitely a challenge and even if I know my drawings show my lack of experience, I tried to have fun.

  The first lesson was about measuring with a pencil and sighting the size of the head and fitting that proportion along the rest of the model's body. It is a rule of thumb that 7 1/2 heads will fit into the size of the average human. Our model was shorter, so our paper was then divided into 6 1/2 sections into which we had to fit our drawing. I found this very distracting. So then I tried to free hand the body shape. My drawings weren't any better, but they were easier to do.

   After that we learned to look for the negative shapes or empty spaces around the solid figure. I think we should have started with this lesson. Seeing the odd shapes in the circle of her arms created by placing her hands on her hips, or the inverted triangle of air between her legs, made it easier to draw just those edges of the model's body. Breaking the whole body down like this made it much easier to understand the relationship of proportions. This part of the lesson was lots of fun! After that, I think all of us felt a bit more confident and became more free in our drawings.

  Shading and adding values is what gives mass or free dimensionality to any drawing, whether it is a still life composition or a figure drawing. This is a part of drawing that I really enjoy. Once I got a rudimentary figure shape drawn onto my paper, I just took my time with the various tones and highlights. This was only possible when the model did longer poses for us. Longer poses are easier for the artist because we have more time to get things 'right'. For the model, longer poses are very difficult. Have you ever tried standing or sitting perfectly still in one position for twenty minutes at a time? Remember how impossible it was to keep from squirming? We gained an insight to the discipline and dedication that models must acquire to do this job well.

   The model was lying on her side. Her upper torso was interesting because gravity played a significant role in the shapes we saw. This depended too, on our angle of view. My view was full frontal as the platform was directly in front of me. Here, I tried to concentrate mostly on her right arm in relation to her breast. The darker shadows made this drawing really come to 'life' for me.

  Symmetry is another factor to think about and is harder to achieve than you might think. On organic forms such as flowers, trees and even fruit it is easier to fudge because who can say those shapes are perfect? On a person those shapes are not always perfect, but they at least have to look like a person. Unless you happen to be Picasso and then nothing has to look like it's supposed to! The right side is definitely off. This was also a shorter pose and therefore harder to draw.

  Our model for the second day was a very tall, very fit man. It was generally agreed that drawing a male model was a lot more difficult because of the harder edges compared to the softer, rounder shapes of a woman. All those super toned muscles were pleasing to look at but frustrating to draw! Add to that the shear dimension of our model who was 6' 8" posing on the platform and suddenly the room was too small for him, not to mention the size of our paper! Of course we had to fit our model to the paper, but we all had a harder time depicting the male body.

   The upper torso was easier to focus on.His legs went on forever but at least there is an idea of his stature in this drawing. I found getting the dimensions much harder to achieve. This drawing is sadly overworked and it shows because his chest really had more sculpted muscles than I manage to show here.

  By the middle of the second afternoon most of us were ready to wrap it up. Our brains  wouldn't process any more information and our drawings started to deteriorate. Then we had 'just one more' pose to draw. After we stopped groaning and griping, our task was to try drawing folds of clothing. Normally that is something I enjoy drawing, but I think my brain had turned to tofu at this point and I didn't accomplish this as well as I might have. The most interesting part was the juxtaposition of the folds of fabric to the folds on the model's neck. Perhaps more shading in the fabric folds might have made this a better drawing, but by then it was time to pack up our supplies.

  At the end of each day we assembled all the drawings on the floor to be critiqued. This is always a bit intimidating, especially if there are people in the class who are already professional artists, but it is also very valuable. We look at each drawing and we say what we think might have made it even better. Looking at other people's drawings and seeing how they did something provides as much insight into doing a technique as the teacher demonstrating it for us. The individual interpretation and innovations are truly inspiring. Maybe somewhere down the road I'll try Figure Drawing again.