Figure drawing: A beginner’s guide
By Patrick J Jones
Figure drawing is a fundamental skill for artists, but one of the hardest to truly master. In this article, I explain the process and offer some advice to help you improve your figure drawing skill.
I will walk you through how to draw a female figure and a step by step guide to drawing male figures, then we will examine gesture drawing.
Although having knowledge of the proportions of a human figure is important, bear in mind that these are only a guide. Trying to shoehorn every person you draw into an eight-head-high ideal is a shortcut to uninspiring figure drawing.
To achieve style we need to work with gesture, the spirit of the pose, the fluid nature in line. If we take gesture too far, though, our drawing will look wobbly. To counter that we need to also work with a solid structure, but too much structure can make for a stiff drawing. Therein lies the great balancing act of figure drawing that we will explore here.
Leave a reply