Life Drawing and Figure Art

4 Common Ways to Approach A Drawing.

Comment Written by Figure Drawing on June 18, 2009 – 11:50 am

While it is tempting to draw exactly what you see in your figure studies every time, it’s not a very practical way to get better. In fact if you try to do this every time you will hinder your creativity and not exercise all of your drawing muscles. Here is some examples of new ways to look at your Figure Drawing.

A Contour Drawing By Henry Matisse. Note the line width changes.

Contour Line Drawing:

Contour line Drawing is the practice of see the forms and masses as lines. Try to ignore the lighting and see only the shapes and structures of the figure in front of you. If you have trouble with this try doing a…

Blind Contour:

Fix your eyes on the outline of the model, draw the contour very slowly in a steady, continuous line without lifting the pencil or looking at the paper.  Try doing it this way for the whole drawing. If you feel the need to lift – don’t. Instead try drawing very light to get to your next position.

A well-done blind contour drawing frequently has sufficient quality and character to be preserved as a work of art.

This blurry photo gives a great example of the study of tone.

Tonal Drawing:

The beginning student often wishes to master this style of drawing before even practicing any of  the other types of Figure drawing. Value drawing is to show the light and shadow and surface tones, creating a three-dimensional illusion. To gain a real understanding try to not use any lines as you practice. This will help you to truly understand Tone and Light.

Example of A Leaf Gesture: Note what its doing. We decided that a leaf generally considered static was a better way to give an example of a gesture.

Gestural Drawing:

Capturing quick poses and movement in figure drawing is a great warm-up exercise, loosening up your hand and mind. It should be done every class. Try to start your sessions with 30  second poses. This will force you to learn the essence of what you are drawing.

According to Kimon Nicolaides in ‘The Natural Way to Draw’, “you should draw, not what the thing looks like, but what it is doing.”

Just as an athlete warms up before exercising or participating in sports, artists use gesture drawing to prepare themselves mentally and physically for a figure drawing session. The fast pace of gesture poses can also help an artist “loosen up” to avoid a stiff drawing style.

Great example of the Nude in silhouette. Still very Expressive.

Silhouette:

A silhouette is a view of an object or scene consisting of the outline and a featureless interior, with the silhouetted object usually being black.  You can be very expressive in a silhouette and modern animators and computer artists rely on it to guarantee that their characters stand out from the rest of the scene. Can your silhouettes be as interesting as a more involved drawing?

Try to practice these styles of drawing the same way an  athlete does various exercises to improve their overall performance. You may surprise yourself when they start to look better than your longer studies.

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