presents
LEARN HOW TO DRAW PEOPLE 15 Expert Tips on How to Draw a Person
LEARN HOW TO DRAW PEOPLE Silver and Velvet 2002, colored pencil, 11 x 16. Collection the artist
DRAWING BASICS HOW TO DRAW PEOPLE THE CLASSICAL WAY
by Michael P. Kinch
This content has been abridged from an original article written by Michael P. Kinch. © F+W Media, Inc. All rights reserved. F+W Media grants permission for any or all pages in this premium to be copied for personal use.
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C
apturing the human form in graphite drawings may seem intimidating, but Tony Ryder believes artists can create masterful drawings by taking a three-step approach toward taming the barrage of visual information presented by the human figure.
Envelope, Gesture, and Block-In Ryder begins with an envelope of lines connecting a few widely separated points on the figure. The envelope establishes the drawing’s general proportions and institutes what the artist calls “point-to-point measurement,” the analysis of the relationship between two points as defined by the length and tilt of the straight line that connects them.
Music 1998, graphite, 24 x 18. Private collection. This diagram of Music illustrates breaking down the envelope. Here, the artist established large, axial relationships, such as the axes of the shoulders and knees, as well as the pitch of the arms and torso.
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Paintbrushes 1998, graphite, 18 x 24. Courtesy John Pence Gallery, San Francisco, California. All images this article from The Artist’s Complete Guide to Figure Drawing, by Anthony Ryder (Watson-Guptill Publications, New York, New York). ©2000 by Anthony Ryder.
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At the same time, or even before he draws the envelope, Ryder is conscious of the gesture of the model. He asks, “When do we really begin to draw the figure? I think we begin before the pencil touches the paper, with a response to the pose of the model. More than anything else, at this stage I respond to the action or gesture of the model. It is the fundamental energy that patterns the whole drawing.” In reality, gesture is an immaterial and invisible energy, but Ryder looks for what he terms “the inner curve,” an imaginary line that flows like a river through all the forms of the body, never making angular, abrupt changes of di-
rection. “Capturing gesture,” he says, “brings the drawing to life. The figures in drawings should appear as if they were breathing, as if their hearts were beating. Gesture is the heart and soul of figure drawing.” Gesture guides the anatomy of the body into the shape of the pose. This shape, expressed in its simplest form in the envelope, is more fully defined in the block-in. Constructed within the envelope, and according to the same principles, the block-in is the elaboration and continuation of the envelope. It is a complex shape approximating the appearance of the figure. The blockin shapes are strung along the inner
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LEFT
Ramona 1995, graphite, 24 x 18. Private collection. As shown here, the gestural currents in this drawing alternate from side to side, spiraling around the central inner curve. ABOVE
Cynthia’s Daffodil 1997, graphite and pastel on gray paper, 25 x 19. Private collection.
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Thought Form (detail) 1999, graphite, 18 x 24. Private collection.
curve. They “progress and merge into one another along its invisible path,” Ryder describes. “They conduct the curve as if it were a kind of electricity, a gestural current, expressed in the fluid interconnection of shapes as they progress into one another.” He refines the blockin until there is a rough but delineated outline of the figure, always keeping an eye on the flow of the gesture by estab-
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lishing large axial relationships, such as the pitch of the arms and torso. Ryder pays special attention to the hands, which he proclaims as “the gestural organ par excellence. Hands are one of the most expressive parts of the body and, due to their mobility, are similar to a little body in themselves.” That mobility and complexity can make drawing a hand intimidating, so Ryder recom-
mends that artists regard the hand as an outgrowth of the gestural shape of the arm. He suggests first drawing the mitten-shaped envelope of the hand, looking at the fingers as a unit, and then noticing how they taper and overlap. “Fingers don’t look like sausages neatly lined up on a meat counter,” Ryder remarks. The second step in Ryder’s figure-drawing method is contour, which is the
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Contour refined outline of the figure. He notes, “The contour of the body is extremely subtle, difficult to describe accurately, and quite fascinatingly beautiful. When the contour is sensitively handled, it can stand alone, like a violin solo.” Contour consists of convex curves that delineate the horizon of the model’s body. Ryder works along the block-in section by section, imposing the curves on the straight-line segments, though not necessarily on a one-to-one basis. The artist routinely corrects the contour, erasing and redrawing small (and sometimes not so small) sections. Ryder refers to the final stage as “inside drawing,” by which he “sculpts” the
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Inside Drawing form of the body within the contour through gradations of tone. These gradations of tone, or tonal progressions, represent the flow of light and shadow across the figure. The most challenging aspect, says Ryder, is learning to see light and form. “Given that we process visual experiences every moment of our waking lives, it seems we should be entirely familiar with the nature and behavior of light. Strangely,” he remarks, “when it comes to drawing its effects, students discover that the action of light is almost entirely unknown territory.” Therefore, inside drawing is developed in tandem with the understanding of the actions of light.
Ryder divides the technical aspect of drawing light and shadow into two basic skills: applying graphite to the surface of the paper in a controlled manner and developing washes of shading in a logical sequence. The control is in the deliberate work of hatching and crosshatching. “Hatching is a rhythmic activity,” he says. “The pencil moves like a sewing-machine needle. The trick is to get the lines evenly spaced, gradually increasing or decreasing in length, and in the right value range and progression. Crosshatching is hatching on top of hatching, with the layers of hatching crossing at an angle. There’s no limit to Aurora the number of layers 1998, graphite and pastel on gray of crosshatching that paper, 19 x 25. can be applied in a Private collection.
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ABOUT THE ARTIST ANTHONY RYDER studied at the Art Students League of New York, the New York Academy of Art, both in New York City, and with Ted Seth Jacobs. He has distilled his drawing techniques in his book The Artist’s Complete Guide to Figure Drawing (Watson-Guptill Publications, New York, New York). The artist lives in Santa Fe. For more information, visit his website: www.TonyRyder.com.
drawing. To mist a drawing with value, crosshatching can be done very softly, as if you were applying washes of value with a brush rather than individual lines with a pencil.” The second skill, shading in a logical sequence, is not so much manual as it is procedural. After creating a finely tuned contour drawing an artist may be eager to start shading. But Ryder tempers zeal with an understanding of and respect for the order of the form. “The body on the inside is subtly structured, simultaneously orderly and complex. So it should be in our drawings. But,” he
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says, “ordering the form on the inside must be done without lines. There are no lines in nature.” Ryder locates landmarks on the inside with nearly invisible micropatches of shading, organizing them into pathways of form that collectively create a network. These networks guide Ryder through the development of the tonal progressions. For example, in Scott’s Back the landmarks created by muscle and bone catch light and cast shadow to create links within the contour. The artist used shadows, cast-shadow edges, and downturns in the light to organize the model’s back.
Ryder realizes that Phases of Dane learning to draw is not Crescent an easy process. “I always 1998, graphite feel like apologizing to and pastel on gray paper, 25 my students for breaking x 19. Courtesy the news that drawing van de Griff/Marr Gallery, Santa the figure in this way is Fe, New Mexico. really a lifelong work of devotion,” he says. “The most important thing is consistent effort. It is also crucial that students learn to pace themselves, to work at a reasonable tempo. Insofar as possible, they should try not to judge themselves too harshly. Progress comes imperceptibly.” n
LEARN HOW TO DRAW PEOPLE
Adding
EXCITEMENT + VIGOR
to Your Figure Drawings
LEARN HOW TO INSTILL A SENSE OF MOVEMENT AND LIFE IN YOUR WORK, MAKE THE MOST OF EVERY DRAWING SESSION, AND STAY EXCITED ABOUT THE PROCESS.
by Dan Gheno
The Criminal by Pierre-Paul Prud’hon, 19th century, black and white chalk on blue paper, 2315⁄16 x 15¾. Private collection. Values, or light and dark patterns, can have an enormous dramatic and expressive effect on the look of a figure drawing. Prud’hon forcefully sets up his light to reinforce the volumes of the figure, with shadow-shape edges occurring at important plane breaks. To accentuate the visual drama further, Prud’hon presses a dark background against the figure’s light side and leaves the lightly toned paper juxtaposed against the model’s dark side.
This content has been adapted from an article by Dan Gheno that ran in Drawing magazine, Fall 2012. © F+W Media, Inc. All rights reserved. F+W Media grants permission for any or all pages in this premium to be copied for personal use.
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LEARN HOW TO DRAW PEOPLE Life Study of a Standing Nude by Edgar Degas, ca. 1860–1865, graphite, 11½ x 8½. Collection Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts.
many practical techniques involving line, value, perspective, and—most importantly—gesture that you can use to consistently imbue your drawings and the drawing process with a sense of excitement, movement, and discovery.
Strategies for Adding Movement: Gesture, Expression, and Action
I
’ve often heard students or fellow artists complain while drawing from life that they are uninspired by the model or by life drawing in general. “The model is so boring,” they say, “I just can’t get anything out of the poses.” But as a friend of mine once said, “There are no boring models, just boring artists.” There is no excuse for a dull or lifeless drawing when sketching the model from life, no matter how many times you’ve drawn the same model and no matter how repetitive the poses may
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seem. Working from life is usually a positive, collaborative exchange, with the model’s enthusiasm feeding off of the artist’s and vice versa. But even when a model seems disinterested or the poses lackluster, the passion visible in the drawing comes mostly from within the artist and is the artist’s responsibility. Contrary to popular belief, this ability to create visual drama is not an inherited skill or talent that an artist is born with. It’s a learned ability, and as this article will describe, there are
A good gesture drawing is at the core of all exciting and moving drawings, whether the finished piece is tight and realistic or loose and expressionistic. Even before you begin drawing, take a few quiet moments to look at the model and try to determine the gesture or the lean of the pose. Then, start by lightly sketching in a few simple lines of action, as Thomas Eakins termed them. This is usually nothing more than a couple of tilted, curving lines that represent the sweep of the figure, a kind of loose stick-figure structure that you can build your finished figure drawing around. It’s usually not too hard to find the gesture in an active pose, as seen in Bronzino’s Standing Nude. The line of action swoops sinuously from one side of the figure to the other, heel to far hand. And in severe action poses, such as the one seen in Prud’hon’s The Criminal, there is always some sort of gestural lean in the overall figure that thrusts in and out of space, giving the drawing vigor. It can aid your studies to work from photos to draw action poses like these that a model could never hold, but remember that it is essential to also work from life to become
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attuned to the all-important spatial qualities of the figure. It’s a little more difficult to find the underlying gesture in a subtle pose like the one in Degas’ Life Study, but it is still there. The line of action may seem like a nearly straight line, but stacked within it is a dynamic series of interlocking, contrasting body parts. In even the most sedate pose, there is always some sort of enlivening counterpointed relationship within the torso, called contrapposto. In Degas’ drawing, the chest is tilted one way and the hips another. Along with this type of backward and forward movement, there is also a side-to-side form of contrapposto—visible in Bronzino’s drawing—with the axis of the shoulders opposing the axis of the hips. You’ll find this dynamic, directional counterpoint of forms throughout the human figure and in just about every type of pose. The human body is an elegantly designed structure, which exists in three dimensions. Its individual, rhythmically connected, volumetric body parts exist in space, advancing toward and away from you. If you use the body as a jumping-off point for your drawings, you should have no problem conveying excitement and a sense of movement in your sketches. Every body part has palpable front and side, and often top and bottom planes. When these forms are stacked one atop another, their planes alternate in dynamic counterpoint. Ironically, reclining poses have the greatest dramatic potential when viewed from a highly foreshortened view, as in Sigmund Abeles’ drypoint. Here, we see one body shape superimposed in front of another, giving the drawing an exciting directional movement that thrusts dramatically in and out of the picture plane even though the pose is itself quite stationary. If I’m having difficulty understanding the in-and-out relationship of body parts, I sometimes try to imagine the completed pose in my head, as if I’m
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Standing Nude by Bronzino, ca. 1541–1542, black chalk, 1615⁄16 x 6¼. Collection Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy.
LEARN HOW TO DRAW PEOPLE
drawing it from imagination. I try to visualize the tilts of the whole figure and of individual body parts, the ways in which the effects of gravity might distort muscles and skin, and ways that perspective might diminish or enlarge parts of the figure. Don’t let your imagination overrule your eye, but this sort of visualization can help you discover which edges to emphasize and which to blur out, and it can also help you understand how some foreshortened body parts might be covering others. You can then draw the model with a deeper understanding of the overall gesture. When working expressively, it’s important to embrace the distortions
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of individual body parts. But try to stay in control of these distortions. As you can see in Prud’hon’s piece, it makes sense to emphasize or accentuate the forward-lunging body shapes—like the forearm or the knee in this drawing— while minimizing the figure’s receding forms in an effort to accentuate the gestural essence of the pose. Many artists also like to embrace a larger kind of accentuation that takes into account the entire gesture of the model, accentuating the expressive peculiarities found in the figure’s overall outside shape. Although these silhouette-like shapes are in essence abstract, when the figure is viewed in its entirety, as in Toulouse-Lautrec’s
drawing Woman at the Tub, the pronounced baselines of these shapes tend to reinforce the figure’s spatial relationship to its surroundings. Even when working in a more restrained, polished manner, it doesn’t hurt to start your figures with this sort of caricatured approach to guarantee you’ve captured the spirit of the pose and later modify it
Woman at the Tub by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1896, sanguine on wove paper, 153⁄8 x 20. Collection Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, Minnesota. It’s important to look for some sort of gestural movement in the model’s pose, whether subtle, as in Degas’ drawing; dynamic, as in the Bronzino image; or boldly caricatured to an almost abstract level, as in this Lautrec sketch.
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toward a less extreme silhouette. In general, notice that people tend to turn with their head or lean in with their body toward the direction of impending movement, as in Degas’ Nude Woman, Standing, Bending. A model can hold an active pose like this—or a severe action pose like the one in Prud’hon’s drawing—for only a short time, so you have to draw quickly to capture it. However, a model can easily simulate running or walking if he or she poses in a more vertical position than the real action or uses props for support, as Prud’hon’s model clearly did. Then it is your job to make it look more convincing as a gesture caught in movement by slightly tilting the pose along a more diagonal inclination. Also, stay attuned to how the model is using muscle power to stay balanced, and emphasize these forms to give the drawing added dynamic power. There is always some sort of imbalance in the figure’s line of gravity when your subject is in movement. This is even true sometimes in a subtler pose, as in Ingres’ portrait of Delécluze, where a little imbalance can be useful, imparting a feeling of impatience and impending movement. But too much lean would be distracting; you don’t want your seated or standing figure to look like it’s going to fall over.
Using Value and Creating a Psychological Impact With the gesture of the pose established, you’ll find you can use values, or light and dark patterns, to enormous dramatic and expressive effect, as Prud’hon does in his drawing, pulling together all the body’s disparate parts into a unifying abstract shadow shape that rhythmically spans the overall
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figure. You can also use values in a non-objective manner as Kollwitz does in The Homeless, where she uses a large, flat black shape to frame her actors in an oppressive gloom appropriate to the solemn subject. When you look at visually dynamic drawings, you’ll find that they are also filled with some sort of psychological, sensual, or emotional content that reinforces their impact. When you draw the figure from life, it’s important to think before putting pencil to paper. Ask yourself what the model is doing and
Etienne-Jean Delécluze by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1856, graphite and white chalk, 131⁄16 x 915⁄16. Collection Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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why. Don’t treat the pose like a clinical exercise or view the model as an inert still life object. Imagine a motivation for the pose, something out of your head or your own experience if need be. Having some kind of background story in your mind—even if it is totally fictional—will subconsciously animate all your drawing decisions as you look at the model. On a more conscious level, there are many decisions you can make to enhance the emotional content of the drawing. Pay close attention to your subject. Notice her facial tics and the
way she purses her lips, as John Potter recorded in Miss Grace Ellery Channing. Watching the model’s eyes move around the room, you might decide to catch them in your drawing as they look toward you, conveying a feeling of decisive strength or an inquisitive quality, as in Sargent’s portrait of Henry James. Perhaps you might decide to put an emphasis on the bones and tendons of the model’s hands, as Kollwitz did in Seated Old Woman, to hint at restlessness or feelings of exhaustion. Or you can draw the figure from above to convey a more delicate or vulnerable
quality, as Munch did in his famous painting Puberty.
The Dangers of High Art The greatest impediment to making exciting drawings is an artist’s own desire to create great art. Especially when I’m trying to do fast expressive drawings, I operate on the hit-andmiss theory that most professional photographers utilize. That is, for every
ABOVE
Nude Woman Standing, Bending, Forward Hair Loose, Study For Scene of War in the Middle Ages by Edgar Degas, 1863–1865, graphite, 14 x 101⁄16. Collection Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France.
LEFT
Henry James by John Singer Sargent, 1912, charcoal, 2013⁄16 x 131⁄16. The Royal Collection, Windsor, England.
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Miss Grace Ellery Channing by John Briggs Potter, 1893, graphite with touches of blue and red wash, 215⁄8 x 147⁄8. Collection Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Boston, Massachusetts. You can create a psychologically powerful sense of movement and emotion with the simple tilt of a pursed lip or the subtle cast of the model’s eyes, perhaps looking toward and confronting the viewer or—as in this drawing— glancing inquisitively toward another person outside the composition.
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100 photos you take, one might end up being a masterpiece. In the same way, I do hundreds of drawings over the course of a month, with many poses lasting no more than five, 10, or 20 minutes. Sometimes they work, most often they don’t, but at the end of the month I usually have a few drawings that I’m not too embarrassed to show the world. Likewise, long-pose drawings can drown in a sea of stodgy turgidity if you concentrate too much on creat-
ing high art. Someone once said that the “pursuit of perfection is itself the enemy of perfection.” No one is perfect, and you’ll ruin a good drawing if you try to achieve absolute perfection. In fact, some Eastern philosophers advise artists to deliberately implant one flaw within the artwork to acknowledge this fact. I don’t need to actively embed errors into the drawing—they happen naturally. Rather than attempting to make each line and shape perfect from the very beginning, I try to build on my mistakes. As many better artists before me have propounded, first you put a line down, or maybe several lines, and then you adjust them for greater accuracy. The trick is to not let yourself get crazy and overanalyze your work, changing things back and forth, not making anything better, just different. When you get into this phase—and we all do at times—it can be helpful to force yourself to work under a time limit, which many Old Masters had to do. Most artists of the Renaissance and Baroque era didn’t have the luxury of working forever. They had tight deadlines and had to provide frequent product to their patrons; and they were able to produce great Art with a capital “A.” No doubt they saw many “flaws” in their own images that they might’ve reworked if they had the time, which may have actually ruined works now considered masterpieces. Instead, even the most polished work by these artists has an excitement that comes, in part, from the artists’ having to make decisive decisions, rather than constantly changing values and shapes back and forth. When working under a time limit on a long-term project, learn how to pace yourself. Don’t work nonstop without taking a break, even when a self-imposed deadline is looming. If you are working ceaselessly to your highest capacity, you won’t be able to maintain this same high level of concentration nonstop without burning out or losing your objectivity.
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Indeed, part of being a mature, accomplished artist is knowing when to rest and forcing yourself to do it. Don’t allow yourself to become a slave to the clock when drawing quick poses either, particularly if you are trying to draw in an expressive manner. Just because you have time left in the pose doesn’t mean you have to keep working on the same drawing. The last five minutes of the pose are the most dangerous in the production of a drawing, and I have found that I’ve ruined many of my own by putting in one line too many or rendering a shape too tightly because I felt too guilty to stop working.
Retaining Objectivity It’s important to maintain some semblance of objectivity regarding your work if you want to retain excitement within yourself, let alone create drawings that are exciting for others. The more you needlessly revise shapes and lines in your drawing, the more rigid and convoluted it will look to the viewer. Some ways to stay energized and objective are physical, having to do with how you use your tools and conduct
yourself in the studio environment. For instance, don’t get too used to one scale, drawing all of your figures to the same size. It’s also important to vary the size and format of your paper to keep your hand from becoming habit-based. For the same reason, you should change your eye-level relationship to the model often—varying your stature from standing to sitting, or if your back can take it, positioning yourself on the floor to experience an extremely distorted perspective angle. If you are in a class or used to working in the same studio space, avoid the carryover habit we all have from our early grade school days of always sitting Multicolor Drawing by Dan Gheno, 2012, colored pencil, 12 x 15. Collection the artist. I occasionally change the color of my drawing tool to keep my excitement level high as I work. But I also often do this as a corrective aid when I find myself getting into trouble with proportions or repeatedly making similar mistakes. I switch to a darker color, and as mercilessly as a gradeschool teacher making spelling corrections on an essay, I superimpose my revisions over the earlier incarnation. This helps me to clear my head and shake off bad habits when I find myself making similar errors in drawing after drawing.
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LEARN HOW TO DRAW PEOPLE LEFT
Suspended by Self by Dan Gheno, 2011, oil-based crayon, 10 x 10. Collection the artist. BELOW
Taking Action by Dan Gheno, 2008, colored pencil and white charcoal on toned paper, 24 x 18. Collection the artist.
at the same desk; force yourself to move around the room to experience different views and lighting conditions. Don’t, though, use your quest for objectivity as an excuse to move around the room to avoid a particularly difficult drawing position that you couldn’t resolve in the past. That’s when you know you should face your weakness, stay in your spot, and try to work your way through it. It also aids your objectivity to sporadically change your choice of drawing tools. Sometimes a change of color can be a breath of fresh air. Or, if you find that you are drawing with a heavy hand that’s hard to control (scoring the paper with your pencil or gumming up your paper with lines that are impossible to erase), try using a softer tool. After a while, you may find your hand lightening up in compensation for the heavier, darker tool. Later on, you can return to
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a harder pencil, and you may find that you’ve conditioned yourself to work with a more delicate touch. Or if you find yourself putting too many lines or values on your paper, try working with pen or brush and ink for awhile. This will condition both your hand and mind to consider each line and value mass carefully before applying them to paper. Drawing is a very physical act. Holding your pencil too tightly or drawing too close to your paper can hinder your objectivity. In particular, when working in an expressive manner, it’s extremely important to stay loose. Draw with your entire body, pivoting off your shoulder and your wrist as you move your pencil or chalk across the paper. You might want to stand at a distance away from your easel. Or if you’re working from a chair, sit back as far as you can when setting up the gesture. It also
doesn’t hurt to look at your drawing in a handheld mirror, doubling the visual distance between you and your drawing and reversing the image to give you a fresh view of it. Some solutions for gaining objectivity are intellectual. Many of us are used to drawing lines or shapes by starting at the top, letting gravity guide our hand downward. When you find yourself trying to revise a line, but you keeping putting it in the same place over and over again despite your attempts to move it, try drawing the line from the bottom up. This often breaks your mental deadlock and sometimes helps you to find other drawing mistakes. Mental deadlocks are a particular problem when drawing the same pose for several hours, days, or weeks. It helps greatly to step away from your easel and do a quick sketch from another point of view to break through a block.
LEARN HOW TO DRAW PEOPLE Page of One-Minute Figure Sketches (detail) by Dan Gheno, 2012, black ballpoint pen, 18 x 9. Collection the artist. In a complicated, foreshortened pose—such as the seated figure in Suspended by Self—I try to imagine the individual body parts as if they were transparent, drawing both the hidden limbs and the visible ones. However, when concentrating on the parts, it’s crucial to retain a sense of the figure’s overall gesture. When first laying in a drawing, try lightly drawing through the figure’s individual, contrasting forms—as in the quick sketches shown here—to find their connecting rhythms. You can erase these exploratory lines later or leave them in as a visual record of the drawing process.
By drawing from a different vantage point, you sometimes become aware of a likeness or proportion factor that you might have missed while working in your original spot. When preparing for a long-term drawing or painting, many artists like to do several sketches or studies from the same position, trying to work out all the proportion and likeness problems before tackling the finished piece. Don’t overdo the presketching. A finished image that is rehearsed to death will feel clinical and dry to the viewer, whereas one that maintains some of the excitement of discovery will feel alive and vigorous.
Keeping it Exciting Drawing is hard work, whether you’re doing an extended, highly rendered composition or a short, expressive sketch. It’s vital that you at least try to feel excited about the drawing process in your mind, even if it feels daunting. Nothing looks more tedious than a labored or painful-looking image that shows how difficult the drawing process was for the artist. If you become bored with drawing you might need to change strategies. There’s no need to pursue the same goal in every piece, such as always drawing a full figure in the middle of the paper. If you have a hard time
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Bending Figure by Dan Gheno, 2012, charcoal, 17 x 14. Collection the artist.
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keeping the figure on the page, it may be important to do this for a while, but along the way, or later on when you’ve solved this problem, try drawing individual body parts. Or if you want to draw the whole figure, you don’t need to render all the forms to an equal finish; perhaps concentrate on the part of the figure that interests you the most. Although I’ve never found a model who didn’t hold some visual interest, sometimes he or she takes the same
poses over and over, or takes interesting poses but cannot hold them, or perhaps the studio lighting is flat. In all these cases, I can always find some body part to draw, concentrating on reinforcing my understanding of anatomy, or simply filling the page with a composed series of body parts that makes an interesting abstract design. You can also get into a rut—whether you have an inspiring model or not— by approaching the drawing process the same way every time. If you are prone to using an analytical approach in which you measure with a plumb line, or if, at the other extreme, you tend to build your figure out of prefab form concepts, you might want to contemplate letting go of all control and premeditation. Try commencing a drawing without any forethought— start anywhere in the figure and see where it leads you. You may discover new expressive effects, and the experience may help expand your vocabulary of visual distortions, all things you can take back to your usual way of working. Most artists remember how excited they felt when they first discovered the joys of drawing. Even if their first efforts were hilariously naïve, they still exhibited an enthusiasm that is often missing in a more mature artist’s work. You can often recapture this energy by asking yourself what it was that originally motivated you to become an artist. For me, it was the excitement I felt when viewing the powerful and elegantly drawn figures in the superhero comic books of the 1960s. I was further emboldened by Charlton Heston’s portrayal of Michelangelo in The Agony and the Ecstasy, as well as by Old Master drawings I saw in books. It’s different for every artist—maybe for you it was an art teacher in school or the excitement felt walking through an art museum. Even today, when I begin a drawing, I’m often reminded of the comic-book artists and Old Masters
LEARN HOW TO DRAW PEOPLE RIGHT
Outstretched Leg by Dan Gheno, 2011, colored pencil, 24 x 18. Collection the artist. BELOW
Figure Compilation by Dan Gheno, 2011, oil-based crayon, 18 x 24. Collection the artist. It’s important to keep up your daily practice drawing from life. If you feel bored by a pose, you can always find something interesting to draw. Don’t just confine yourself to the full figure. Use some poses as an excuse to study the body’s underlying anatomy and to concentrate on individual body parts. Also, try to create interesting designs by combining and overlapping full figures or body parts that might have otherwise seemed unexciting.
I admired as a youth. Sometimes, I purposely try to channel them as I work. It’s not that I’m trying to copy the artists or their personal styles; I’m just trying to conjure up some of their energy for my own drawing efforts. Don’t be afraid to channel one of your childhood favorites as you work, especially if you feel your energies flagging. Use your idols as muses to keep you motivated while trying not to lose yourself and your own style.
Staying Confident “When will I ever feel accomplished?” is the phrase I often hear when artists feel weary and frustrated, and this lack of confidence can result in overwrought drawings. Hopefully, an artist never stops growing and questioning his or her own weaknesses, but it’s important for all artists to have a sense of purpose and confidence as they work. It comes down to practice. The more you draw from life, the stronger your eyehand coordination will become, and this in turn will create more confidence in your personal outlook as you draw. Even if the model isn’t inspiring, consider yourself to be drawing for the sake of practice itself, and remember that the experience will pay off in a more forceful and decisive approach when you face a model who better inspires you. n
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