I'm teaching this Winter! Fundamentals of figure drawing.
I'm really excited to announce I'll be collaborating with my friend Sing at NUDD (Nude Drink Draw) again, teaching a 10 week fundamentals of figure drawing course. I'll be teaching the fundamental skills for drawing the human figure that enabled me to improve my life drawing fast, and set a foundation for my imaginative figure work in comics.
I'm really excited to announce I'll be collaborating with my friend Sing at NUDD (Nude Drink Draw) Hong Kong this winter. I'll be teaching 10 sessions every Saturday afternoon, each session will be devoted to a specific foundational skill that helped me improve my understanding of the human figure and level up my life drawing. We'll be covering observational skills, drawing skills, and some basic anatomy. We'll have a life model posing for us each week, and I'll be doing demonstrations as well as giving one to one feedback to attendees.
What we'll learn in this course
Life drawing is an essential skill for any artist. It's a way to sharpen our observation skills and develop foundational drawing skills that can applied to drawing anything, whether drawing from observation or from imagination. The human figure is one of the most challenging subjects we can draw as artists. Life drawing requires a range of skills, and it demands us to execute those skills quickly. To draw the figure accurately and make it look believable as real living human being is a very difficult thing to do, and if you can learn to draw the figure I think you can practically learn to drawing anything.
I've spent quite a bit of time researching and thinking about the practical skills that helped me learn to draw the way I do, and I've come up with a curriculum of 10 lessons that I think will help any artist improve their drawing.
- Week 1 - Gesture
- Week 2 - Proportions and measuring
- Week 3 - Landmarks of the body (simple anatomy)
- Week 4 - Balance and movement
- Week 5 - Rhythm
- Week 6 - Head and Torso - Three main blocks
- Week 7 - Twisting and turning
- Week 8 - Structure and simplification
- Week 9 - Foreshortening
- Week 10 - Shading
What you can expect from me
I'll be providing live demonstations and talking through how I approach each subject, and why it's beneficial to a drawing. We'll them do some drawings of a live model, and I'll be giving each participant one to one feedback throughout the session. At the end of each session we'll look at each others drawings, do a critique, and reflect on what we learned.
Suitable for artists of all levels
I've designed this course so you can drop in at any time, however you'll get the most benefit if you attend all 10 weeks. The sessions will be suitable for beginners and more experienced intermediate artists. You can book your place in a session on Bookwhen.com.
Week 1 - Gesture
Gesture is understanding the movement of the figure and the overall pose and posture of the figure. Gesture drawing is a way of drawing the figure very quickly, capturing the pose of the figure and ensuring our figures look alive and we avoid stiff looking unnatural drawings.
Week 2 - Proportions and measuring
Capturing proportions of the figure accurately will ensure our figures look more believable and more like real people. I'll be teaching a simple way of measuring what we see to ensure our drawings have accurate proportions, and demonstrating how I have developed this technique to make it a natural part of my process. The more we develop our measuring techniques the more it will become second nature as we draw.
Week 3 - Landmarks of the body (simple anatomy)
I'll demonstrate different visible landmarks of the body we can use to measure proportions more intuitively, as well as developing an understanding of simple human anatomy.
Week 4 - Balance and movement
Using our understanding of gesture drawing and the landmarks of the body I'll demonstrate how we can make our figures look more balanced and solid standing or sitting. We'll develop an understanding of weight and the center of gravity on the human figure. This helps us draw dynamic figures that look natural.
Week 5 - Rhythm
Rhythm is a way of making our drawings look more natural, and coming to a closer understanding of human anatomy. BY understanding how we can use rhythm to define our lines and enhance our gesture drawings. This will enable us to show a better understanding of the contours of the figure, and the way different parts of the body fit together.
Week 6 - Head and Torso - Three main blocks
We'll explore the three main masses of the body, the head, chest, and hips, and how we can draw them simply. This will help us develop a better a better understanding of three dimensional form while keeping our figures gestural and dynamic. We'll also enhance our understanding of proportion.
This session will cover some key skills that can be applied to drawing any subject, not just the human figure.
Week 7 - Twisting and turning
In this session we'll learn how to approach more complex poses, showing the twisting and turning of the figure through our understanding of the head, chest, and hips. This will enhance our understanding of gesture, while keeping our drawings three dimensional.
Week 8 - Structure and simplification
The human body is a very complex form with a challenging structure that can seem overwhelming. We'll learn techniques to simplify the forms of the body, making them seem three dimensional and natural and giving our drawings volume. This is a foundational skill for drawing more realistic figures, and will enable us to progress into a better understanding of perspective and shading.
Learning to simplify complex forms is a key drawing skill that can be applied to drawing anything.
Week 9 - Foreshortening
In week 9 we'll develop a basic understanding of perspective. Drawing foreshortening presents a real challenge for keeping our drawings proportional and gestural while adding dynamism. Building on the simple forms we learned previously I'll share my approach to solving problems of perspective and foreshortening in the human figure. This will make our figures look interesting and dynamic.
Week 10 - Shading
Understanding three dimensional form is an important foundation for understanding how light and dark. I'll cover a few fundamentals of understanding shadows and how we can apply these to the figures we observe. We'll also talk about how we can organise and simplify our values to we can keep our drawings accurate and realistic in the time we have.
The principles we will learn in this session can be applied to any subject, not just the human figure.