Total Figure Drawing

This lesson demonstrates how to quickly capture the overarching gesture of the human body - Gesture drawing trains the artist to see the "Big Picture" of pose and posture.

Part one of a two part lesson, you will learn draw the standing nude figure using straight lines at first, then changing those lines to curves as a second step. We will pay special attention to the tilt if the head, shoulders and hips. 

Part two of a two part lesson, you will add value (shading) to the line drawing from part one. You will learn a repeatable method for shading the human body.

This lesson builds on the previous two-part lesson. Foreshortening refers to the proportional differences observable in the human body at varying angles. This lesson will teach you how to use one body part as a tool for capturing the size relationships of all the other body parts as-well-as the whole.

All lessons in this course are applicable to both drawing-from-life and drawing-from-a-photo. However, their are additional techniques/trick that you can use to accurately capture the complexity of the human body when using a photo for reference. In this lesson you will learn to use the joints as landmarks to determine the position of the bones and then make a line drawing around those joints and bones for an extremely accurate drawing.

Drawing the human body from imagination is made possible buy studying the human form from life and photographs first. When you are ready this lesson will show you how to "put it all together". Here we will draw a standing figure with a twist to the body, making changes along the way as our vision becomes clear.

Continuing to work with our imagination, we will draw a crouching figure, forcing us to consider foreshortening and also how some of the body may obscure/hide another part of the body.

After completing this lesson you will be able to apply a systematic approach to drawing the human head. The technique trains the artist to work from broad to specific so as not to waste time on details unnecessarily until the form of the head is established.

Drawing the head from the front is one thing, but drawing it looking up, down and all around is a more advanced proposition all together. This lesson will show you how to get started on a head at unusual angles. 

This lesson will walk you through an eye drawing and address some of the pit-falls that can keep eyes from looking realistic in a drawing. 

Part one of a two part lesson, I'll show you how to simplify the hand in you mind and then work toward the complexity we observe in the ever-changing positions of the human hand. We will impose pseudo-geometry onto our hands so as not to make a drawing that looks like a floppy glove.

Part two of a two part lesson, we will draw a hand holding a coin using the techniques introduced in the previous lesson and then shade it to completion.

Drawing feet can frustrate art students. In this lesson I'll show you how the foot is like two geometric forms combined so that you will be able to better imagine the foot. We will look at drawing the foot from the side and also from the front.

The concluding video lesson in this course offers inspiration and some practical tips on what to do when you can't find a model.