Life Drawing
Recently we have had some life drawing sessions. We sketched a live model in many different poses with only a few minutes at a time for each pose. My initial sketches were quite out of proportion and I struggled to keep my eyes only on the model. As the session went on however I began to improve somewhat at drawing poses quickly and in proportion. At first we had 3 minutes for each pose. I felt this gave me enough time to think about my drawing. I alternated between looking at the paper and the model. Considering the scale of one part to another helped with proportions - comparing the size of the arm to the leg for example. I found charcoal easier to work with as it gave me more freedom to make long lines quickly and without worrying about keeping it straight as much as a pencil.
After this we spent some time having only 10 seconds for each pose. This is an exercise that animators often use to improve their anatomy drawing. At first this was overwhelming and I struggled to get much on the page. I learned to draw the most important parts of the figure first: the shoulders, torso, arms and legs. Getting the position of these elements and their joints was an important part of drawing quickly. I used large, quick lines to get the figure down.
I found this experience valuable. It taught me a lot about the fundamentals of drawing human figures, which I had struggled with in the past. Considering the position of the shoulders, arms etc was a tip I found especially helpful and made it easier to draw believable people. While I have not yet mastered it I thought that the sessions were helpful for gaining the fundamentals of life drawing.