In response to the time post, Hoshii asks: what if I sit down and have nothing to draw?
Ironically, this was a pretty bad pick to draw from. The subject has no legs, and important details on his arm are obscured. The dark shadow also makes it hard to see the right-hand edge of the figure.
Well, that would be a good time (although, really, ANY time is a good time) to draw naked people. Figure drawing is an ancient and very respectable exercise that you’ll probably be doing for the rest of your life if you’re any kind of artist drawing pictures of people (clothed or otherwise).
And if life drawing classes are not currently catered for in your budget (yeah, I know, me too) you can do “poor man’s lifedrawing” by drawing from photographs. Some tips on how to go about this.
Where to get good photographs
There is certainly no shortage of pictures of naked people on the internet. However, most porn isn’t very suitable to use. It’s generally badly framed, the poses are weird and unnatural and there’s not a great variety in body types. Also, the material could be distracting.
You may have more luck looking around on artsy photography sites, like photography.net. Their pictures of nudes more often include the entire body (plus) and they tend to be a little more imaginative when it comes to choosing the poses (plus). On the minus side, they often suffer from overly artistic lighting (making the figure hard to see) or too much airbrushing (making the figure implausibly smooth and hard to learn anything from). They also tend to lean heavily (very heavily) towards the female figure.
You can also browse models’ portfolios, although they have many of the same problems.
The real gold is in stock photography sites. Most of these you need to pay for, but there are some free sites around as well. There is also a small community on Deviantart (link NSFW) of models who donate their skin to art. Again, you need to wade through the cheesecake to get at the good stuff, but there is some good stuff to find.
What to do with them
OK, so you have a little collection of photos with well-lit, complete figures, in a variety of poses, wearing not very much. Now what?
Gesture Sketch
- Click to enlarge
A gesture sketch is a really quick drawing (1 – 5 mts) where you try to capture not so much what the figure looks like, but what it is doing. The movements of the figure; not the limbs exactly, but how they fit together. It’s generally not very detailed, because you have to be very quick and focus on just the main lines of the pose.
Note: this is not a very good explanation of what a gesture sketch is. Maybe I’ll do a full post on the subject later. Or get someone else to.
Second note: the drawings in this post are not meant to be some kind of “this is what you should strive for” or “this is how the teacher does it” standard. My figure drawing is what it is, not especially impressive, not complete beginner either. The illustrations are here to give you an idea of the level of detail you can go into, and the different ways you can use a reference photo.
Detailed Study
- Click for full image
A more detailed study is where, essentially, you try to copy the photograph. You pay close attention to the proportions and distances, the various bumps and valleys, the shadows and light, and all that good stuff. It will take longer, and might look something like my drawing on the left (perhaps with more detail, this was still a pretty quick sketch).
A gesture sketch will help you learn how to bring a sense of life, purpose and action to your figures, even when they’re just sitting on a chair. This more exact copying will help you draw something that looks like it might be a real human being in the first place. When people tell you you need to “study anatomy”, they’re probably referring to this kind of thing. Both exercises are useful, they just have a different emphasis.
Expressing an opinion, or, stylise like crazy
- Click for full image
If you’re working in a highly stylised style, like superhero comics, or girls’ manga, or, well, most types of comics, really, you can also use your naked pictures as reference for a much more stylised image. You keep the pose, but do your own thing with it. There’s different ways of going about this. You can pick a well-defined style and put it onto the image in front of you, like drawing a chibi version of the person in the photo.
You can also take the image and exaggerate the parts that are the most interesting, important or exciting about it, and end up with something perhaps a little like this last sketch.
This is great fun, and I recommend it as an exercise for that reason if nothing else. ^_^
Why this is not as good as life drawing
You should still do life drawing. A photo is a two dimensional representation of a three dimensional object. It is easier to copy onto another two dimensional plane (your drawing) than the three dimensional original would be. But by working from photos you’re missing out on an entire dimension: depth, and you’ll want to learn about ways to bring that dimension into your drawings. You can’t do that by copying photographs, or at least, it’s very hard to. You can learn loads about how the human body fits together though, and that’s worth a lot too.
Man, this post was huge, and you had to look at my awful drawings. Dang. Thanks for hanging in there, and, as always, I’d love to hear about your experiences with this subject. Do you draw from photographs? Do you take life drawing classes? Do you draw in a comics style but get horribly stuck when presented with a live model, or a photo? Let me know.
