The secret to a well-proportioned human body is to remember magic numbers as well as the alignment of our joints. Many guides on figure proportions use the same method or varying methods. Envato — In my opinion, this is one of the best guides out there.
Very thorough but easy to read with clear pictures to help you understand the method. Otter Art Studio — This video has a great demonstration that utilizes the same method. However, the magic number used in this video is 7 body height is 7 head heights. Often times, females follow the 7 head rule where males follow the 8 head rule. Exercise Remember those stick figure poses you made earlier? Remember your proportions and how each body part relates to each other.
Follow the guides I referenced above to create a well-proportioned person. Understanding muscle structure is imperative to more realistic drawings of figures, but it actually also helps if you are just drawing cartoon figures.
Even in simplified cartoon figures, a strong knowledge foundation of muscle structures will help you convey certain poses and action of these characters. Envato : This online guide briefly goes over the muscles and body fat. It was definitely a trip down memory lane for me with flashbacks to Anatomy It is a wonderful guide. Stick to Figure : This 2 nd video of a 3 part series teaches you how to move from stick figure to human figure by using simple three-dimensional shapes.
Exercise Select a few poses of people in action —rock climbing, dancing, shooting a basketball. Focus on the muscles that are used during these actions and focus on the lines that the muscle creates on the body.
Practice drawing a few people using three-dimensional shapes to first help guide you to form the body. Hands When I was younger, I drew people who always had their hands tucked into their front pockets. Actually, I probably still do that now. I hate drawings hands.
Hiding the hands is a huge disservice to your drawing. Drawing good hands takes practice and again, a good grip on human anatomy. Just like your stick figure from Day 1 , hands are more than just five straight lines for fingers. Your hands are composed of 27 bones, 14 of those are in your fingers. The small bones and joints of your hand are important to focus on if you want a good depiction of the hands for your drawing.
Many resources out there just give you a step-by-step on how to draw hands in a specific pose. I think the best guides are those who teach you the basic principles of drawing hands so that you can draw them in any pose. Envato : I love this guide. It starts at the basic anatomy of construction of the hand and how you can utilize your knowledge of it to draw great hands.
Highly recommended! Art of Wei : This is another great video from this Youtuber. He also focuses on hand construction. Draw with Jazza : This video is a quick and simple guide to drawing hands. He also has a longer, more detailed video if you want a slower and more comprehensive video. Exercise Pick 5 different hand positions and draw them.
You can use your non-drawing hand as a guide or you can search images that depict the hand position you want to draw. Pick a variety of hand positions, not just similar ones. Try a flat hand to start and work your way up to a more difficult positions. Feet To me, the feet are even worse than hands…but thankfully, I could always hide them in a nice shoe.
Envato : If Envato had a great guide for drawing hands, then it makes sense that they also have a great one for feet. Again, they start with the basic construction of the foot and go from there. Movement: Refers to the arrangement of parts in a work of art to create a slow to fast action of the eye. Rhythm: It is a type of movement in an artwork or design often created by repeated objects.
Regular- Example: 9s9s9s9s9s9 2. Irregular- Example: qqeeqqeyyy. Emphasis: refers to placing greater attention to certain areas or objects in a piece of work. Example: bright yellow dot in large black area. Proportion: Refers to the relationship of certain elements to the whole and to each other.
Pattern: is created by repetition of not limited to shape, line, color, or texture. Variety: It is achieved through diversity and change. Using different line types, colors, textures, shapes…..
Gradation: Refers to a way of combining elements by using a series of gradual changes. A subcategory of repetition is pattern. Pattern — any compositionally repeated element or regular repetition of a design or single shape; pattern drawing sin commercial art may serve as models for commercial imitation.
Basically, take any frame of reference and divide it into thirds placing the elements of the composition on the lines in between. Lastly, try watercolour. Draw the outline the bottle. As before, use your most powerful 4 in a light brown tone using a thin brush red for the tomato, except for the highlights.
These can be touched in afterwards if you wish to get rid of them. There is no value in difficulty for its own sake. Method helps to reduce the most complex picture to a manageable scheme. Put in the green on the sideboard, plus a rather sketchy large orange bottle and the pattern and shadows on the object to one side.
Drawing with a brush, use a china pot. Leave plenty of white paper showing light brown for all the main shapes, including on the pot and as little highlights on the bottle. Taking a larger The fruit bowl can be treated in a similar way to brush, wash a yellow-brown colour over the china pot.
Finally, emphasize some edges everything except the objects. Then, put in the with extra dark colours, as shown. Put in a dark yellow on the apples, the orange area to the line along the wavy edge of the sideboard. If right and the deep blue of the bottle. Notice how well this works without sideboard. Now for the reds and greens of the it being a super-realist type of picture. The pine cone has a particular outline. This will enable you to put in the texture and aspect, which is very different from projecting edges afterwards with a very light the shiny metal bottle and the earthenware pot.
Play around in a very light tone on the mid-toned paper. My with several versions of red-brown, yellow-brown paper is a rich buff colour. A good bit of work on the pine simpler in its strong ultramarine and cobalt blue with a creamy edge, but make sure that the dark shadows on the overall green-brown colour. I used an olive brown, and the highlights in With a pot like this, the dark shadows are less yellow give it the appropriate bronze look. The metallic bottle, Lastly, the cloth should be put in quite strongly which is a sort of bronze, can be given quite in light blue, white and grey, conveying some idea of cast shadows.
Block in the top shelf after brown, make shadows and outlines to define the the dark green background, leaving an fruit. Use brown to indicate the edges of all the indication of the row of wine glasses. Smudge all wood. Finally, put in the very brightest and this a little with your finger tip. Now, block in whitest touches, like the light blue highlights on the light grey of the earthenware bottle, the the glasses; also the highlights on the bottle, bowls yellow-green of the apples, the white of the and apples and the front edge of the sideboard china bowl and the brown of the wooden bowl.
Remember not to Lastly, block in the colours of the front and top overdo the detail here — that soft-edged look to of the sideboard. Based on a painting by William Brooker, who worked to simplify and emphasize the essential qualities of still-life arrangements, the effort to capture the effects of space and substance was undertaken quickly; rather like the Zen masters who contemplated for several months and would then produce their pictures in a matter of minutes. Touches of painting, working on a dark brown paper.
After extra colour went on top of existing colours, drawing an outline in a beige, the background either to tone them down or lighten them up.
All the light colours were The resulting still life looks good because there added quite simply like wedges of yellow, cream is no detail to speak of and the basic shapes do and light blue; then the dark colours similarly.
It shows how well the artist could After blocking in the tabletop and its leading perceive the essence of the scene and put it edge, the marks indicating the edges of the blue down with simplicity and power.
It takes pots, the lamp and the dark spaces between prolonged practise to become as good as this. Maybe you could arrange a small fork and trowel, gardening gloves, bulbs and a sun hat, as if carelessly strewn across the tabletop.
The setting itself then suggests some story or ongoing action which your choice of objects could reinforce with some success. This scene is set out for you, this time using coloured pencil to suit the lightness in tone. The setting is fairly natural, although it actually took time and care to arrange. Using a pen and coloured inks, it is quite a tour de force to produce something as brilliant as the Bonnard painting, with these strong contrasting colours in very hot tones.
As long as you can maintain the contrast between the darker more solid colours and the lighter broken colours, then this method can work quite well.
You can adjust it to suit your own ideas, but the mere fact of someone else doing it brings a certain element of surprise to your first view of the composition. I often find that my wife has placed objects down and they have fallen into just the kind of arrangement that works well as a still life.
Using a buff paper for the pastels, I sketched the whole frame of the bicycle in the red first, and then added greys and yellows for the handlebars, crossbars, pedals, seat and tyres. I increased the intensity of the main colour and then put in the white wheel spokes and hubs, and the black edges to the wheels, pedals, seat and brake. Lastly, I dragged some dark red around the frame to give more substance to the structure. It was all kept very sketchy and done quite swiftly.
Either your own, or those vehicles that line the streets, are good models for a large still life. For the very dark areas around the wheels and at the shadowed front of the car, I used a thick felt-tipped marker to give a bit more solidity to the whole effect. It is good artistic exercise trying to capture the reflections on the shiny surface of the car.
Large objects are always tricky. You will find that they take up a lot of space on the page and so need a bit more planning — some- thing that may make you tend to leave them and choose some- thing else. However, if you can rise to the challenge and bring in some other objects into the picture, you again have the chance at hinting at some kind of story for your picture. Just add them when you can and be sure to maintain the correct proportions. I chose large metal and pottery objects, which were all fairly light in colour.
As they were all circular in shape, I decided that I would play on this feature by choosing the perspective of looking down on them when they were close to me, so that the deeper shadows in the interiors of the pots gave a sort of repeat motif and were very dominant in the picture.
As all the items were lit from behind, the main light was diffused and helped to even out the colour values. This pot has vertical 1 sides and is a simple shape. Because it is light in colour, the interior will not look too dark. The conical pot with the The large white enamelled jug is a good 2 3 green interior is the sturdy shape and will have a darker only splash of colour in the interior due to the half guard around the top.
Its interior looks almost black in contrast to the other objects. Notice the arrows showing the direction of the light which means that all the shadows are facing the viewer. Draw a sketchy outline of your arrangement before starting on your finished drawing. Because with pencil you can be quite precise in your outline, take your time to get the shapes exactly right in relation to each other.
Remember that the space between the objects is as important as the shapes of the objects themselves. Notice that the darkest part of this pale still life is the interiors of the pots.
Before you start rushing around in search of a good view, consider the area you are working in and adapt your ideas to make the most of a particular environment.
The first and most essential step is to compose your picture. As shown earlier in the book, this can be done with the use of a framing device made from a piece of card, so you will not be overwhelmed by the immensity of a landscape. When you survey a landscape full of trees, bushes and grass, take time to look at each area of vegetation carefully and note the immense variety of green that exists in just one view.
Distant areas will appear more blue-green, with some greys — cool hues that help to push those parts of the picture right back to the horizon. Urban landscapes have an entirely different range of colour but, even so, some of the same rules apply. Most important is the effect of distance on colour and tonality; so watch for their effects right at the start of your picture. The ideal arrangement for the light is from the left or right of your position, so that the objects in the landscape are lit up in a way that shows their dimensions.
Ideally, you should be able to see enough of the foreground features to show scale and texture. A large middle-ground area, where trees, rocks, streams, buildings and other features stand closer or further from your viewpoint, will give an impression of depth.
Hills, mountains and large expanses of water in the background, when diminished in the cool distance, also give a very good sense of scale and depth to the picture. So, before chosing your landscape, decide how much detail you want to include and how much of a feeling of space you wish to give it. Adjust your viewpoint to achieve this, by lowering it to get closer, or lifting it to get a greater sense of distance.
Enjoy the qualities of the natural world when you are drawing in the countryside, and likewise the drama and interest of the man-made world in a cityscape, with all its verticals and mass of buildings.
The fun is in finding out how to do it in practice and, eventually, you reach the stage where you just draw the whole thing by eye and forget the science. It is a good test of your ability to make an adequate picture from a limited viewpoint. This is a slightly simplified, redrawn version tree-covered hills. The view is bottle and a pen and paper. The interest is in of darkening skies filled with rain clouds, the transition from interior to exterior, with red-roofed, white-stuccoed houses in the suggesting space beyond the cluttered middle ground.
Beyond these are indistinct foreground. Any train journey allows you to draw a changing landscape. You have to be quick to get enough down so that when you get home you have an accurate reminder to work up into a finished drawing. This view — drawn in coloured pencils — is from shed.
I put the garden chairs on the lawn just to a position on the raised decking immediately give the scene a point of focus. Your garden or outside my own back door.
I have eliminated all the figures of passing people in order to show an absolutely simple view of the street and, with the exotic touch of a full moon, it becomes a very effective picture. The lit-up windows help, something that ordinarily you might not notice, but I am sure Hiroshige could have created just as brilliant a piece of art with any suburban road at midday.
This example was done in coloured pencil and a few lines of ink. This will take a little more planning than you have so far required but, as it is local, carrying your drawing equipment and a portable stool should not create too many problems and you can easily retire if the weather turns against you. This is an ink-drawn version of one of the painted sketches I did during a morning expedition there with her.
When you can show to remember one of the key points about things simply but drawn well, you have gone drawing: make sure you choose an area that further into the learning process towards holds some interest for you, or else you risk becoming bored with your efforts.
As this tackling more complex situations. Most places have at least one or two buildings that stand out from the rest, and which could LANDSCAPE make a good subject for a piece of perspective architectural drawing. I am spoiled for choice, being close enough to London to get there within twenty minutes by public transport, and where there are plenty of extremely dramatic and even eccentric buildings. This view, which I have drawn in watercolour, was originally sketched by me in ink and then photographed one day near the British Museum.
Later, I got out both the photograph and the drawing and re-drew the whole thing in watercolour as simply as possible, omitting unnecessary complications like myriad street signs and all the traffic.
I concentrated on the drama of the tower-like corner building, with its two sides swept back like a great wedge of cake. The splashy technique of boats and umbrellas or sunshades set up. The putting in the colours with a medium-sized rocky island opposite the resort is covered in brush, keeping lots of the white paper showing, light scrub, the sun is bright and the sea is blue.
Here are two examples. Observe how leaves grow in clusters and bunches, so that you begin to see the patterns they make. The watercolour I have produced is a fairly rough copy of the brilliant red flower, contrasted with the dark green of the leaves and the yellow blooms beside. A little bit of background colour helps to anchor the blossoms together. These huge old trees with their wildly spreading branches were painted in the autumn with all the brilliance of yellow, orange, green and brown leaves, filtering the sunlight.
The trees themselves appear remarkably dramatic at that time of year; the gnarled, twisted and split trunks, the interweaving branches and the brilliant foliage create a really extraordinary woodland scene. The second scene, by another Victorian painter, A. Garden, is of willows on the River Ouse, painted in Again the drama of the twisted and split willow trunks, one of which grows downward into the stream, suggests living beings rather than trees.
The wintry or early spring scene sets the bare branches like a network against the sky. The three images selected here are marvellous evocations of watery scenes by master artists.
Now let us look more closely at trees reflected in water. Broken reflections in running water is a difficult but very interesting effect to attempt to draw and you can try it in any season.
Our version gives a dramatic effect with the almost monochrome range of strong blues and whites, executed in pastels, which can look very similar to oil paints.
The bright gap of white sky seen through the heavily shaded trees is reflected rather less sharply in the water. The greens and blues of the trees are also reflected there, less defined in a more generalized colour splash. It is a very rich and dramatic picture, although tranquil at the same time.
It is a good medium for gradation and variety in colour, but not so punchy in effect as other media. You will need to study moving water quite carefully, and the use of a camera is a great asset here. The examples here show one with a man-made feature which helps to define the space dramatically. The other is totally natural, with vast size and energy, the sheer spectacle of this force of nature inspiring us with awe.
The puffing, rolling steam from the railway engine pours off the bridge, the broad piers of which appear almost too big for the minimal construction it supports.
The reflections also help to emphasize the height of the bridge over the rest of the scene. The position of the artist was high grander the landscape you can encompass. This enough to observe the whole sweep of Niagara, picture, after the painting of the Niagara Falls plus the distant landscape with the river winding by Heinrich Fuseli in , is possibly one of the its way towards the Falls from the Great Lakes.
I have used a mixture of watercolour and American standing in the foreground to give coloured inks to recreate it. First, float on some some idea of scale, but the tall pine trees on the flat areas of watercolour and then draw in a few lower bank give a decent sense of scale as well. Here are two landscapes that give quite different effects, and the mediums seem particularly suited to the type of scene being shown.
One seems to be glowing with energy and fiery, while the other is cool and gentle in effect. This first example is an antique Chinese landscape from c. This was done first with sepia ink and then green ink, carefully portraying the intricate details of the rocky hills and twisted trees.
After this, keeping very subdued like the original, came softly applied layers of coloured pencil, using the edge of a well- sharpened point in violet, brown, green and blue. The original was done with oil paints, but can be effectively imitated by pastel in the same way as Monet worked his paint.
These impressionistic strokes of brilliant colour allow you to show the dazzling effects of hot sun when it is low in the sky. It is, of course, possible just to take a photograph of the scene and then start your painting when you return home. But this is not quite the same exercise and you will find that the results are quite different. First, you need studies 1 of trees to get some idea of what you want your landscape to look like.
Here right I have made studies of groups of trees and bushes and also a staked wire fence below. It is possible to adjust the landscape that you see in front of you, by moving your position a little or by leaving out parts of the scene, or even moving them around a little.
Many artists do this, but you have to be careful that the results will all hang together. So having found one and made sketches left and far left and the drawing below , I now have to decide how all these elements are going to fit together. This helps to give depth in the picture and acts as a natural indicator to the big tree.
All the other trees should be much more distant or otherwise insignificant. It is really easiest to photograph them and then to work from the snaps you have taken. The best place to start is with the insect world because the creatures are relatively small and not too complicated in shape. Usually, when it comes to insects, museums hold dozens of drawerfuls of them, and it is not too difficult to make quite careful drawings on the spot.
Probably the next easiest is the sea world, with fish of all sorts and sizes. Again, they have simpler shapes than land animals and are quite wide-ranging in colour and pattern. A local aquarium, or someone you know who keeps fish in a tank, can be good for first-hand reference material and, of course, all that swimming around makes the creatures more vivid than using a photographic reference. When you progress to animals on land, there are reptiles, mammals and birds in multifarious shapes, colours and sizes.
Observe how the various species have similarities as well as differences, and this should make it easier. As an artist you will probably want to try your hand sooner or later at a really large creature such as an elephant or rhinoceros. If you cannot reach a zoo easily, then a visit to your local natural history museum can be very instructive.
Take your sketch book and draw the stuffed or reconstituted animals on show. Their bird collections are frequently comprehensive too. Once familiar with the shapes of your chosen animals, the next task is to convey some semblance of movement.
An expressionist technique is more likely to conjure up the essence of the animal than a careful, detailed drawing. But whatever you draw from the immense range of animal life, have fun experimenting with various ideas and effects.
Of course ANIMALS in northern climates you get a lot of rather subdued colour, but in more tropical zones, colour is often quite extravagant.
So look around for the most interesting animals that you can find and learn to put in your colour with confidence and enjoyment. If you have access to a natural history display, find a range of mounted moths and butterflies to draw at your leisure. The example shown here is a Monarch butterfly, which I have produced by first laying down an area of yellow-orange watercolour and then drawing over the top of it in black ink.
Because the shape presents itself with a flat surface, there is no problem of representing depth, which gives you an easier start. The next example is from the bird kingdom, showing the characteristic shape of the drake mallard. It can be kept as a silhouette without any need to show depth. The patches of colour are well defined and the whole drawing has a very clear pattern and decorative feel to it.
You simply draw in each area of colour with the brush and fit them together like a neatly slotting puzzle. Once again, thanks to their colour patterning, you do not need to pay much attention to the solidity of the creatures.
Keep the areas of colour fairly flat and the combination of brilliant colour and design will be sufficient to give a very attractive impression of the types of bird that you have drawn. Do the outline in the same medium that the main colour is put in, or outline in very light pencil, which you can afterwards rub out.
You can also draw the outline in pencil or ink on a separate piece of paper, and then put it with another on a light box or on a window and trace the shape through in the main colour. This is not so easy and, for the best results, it is a ANIMALS good idea to put in some time studying the animal you intend to draw, before you actually start. My first choice is the common cat. Try drawing it at rest first of all, just as I have done here, using only one colour to produce a reasonably structured drawing.
Note how this cat is lying comfortably, although his head is raised and he may move at any time. Once you have produced a couple of preliminary sketches like this, you will feel confident in trying something more complex. Here is where a decent photograph of your cat in action could go a long way towards your cat on the prowl. Mine is done in coloured making your next attempt quite realistic.
Using inks because the texture of the fur lends itself to the photograph for reference, and with the this multi-stroke technique. So using grey, animal still around where you can see him, you brown, green, yellow and black you, too, can can a start on an authentic representation of build up a convincing effect. You should also make the effort to visit a zoo or park where you can spend a bit of time studying and drawing animals. It all helps to produce a more convincing picture. However, you can approach a subject like this in exactly the same way as you would the horse, keeping the style simple and loosely-drawn, in order to give some semblance of movement to the finished product.
Next I show a lizard in mid- scamper. It has a straight- forward shape and, as long as the texture of the skin looks scaly enough, there are no great drawing problems here either. The colour can be kept to a minimum, with just enough to hint at the green, sinuous body. The tern itself is put in very sketchily with no clear details, just as you would see it if it were to fly past you suddenly.
In the next picture, I have a leopard running forward to pounce on its prey. The drawing is similar in style to the bird, in that the lines defining the animal are loosely drawn to give some idea of the powerful muscular activity of the beast. I have drawn this one with a brush, in watercolour, and tried to keep it straightforward in style, with all the emphasis on the outspread wings and the arrow- like body.
I have splashed in the foxy red of his coat without attempting too distinct a shape, putting dark patches of colour on the feet, nose and ears, and leaving quite a bit of white showing around the muzzle and on the tip of the tail. The movement here is suggested by the very curve of the creature.
The effect of the waves below it and the wet shine on the body help to convince the viewer that the incident is drawn from live observation.
This means that you need some pictorial references to draw upon. Drawing a dog in its basket is fine while it sleeps, although they often move in their sleep. So draw the dog in first and the shape of the basket after, as the dog may wake up and invariably move off.
Their colours can be very vivid and as their shape is so streamlined they are not too difficult to draw. The difficulty is to make them appear to be in the water. This image demands that the cage is drawn with care and precision, while the bird itself is just a colourful shape inside the wire structure. The scene can be set by drawing enlargements of ANIMALS plants that you see around you plants from your own garden or house plants or work from photographic reference.
You will need to study plants close up, although 1 you do not need to have access to real jungle plants because quite ordinary ones will do, as long as you make them look much bigger than they actually are. Also, you will need to vary the shapes of leaves a little and make them look more luxuriant.
Having got enough in the way of leaves, you will also need to find some type of flower to be your jungle blossoms. Choose something florid and pink or red. It is probably easiest to work from photographs. Next, show a little bit 5 of sky and a moon or sun glowing brightly in the deep azure space of the sky.
The whole charm of this type of picture is in its decorative, dream- like richness. One major fact is that coloration of the human body encompasses a wide spectrum.
There are few truly strong colours in the human skin range, but a host of very subtle tones. Apart from obvious differences in skin colour between various races, the complexion of each human being reflects any number of hues, according to whether you are looking at that particular individual in the cold light of winter in the north or beneath a brilliant summer sun, closer to the equator.
Then again, there is another range of tints caused by the effect of electric light. With people, it is always a case of getting them to co-operate with you in order to draw them effectively. It may not be a question of drawing the whole figure, but sometimes just an arm, or a foot, or the head and neck. Your models will need patience, as it takes time to produce a good representation of the human body.
A life class at a local art institute is one of the best ways of learning to draw the human figure and the experience will never be wasted. But even without tuition, you can still prevail upon friends and relations to sit for you. Change the poses frequently — standing up, lying down and positions where the body is extended and curled up in turn all help to increase your range. And remember to look carefully at limbs and torso when they appear foreshortened, in order to see how much the shapes of the body alter when seen from different angles.
Finally, clothing obviously makes a big difference to the appearance of your model. Start by asking them to dress simply, so that you can see the shape of their body clearly. As you improve, you can ask them to wear something thick or heavily draped, and you can test yourself to see if you can work out what is happening beneath the fabric.
The following stage-by stage pictures will give you some idea as to how the process works. Having set the scene, I 2 then built up a texture with pink strokes going in different directions, following the contours of the figure.
Leave any areas of light where the spotlamp catches the far side of the figure. Looking hard at it, I noticed some areas of light blue which I put in with my palest blue. There is a limit to how far you can take this.
Black is the darkest colour and you cannot use it extensively or the picture will become too sombre. The very lightest areas of this figure carry some yellow marks to give an effect of the artificial light. If you look closely, for example, at the way the artist has handled his colour and how he or she has contrasted the stronger colours with the softer ones, you will learn quite a lot that will help you when you come to work from your own sources.
This diagram gives Unit 2 a very simple view of that complex object, the human body. Viewed from the front, the height of the average adult — male or female — is approximately seven-and-a-half to eight times the length of Unit 3 their own head, measured from top to bottom.
Women are generally smaller boned than men but the ratio of head to overall height remains Unit 4 the same. Notice how the halfway mark of the human figure is the Unit 5 lower end of the torso and the top of the legs. The navel is three units down, as are the elbows with the arms lowered. The range of tones on the human body is quite subtle, but they do go from cool or cold colours to warm, rich tones. The sort of light that is used makes a difference — sunlight being so strong that it often washes out contrasts of colour, and artificial light being restricted and therefore changing the natural colour of the body.
The man is seated, facing the source of light and since he is drawn in coloured pencil, there is no great contrast between the very darkest tone and the very lightest. Note how the shadowed area is mostly in cool blue tones and a warm yellow has been used in the areas where the light is falling on the figure.
The numbered patches show the colours used. So, take immense care with the large, main shapes and colours of the body, and then the details will really take off. When working like this you should do the initial drawing in a single colour first, to establish the overall shape of the figure.
This dark, densely sketched background in deep blues has the effect of throwing the lighter, yellow-toned body forward into relief. This effect can give you a rather attractive, low-key picture. In this example, based on a portrait by James McNeill Whistler, I first flicked in the whole of the figure with a small brush and then, with a large brush, I washed in the entire background in the same colour.
When all that had dried, I put in the other colour areas, being careful to avoid too much contrast. The first is drawn in more carefully, using the outlined areas and just filling them with a single tone of colour.
The washes to give a more spatial effect to the figure. The second is much even limited colour can achieve. In my version of the picture, the strong pastel colours are punchy and contrast with each other, making the scene look very hard, sharp and rather unsympathetic. The colours seem somehow to isolate the figures in the urban landscape. However, by isolating the man. The white patch of the shirt is placing this dark-suited young man against a like a small flag calling attention to the elegant dark huddle of trees and a dark ground surface, figure.
This is a painting by the artist Eugene the contrast is reduced to the sharp patch of his Palmer called The Brother , and I have white shirt seen above the high-buttoned jacket. How much do you show clearly and how much should the drawing be blurred in some way to make it convey movement? You can either hope that your drawing is dynamic enough to hold up as a moving image, even if everything in it is crystal sharp and clear, or you can bring in some distortions and fuzzy edges to give an impression of movement, as if you have taken a photograph with a slow shutter speed.
The first picture shows a dancer suspended in mid- air, in the middle of a great leap, and it is obvious enough that this pose could only have been captured by a camera. Clearly the figure is not supported by anything except her own impetus. The movement through the space around the figure can be marked by traces of his hands and feet — blurred by their rapid movements — to show that this is all happening in real time.
So, both solutions work in different ways. Try each of them and decide which one you prefer for use on any particular occasion. The man is lying on his back and his head appears very large in comparison with the rest of his body. Notice how the shoulders, arms and chest are the next biggest part of the body and how the legs appear quite tiny, with the feet sticking up and looking almost too big for the legs. The second figure — of the girl lying on her front — is similar in proportion but, with her arm stretched out towards the viewer, her hand looks unusually large in comparison with the rest of her body.
The arm extended towards the viewer has a large hand and a much smaller arm in comparison. The man lying with one knee bent, again seems to have enormous feet, large legs and a reduced upper body and head.
Notice how the underside of the chin is prominent in both cases. These drawings were done in ink and wash. These two open hands, showing the palm, will be very familiar to us, since they are seen from the viewpoint of the owner.
Notice how the movement of the thumb changes the character of the gesture. The open hand with its fingers straightened 2. Another fist, obviously masculine, but with out looks flat and fin-like. When the hand is in a fist, draw the whole shape first, picking out the detail afterwards. Here is a hand in a fist, which has quite a 4. This hand is partly closed and partly open, rugged quality about it. A gesticulating hand suggests fluidity of 6. A hand extended towards the viewer, relaxed movement.
Notice how the outside of the fingers are in shadow and contrast with the palm, which is lit. Remember, the arm is larger in section nearer the body and thinner further away, towards the extremities. This arm with the hand resting on the hip, shows clearly the main shape, including the large muscles in the upper arm and the delicacy of the wrist. With the arm raised and the elbow closer to the viewer, the forearm looks bigger than the upper arm, which is foreshortened.
One thing is clear, the arm is larger in section nearer the body and thinner further away, towards the extremities. The only time this appears not to be so is through foreshortening, when a thinner section, such as the wrist, can seem as thick as the bicep, due to the effect of perspective. Study of the joints will help you to create a convincingly lifelike arm. Draw it with a simple outline to start with, then gradually increase the subtle curves to produce the shape of the muscles more accurately.
The other two sets of legs show very clearly the appearance of bent knees — in one case, a large bulky shape 2 , and in the other example, the way the two legs curve softly around each other when they are lying across each other 3.
Notice how the calf muscle of the upper leg forms itself around the thigh muscle of the one beneath. It will teach you more about drawing than any other kind of drawing that you can think of. It is at one and the same time the most difficult and the most satisfying exercise and will help you to become an efficient draughtsman quicker than any other kind of work. Try drawing your own hands, feet and legs in a mirror or directly; the practice is always valuable.
The most difficult view is from the front 2. A straight side-on view shows the typical foot where everything is foreshortened. The foot seen from below is unusual and needs a bit of study to get it right. But it is not too complex. Feet arched and up on their toes are not too difficult except when seen from the front. A foot coming down as if walking, shows how 6. The typical shape of the foot of someone the toes lift up to help the action.
Note how the flatter part of the foot connects with the ankle joint. But usually there is more fun in choosing a theme to put your figures together in a more natural and narrative way. I chose as an easy 1 option the perennial holiday beach scene, which most of us have had some experience of, and which shows off the human figure to some advantage.
So I drew a young woman sitting as if on the beach, then a male companion lounging with his hand up as if calling to someone. Then I added the classic 2 bathing beauty, kneeling up and applying sun-tan lotion. Another character was I next added a young 3 4 an older man with a bath man with a beach ball, towel, looking somewhat which he appears about to throw. And finally a 7 middle-aged woman with dark glasses, just standing. Now you have to set the scene. First the 8 All these figures are in sea, making a nice broad horizon across their swimming the middle of the picture.
A bit of rocky cliff to costumes so we have a one side and then an island and some yachts on classic scene of bodies the horizon. The beach is divided into a lower almost in their natural part near the sea and a higher part closer to the state in a familiar observer.
On the lower part is a deck chair and a situation. On the higher level are placed two beach towels, one of which has a large umbrella or sunshade planted near it.
0コメント