Innehållsförteckning för Paint & Draw: Anatomy från Paint & Draw: Anatomy

The human body is beautiful, complex and utterly unique, with no single figure the same as another. This individuality is what makes drawing the human form so tricky – there are very few certainties or rules when it comes to drawing people. However, bringing the figure to life involves more than just re-creating what you see in front of you; it’s essential to understand the body and what lies beneath it. In Paint & Draw: Anatomy, find out how to draw from life successfully, from simple warm-ups to get your creative juices flowing, to in-depth tutorials on different areas of the human body. Discover how to realistically sketch some of the most complicated parts of the figure, including the head and the hands, and learn how to bring it all…

Over the next few pages I’ll reveal the basic steps I use in my lectures, and how they’re related. I’ll start with the first conception or inkling of an idea, and take you through to the final presentation. Each step involves applying core visual tools, like selecting icons for a particular program, that you need to know how to use, to develop your concept. Continuing the computer analogy, drawing is the graphical interface to your imagination. These tools enable you to relate your idea to yourself and the world. I’ve organised these tools into a series of logical steps that can be applied to any visual presentation. All of us know a lot more than we think we do, and much of what I teach is simply making this knowledge…

Here, we’ll look at shape and how a seemingly complex subject can be simplified to create a foundation for your drawing, as well as introducing the idea of negative and positive spaces. The exercise outlined in the following steps is one that you can try at home, drawing from your own hand. It could just as easily be applied to a chair, a plant or anything that presents trapped shapes and negative spaces. It will help you to exercise one of the most helpful skills you can develop when making observational drawings – objectivity. Your preconceptions of what you think a hand, chair or plant can look like stop you looking clearly at the subject in front of you. By simplifying what you see in front of you into abstract…

Materials ■ Seawhites Newsprint paper ■ Conté Pierre Noir B pencil ■ Kneaded eraser The torso is the core of the body, and will display a lot of the gestural ideas in a pose if drawn fluently. The torso is probably going to be one of your first stops as you work through the figure, because it is so integral to the pose, due to its large size, and role in understanding the proportions of the body. One common issue I see with this area of the body is flattening everything out – as if the figure were a gingerbread man! This is mostly an observational issue, as the brain wants to think of the body as a flat schematic, rather than as three-dimensional shapes in space, but one we…

Materials ■ Seawhites Newsprint paper ■ Conté Pierre Noir B pencil ■ Kneaded eraser Hands are an intimidating body part to draw, sometimes even tripping up the most seasoned artists. When we look at a picture of a person, the hands are often the thing we look at most after the face – they often express a lot in body language. Of all our own body parts, the hands are those that we can always look at easily without the aid of a mirror, so they are something we are extremely familiar with. As experienced, critical viewers of hands, we will notice even the smallest mistakes! The hands are very complex, and all that complexity is condensed into a relatively small area of the body. There are lots of joints…

As we all possess a body, we think we know what it looks like. When we draw it, we bring to bear that prior knowledge and we draw that rather than the exactitude of the arm or leg that’s in front of us. There are a number different approaches to help you overcome this this problem, and most of them focus on the same idea: shape drawing rather than object drawing. You need to divorce yourself from the idea that you are drawing a figure as much as possible, and instead really concentrate on the shape it makes. Spend longer looking at your figure and much less time looking at your paper. Draw the figure like a jigsaw, working from the centre outward until you find its edges, and if…

Any life-drawing sessions begin with a few short poses, usually around three minutes or less. However, I tend to start every figure drawing in the ways shown in this workshop, regardless of how long the pose is. And there are many reasons for this. Sketching quick poses provides a great warm-up for artists of all abilities, and will often give you an idea of the best way to proceed with the longer drawing sessions. It also identifies any problem areas that need to be worked on. Finally, quick poses are great fun to do and collect together for future reference – you’ll be amazed at how quickly your drawing improves! When I draw short poses, I kick things off with the torso, before adding the head, and following the neckline…

Materials ■ Seawhites newsprint paper ■ Conté Pierre Noir B pencil ■ Kneaded eraser The head is an important part of the body, as we love to look at faces and will usually look at the head first when viewing a drawing. Because of this familiarity, coupled with the complexity of the features of the face, we are ruthless judges of portraits and will notice even the smallest of mistakes. The posture of the head is also important when drawing the figure because it adds interest to the pose, as well as indicating intent, especially in more dynamic poses. There are a lot of potential tripping points, with proportion being a common complaint. I always recommend lightly roughing out where you want to place the features before delving into the…

Materials ■ Seawhites Newsprint paper ■ Conté Pierre Noir B pencil ■ Kneaded eraser The pelvic region is the juncture between the torso and the legs, lending it a fair amount of structural complexity despite its apparent simplicity. Many muscles in the legs and torso anchor at the pelvis, making it vital for describing complex and dynamic poses. A lot of the difficulties of drawing this part of the body stem from misunderstanding how the legs attach to the torso. One common issue is creating a fork with the legs – like a stick man – which doesn’t account for the top of the leg attaching to the side of the pelvis. When this is taken into account, alongside the way the muscles of the leg attach to the pelvis,…

One way that painters of the Renaissance learned to mimic the sculptural forms created by their contemporaries working in stone and bronze was verdaccio, or the dead layer. After creating a refined sketch and blocking in the tonal values, they would then wash over the light and shade with a fairly ugly shade of yellowy greenish brown, comprised of raw umber and yellow ochre. This was particularly used in frescos, which were painted straight onto plaster using tempera, a type of paint that is made from pigment suspended in egg. Verdaccio can be left as it is to model architectural details – Michelangelo did so on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel – but when flesh tones are glazed over it, then it really comes into its own. Look at…

The humble pencil is a ubiquitous and versatile drawing tool. Over the next few pages, I will be exploring the potential of graphite as a drawing medium, introducing you to fun and simple exercises and techniques to help you really get the most out of your pencil. In this tutorial, we start with some important considerations when picking your pencils, followed by an introduction to the most fundamental unit of drawing – line. This will provide you with a sound foundation for novices and some really useful reminders for the more experienced artists. Meterials ■ Graphite pencil■ Cartridge paper■ Sharpener or craft knife 1 The Shakespearean question 2B or not 2B? Picking the right grade of pencil for your drawing will help you make the best sketch possible. Graphite pencils…

Artist CHRIS LEGASPI teaches you the basic techniques you need to draw and shade a figure in 20 minutes or less Shading and rendering is my favourite part of a 10- or 20-minute pose. Here, I’ll introduce some of the basic principles, tools and techniques that I use to shade or render in a short amount of time. Before I begin, I first analyse and limit the values I use. For life drawing, I use a three-value palette of light, dark and midtone. This helps me control values as I shade and render forms. To define forms, I use a combination of soft or hard edges. Soft edges do the majority of the work and create the most natural look. Hard edges are great for accents or sculpting forms. There…

Materials ■ Seawhites newsprint paper ■ Conté Pierre Noir B pencil ■ Kneaded eraser When drawing the neck and shoulders, it can often be challenging to show the volumes in our work, as we are used to seeing people front-on. As always, I recommend starting lightly with the gesture – even though the neck and shoulders seem quite chunky and static, they have a surprising amount of variety in their poses. If you are unsure of the angle of the shoulders, compare them to a horizontal to check which way they are tilting. Usually a pencil held up in the air will be sufficient. There are three major forms at work here; the neck, the shoulders, and the ribcage. An effective tactic for drawing the shoulders at different angles and…

Materials ■ Seawhite newsprint paper ■ Conté Pierre Noir B pencil ■ Kneaded eraser Drawing the arms forces us to deal with a lot of subtleties in the forms of the figure. They are probably the most difficult part of the body to draw as while they are rich in complex anatomy, they will often show little in the way of surface features because the muscles are easily hidden by fat. This can make it difficult to describe the arms with our drawing, as many often feel they have little to work with. However, this can be addressed by looking at how these complex forms change the surface of the arms, and how the bones of the limb can be seen describing the arm’s behaviour at the joints of the…

Materials ■ Seawhites Newsprint paper ■ Conté Pierre Noir B pencil ■ Kneaded eraser Feet are often neglected in life drawing. However, they play a vital role in the figure because they ground it, by providing support, and indicating how the figure is balanced. When someone is standing, the feet transfer the weight of the entire body into the floor – a good gesture should run all the way through the figure, through the feet, to the ground. The most common mistake I see people make with feet is not drawing them! It is all too easy to run out of time and not get around to them, or even worse, chop them off the edge of the paper. To avoid this, it is always worth sketching out the full…