Over the past few weeks, I’ve gone back to figure drawing but this time I really wanted to come up with a solid process. A process that would allow me to invent figures from my imagination.
To do this I went back and re-studied a number of my favourite resources:
- Proko’s YouTube channel.
- Michael Hampton’s book “Figure Drawing: Design and Invention (affiliate link)“.
- Matt Kohr’s Ctrl+Paint website.
The process I’ve settled upon so far is as follows:
- Gesture. I like Matt Kohr’s approach to this best as his gestures most closely match the human skeleton. To my mind starting with the human skeleton is the most logical way to build up a human figure.
- Landmarks. Both Proko and Michael Hampton teach this step and I have found it very useful in finding the correct orientations for the various body parts.
- Volume. Again Proko and Hampton agree on this step and it really helps me to construct the various body parts with the correct perspective.
- Details. This step needs more work on my part. I intend to study more from Hampton here, I really like his method for constructing musculature from simple forms. I also intend to re-visit Proko for this as well, his videos on anatomy are probably the best I resources I have found to date on this subject.
It’s not quite my perfect figure drawing process yet but it will do for now and I will tweak it as time goes by and I learn more stuff.
Any comments on this approach would be most welcome, I’m always open to critique – don’t be shy :).