drawanyway.com

I love drawing people, so no doubt this is a subject I’ll be coming back to again and again.

There’s a lot to think about: getting the proportions right, putting the body into a realistic position, and - if you are drawing someone specific - getting a likeness. There are also a number of skills to be learned around areas like drawing hands, hairstyles, clothes and so on.

It’s one of the subjects that tends to intimidate new artists the most, perhaps because people are complex. Drawing a vase or a bottle or a cup is easy in comparison - it’s just a matter of looking at a basic shape and translating that into two dimensions.

OK, so here’s a good way of starting to look at the human body: as a series of shapes. Actually, this is how the classic drawing books teach you - you can probably picture the diagrams where they have a cylinder for a torso, topped with a sphere for a head and a series of articulated tubes for the limbs. Well, those books weren’t talking rubbish. That’s a very good way to start.

If you start by figuring out those basic shapes, you can then draw over them and refine them a little - put in a waist or a bosom, knees and shoulders. 

Your task - find a subject (a friend, family member, person on the street, colleague - they don’t have to know!) or look at yourself in the mirror. Start by drawing the basic shapes. Stop there if you like, or if you want to, go on to refine your drawing with some extra details. Then post the results here.

I’ve tried to demonstrate this above with a drawing I doodled at a conference. At the top is my drawing, and underneath, I cracked open my drawing tablet (excellent, I’ve been meaning to do that for years!) and superimposed the basic shapes. But what you’ll be doing is the opposite of this process - starting with basic shapes - with a faint line -  and then drawing over them with a stronger line . Sorry, the lines are a bit wobbly - I really need practice with this tablet (and in case you are wondering what I’m talking about, this is a drawing tablet, on Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk. I’ll be talking more about ways you can draw with your computer - with or without such equipment - later this week).

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