Figure Drawing Basics

1. Intro Figure: Hey, everyone. So today we're gonna talk about figure drawing Now, there's gonna be a lot of elements for this video, and you're gonna want to take your time with it. So it's a little on the long side. But if you kind of just go from beginning to end and follow me along, I think by the time you reach the end, you're gonna have a much better understanding of at least how to get started with your figure drawing and that hopefully it's not is overwhelming. So over the course of the class, you're going to see me draw a couple of different figure drawings from different angles in a very simplified manner. And later I'll go and do some demonstrations about the individual body parts and break them down a simply as possible so that they hopefully make sense without having to have any sort of anatomical knowledge. Now I will say that there's no way I could cover every single element of figure drawing and a single video. It would just be way too long and probably overwhelming for most people. So in this video I chose to focus on just the absolute basic elements. So that hopefully that people that are just getting started will have an easier understanding of how they could approach their figures and at least by the end, have a very simple mannequin ized figure that would look good and, you know, and doesn't necessarily have to be a really detailed drawing. So follow along and just take your time of this class. It is a little long, but I think by the end you'll get a lot out of it. Thank you for watching. 2. Measuring Ideas 1: So before we actually get started with any drawing, I wanted to spend a little bit of time talking about measuring and maybe just go over some ideas that might help you in terms of constructing your figures as you go Now there's a number of ways that you can sort of approach this, and everyone will kind of, you know, will make sense of it a little bit differently. But at least for me, this has been the most consistent in terms of strategies that I've used to help me deconstruct a figure, especially when we're just getting started. So I still like to mark off the top and the bottom of the figure. And basically what those represent is just a simple sort of landmark so that I can say like , Okay, I want my figure to be at the very top here and at the very bottom. Um, and then I might proceed to create some sort of an envelope which would act like a more or less a self containing sort of shape that is going to just give me a general sense about where this, you know figure is going to occupy on my paper and I do this with pretty much any drawing anyway. So whether it was a figure, a portrait, you know, a cast drawing or anything like that, it's just generally a good idea to have some sort of large shape established so that you're not staring at a blank sheet of paper. So there's a couple of different ways that I've seen, you know, other books in the past. Approach this and one is about, like, using ahead measurement as a, um, more or less as a unit. And then you can take that down and say like, Okay, well, if my head is this big, how many units down to the foot would it be in? The only problem I find with that is that if you're not dealing with the standing pose that is facing you, um, it becomes a little bit trickier. So, um, it's something that you can use, but it's not something I recommend using a lot. And so I'll talk about some other ideas that I would use in place of that to help build out your figure and establish some basic measurements to go from. So is an alternative way of measuring. I very much prefer finding the top and bottom and then start to divide my figure into halves on and ultimately quarters. Now, again, all of this would be sort of pose specific. And, you know, maybe I only need to mark off the halfway point to get started. It really just depends on what I feel like is gonna make the drawing easier to do for me. So you kind of have to just kind of approach each figure drawing as a new scenario. But the idea here would be is that we marked the top and bottom, and then I would find 1/2 way point in the figure eso then that gives me very two distinct halves that I can then further base additional measurements off. Um, now, this will depend, You know, quite a bit again on the post or whether or not the figure is standing seated, if you see if it's a back pose or anything like that, so keep that in mind as you go. But in this case, we could say about the crotch in this standing post is gonna be about half way. And so, depending on how much information I felt like I needed. I very well could just say I have my halfway point. Let me start constructing the figure a little bit just so that I get more information on the page. And that's generally what I like to do is start establishing some basic landmarks, maybe a center line. Um, just so that I have a little bit more to go off. Once I get a couple more things established, then I could maybe think about taking those measurements of my halfway points and perhaps finding 1/4. And so, you know, what I basically do is find a landmark on the body and it could be anything on and basically decide. Okay, well, what's the halfway point within the existing half? And so as an example in this scenario, we could say it's more or less about the armpit. And so from the armpit, I could say, OK, well, from the top of the head to the armpit that gives me 1/4 and from the arm pit down to the crotch, that gives me another quarter on. And then I would go ahead and repeat that process down on the lower half of the body as well, in this case, it would be about the knee. Or maybe the Patel attendant. And I could say there's another quarter AM There's another quarter and so basically just takes the figure a little bit farther down so that I can use those as some sort of a guide to help me construct the rest of the figure and so kind of once that's established. Then I start just building out my figure and looking for other points of reference to help , you know, make measurements and look for proportional things that are basically going to get me to a starting point in terms of construction now, there would obviously be a lot of refinement that would still happen along the way. But in terms of just getting the figure placed on the page, that's sort of the first sort of objective that you'd want to establish before we start doing any sort of detail. And so I would, you know, kind of look for different angles, and this is kind of where you would have, like a measuring tool of some kind, whether it's your pencil or us, you know, like a stick or something to actually hold it up and start plotting angle. So you know, I might taken angle from from the head to the shoulder, from the shoulder to the hand things, finding other axes, points that I could relate from side to side eso like little peaks and valleys that may occur in the figure that I can use as a more or less point of reference. And I can start taking different kinds of angles and look for areas where I can compare them to something else that I've already established. And so what ends up happening is you go up and down the body, and it's like this exact effect where I can take one point and compare it against another on and then compare it against something else. And then so on and so forth in you can essentially go horizontally and vertically up and down the figure and make those relationships, um, at least make or make comparisons, I should say. And then hopefully, by the time you get from the top to the bottom, you have a reasonable amount of information that you can say like All right, let me go ahead and start refining this and be more specific. And if I need to make corrections than I can go ahead and make those changes. But until you actually get something very well established on the paper, it's very hard to kind of make these very large sort of decisions about what should be taken out or added in. So just keep that in mind, Um, and again, everyone's gonna find their way. That works best for them in terms of measuring. Um, but what I've kind of shown you here is kind of how I've done it for the last, you know, several several years that has given me the most consistent results. So I would recommend everyone trying that if you feel a little stuck and so over the course of the other demonstration videos, you'll see me more or less used this approach, constructing the figures to a very basic level on, and then they get developed a little bit farther. But hopefully it all makes sense when you see them and it will be able to help you out 3. General Construction Ideas: so I wanted to just take a little bit of time to talk about general construction ideas in more or less how you may want to approach figure drawing. Um, there's definitely almost an infinite number of ways you can do this, but especially for beginners, I really like to focus on constructing the figure with really simple shapes as a way of getting started. And so basically what that looks like is, I like to stick to very simple circles ovals, cylinders and cubes and things along that line, because if anything, hopefully everyone can at least draw those to some basic degree. And then we can use those pieces to combine them into, Ah, very basic mannequin ized figure So you can see here. Imagine if this were a head. We would start with a simple circle and maybe add a jawline to that. And then the neck essentially becomes a very short compressed cylinder. And that's more or less how I would think about the body, at least as ah, very basic means to an end. Um, and again, like I said, from there, we can take those simple shapes and build upon them. Ah, and start dividing them into subsections so that they start looking a little bit more like a body. But we have to start with something just really in the beginning, just to get something on the page. And so, really, even when we get down to the body again, we can think of let's say something like the rib cage, you know, as essentially just a very basic oval. Um, and then from there we can start dividing it up into a more complex form. But if you're having trouble just even thinking about drawing figure in general, it really does help to kind of break it down into very simplistic shapes, because then it come. It just makes it a little bit less intimidating on. Hopefully that will make you feel more confident in approaching the drawing to start with. And so you can even see here. Just if I have a basic oval for a rib cage and then a small circle for, like a pelvis, Aiken kind of just join them together with a couple of lines, and we sort of get this, you know, being bag effect. Oh, are some sort of like a rounded sort of cylindrical tube and that could be representative of the torso on then, you know, kind of. Obviously as we go from there, we would start adding, you know, you know, arms and legs and things like that. But, um, again, you can really just start with something this basic and then start adding pieces of information on top. And that's enough to get you started because the one thing I don't want people to do is just kind of start with, you know, let's say, Oh, I have a random contour line and I'm gonna try and figure out my proportions That way this is not a good way to build a figure, and I've seen a lot of people at least try and recommend stuff like that in the past, and it's really never been all that effective. Eso I always air on, kind of just starting with really just basic shapes, and you have to establish some sense of proportion first, before you can start adding details like contours and anatomy and things like that. So that's kind of mainly where a lot of my construction ideas air gonna come from now. One thing you may consider as well is to maybe try and draw the figure, using rectangular sort of cubes and smaller cubes to establish the perspective of the body on. But can, in and of itself be a good exercise just to understanding how things are turning in space by using something that has more plainer sides, like a cube or a rectangle Theo. Only thing I will say is that by doing so, I do sometimes find it's harder to then turn the figure into something a little bit more organic, like a cylinder or some sort of organic form. But even just as an exercise, I find that drawing cubes in space that a representative of the body parts to be something you know of benefit because it does. Like I said, it does give you an idea of how things are looking perspective wise and so looking for the pitch of the pelvis or the pitch of a rib cage and really understanding what, um, you know, sort of angle that something is actually facing can be a very, very beneficial exercise to dio on. And it's something I would recommend, even doing if you have, you know, shorter poses toe work from versus that's a like a longer pose. And so once we get down to say, you know, like appendages like arms and legs e really do think about them, really just kind of in a very sort of simple cylinder fashion, because it's the easiest method of just getting a simple construction established and then to be able to build information on top of that becomes much more simplified. And so if we think about the arm being too sort of cylinders, the the top part of the armed being a little bit longer than the forearm and then we just have a little bit of information in between that would essentially be like the elbow. And you can see we have a very basic arm built, you know, sort of right away with very little information. And so I wouldn't think about the leg, essentially in the same fashion in that were thinking just about tubes that air sort of interlocking, and then the hands and feet become a separate shape on top of that. But at least getting started. You can use that very effectively to establish, you know, the rest of the appendages. Now the other thing you might see in more so in, like certain academic books that don't even to kind of talk about later, is kind of a stop building. The figure more with, you know, in the linear sense with straight lines and that are angular. And it's very it's It's sort of a more academic approach that you would see, um, like you a lot of time Students would do this with, like, cast drawings or barb drawings, Um, and you'll see even the drawings that I do. Demonstrations from a lot of them are constructed like this, where it becomes much more measurement intensive, and they're just using very simple straight lines to establish general proportions. And then the other information is built on afterwards. Now I do recommend trying this at some point as you feel more confident with your overall drawing ability, because it does kind of help make the drawing look a little bit cleaner in the long run. But I find that if you're just starting out, it's a little bit more advanced, and I and that's where I would say deferring to simple shapes might be a little bit better to start with, Um and then as you again. Like I said, as you feel more confident, you can start kind of maybe trying that approach. And for me, I kind of blend the two together a little bit because I find that I can find there's benefits in both and each. Each pose will be sort of different and how I approach it, because there's too many variables to say that you know this one away will always work, So that's something to consider. Um, and like I said, to find a happy medium between the two has gotten me fairly decent results in the past. So as an example, let's say if I were to start with an oval for, like, the rib cage, But then I want to just take straight lines and build off of that and start constructing the rest of the torso and then start working my way down now again. Like I said, the thing is, is that every pose will kind of be a little bit different, and so certain things will be more beneficial for one post versus another. There's always gonna be things like axes, lines and center lines that I'm always going to use. But then, in terms of constructing the rest of the body, I may want at one time go with more organic, simple shapes, like, you know, cylinders and, uh, and spheres and things like that. But then as I get to other sections of the body, maybe I just use straight lines because I don't have to put in a zoo much information. And so every scenario will like that you're gonna be asking yourself these questions in terms of how much actual information do I need to put into the drawing because it's actually gonna help me construct the figure. And then because the other things that you want to consider our is, You know, if a model is being lit, you know, from a certain angle, then you know you may have things there in heavy shadow. You may not be able to see certain pieces of information, and so then you kind of have to resort to other things like landmarks, you know, or other anatomical points to help construct the rest of the figure. But I wanted to at least start with, you know, for those of you that are just, this is a very new process for you, and or maybe you haven't done very much figure drawing, if any. Then I would recommend you stick to very basic shapes like this, because again, if you if you can't draw those than maybe spent some time drawing those simple shapes first , so practise drawing ovals and cylinders and cubes and things like that if you're just new to drawing in general. But in terms of how it applies to the figure, that's kind of how I would steer people towards because those simple shapes are easy to draw. But it's it's very beneficial to take something like that and then convert it into something that's much more complex, like the body. So just kind of keep this in mind as you're going, I would recommend just trying, you know, as many different things as possible. Just that way, you're gonna find something that clicks and makes sense for you, and everyone's different in that regard. Um, you know, I found for me, especially when I was first starting. Drawing the basic shapes like I've shown you here was a lot more beneficial. And then, as I got better and kind of, you know, mentally kind of shifted towards a different style of drawing, going back to straight lines and that sort of linear construction was a lot more appealing to me. But again, I think there's a combination of depending on what your goals are with figure drawing and what kind of drawings you ultimately hope. Teoh start practicing or working on. You know, whether it's illustration or more fine art you confined. Benefit and doing is many different methods is possible cause some doing one thing a certain way. Over time, it can get a little stale, but also to you by trying other ways of construction. It will hopefully let something else that you've been practicing click as well, so I'll end up doing videos for different parts of the body in a very similar construction method. And then you'll also see me and later in the later videos, draw individual figure drawings, and I kind of blend the two a little bit for those given particular poses. So hopefully this gives you an idea as at least as a starting point on, and then, along with the rest of the videos in the class, that it will all kind of come together in terms of sort of a good, foundational approach to drawing the figure 4. Landmarks (Front Pose): So before we actually get to any drawing of figures, I wanted to spend a little bit of time talking about landmarks that you can use to more or less help you establish your proportions and at least to get started on. And it's something that you want to have in the back of your mind as you're building your figure, because they can be helpful tools in terms of construction. So we kind of talked about marking off the figure from the top and bottom. Uh, and that's something that I would still start with, you know, regardless on. And then once that's established and we start constructing the rest of the figure, then we can start thinking about how to break it down into smaller chunks that are a little bit more manageable. So as I'm starting with head here, the next sort of logical landmark for me is gonna be the pit of the neck on. And then from the pit of the neck is gonna be the edge of the shoulders. And what this is essentially doing is it's gonna help me build some sort of horizontal axes , using the clavicle in the body and once I have that established. It's giving me an idea of how the figure is leaning or the pitch of the shoulders on DSO that establishes a very sort of concrete axes for me. And so with that, at access established, it's giving me an indicator of like, Well, how is how is the model distributing their weight? And so I know that if I have a shoulder line that is pitched upwards like this, that it's going to give me some sort of indication that there is a lean of some kind. And it's very obvious in this particular instance that with the shoulders tilted the way they are, that the model is leaning on sort of one foot. And then we were seeing the pitch of the pelvis, and it's those two opposing axes that gives you a very key indication of how the torso is actually bending. So in this case, you know these I would go from the pit of the neck down to the crotch and from the front that's gonna have more or less established a center line. And if it was a back poses, it's kind of you think about the center line is almost like the spine, you know of your figure. So with that major line in there, I can see like Okay, well, now it's giving me a sense of perspective is well, so I'm not looking at the body straight on. It's kind of in a subtle 3/4 turn. And then from the crotch down, I can establish another axes line, and I would be looking for the pitch of the hips on so that you can see here. Obviously that you know, we get a very slight bend in the body, and there's a very distinct compensation of weight on one leg versus the other. And so, even with just those few lines, we kind of more or less have a torso established. And so I'm gonna just reemphasize the pit of the neck, then the edge of the shoulders in the crotch, because now, within the torso, there's other points of reference that we can use to help us measure as we're building out the rest of the figure. And I have a tendency to work on the torso first, because the limbs are significantly easier to attach to the torso after the fact. But because the torso is more or less the largest component of the body. I like to find points in there and build out. So in this case I would be using the nipple line as another axes because that's gonna tell me the pitch of the chest in what direction it's facing. So it becomes another perspective tool. The corners of like the armpits could be another relationship point that I would use again because it's it's indicating the twist in the body. The naval would be another point of reference because then, once we have all these little sort of landmarks established, I can start taking measurements. Eso I'd be looking for different angles, Ondo, where I would hold up my pencil and say like, Well, what's the angle from, you know, here to hear or from here to here? And essentially, what ends up happening is the whole drawing becomes that. So once I have, you know, a comfortable amount of information on the paper. I would start taking all these points and comparing them to each other, and so I would be checking the distances of everything in relationship to something I already have established. So and once I did that for the torso. I would start doing that for the rest of the limbs. Um, so here, you know, I would have abandoned the rib cage in this landmark here, even though it's not present on the drawing. Depending on the model, you would see sort of that you would see a little indentation if the model was lean enough . It would essentially be like the 10th rib in the rib cage. And sometimes it creates like a little div it, um, and you could use that as a reference point as well. So But there's all these little things that you want to. If you don't necessarily draw them in the drawing, you kind of wanna at least know where they are. And I said, Like I said, just use them as a guide to help you construct the rest of the figure. And so once I kind of have, you know, a few points established again, like I can take what I found already and start making the rest of the figure based on those . So even from here, from the top of the head, I would say find the angle from there to the shoulder And that's going to give me a relationship of where the head is sitting in relationship to those shoulders. Um, you know, and then as we kind of keep going like, say, like, hear any sort of bend or apex or convex curve could be another point of reference. So the elbow, the edge of the wrist, could be something to go off of any sort of bony area of the body where you have a very distinct point or you find a very distinct angle can be used as a way of measuring as you're going from the top of the figure to the bottom. Now, once we get down to the lower half of the body, we don't really halves many sort of reference points. But you can still find things that you can use to help you construct like the legs in the lower half of the body. Um, the biggest thing that I think is once you have the that relative pitch of the hips, it does give you a very sort of key indication about how the legs are gonna be positioned for the rest of the figure. So in this case of their standing it's very obvious. But sometimes, you know, if you get something that seated or a little less obvious, you can still use the pitch of the hips to help. You kind of build the legs from there. So, you know, in this particular case, if I have the knee, you know, and the top of the hip established Aiken sort of build a cylinder shape, you know, into that and then sort of kind of create that mannequin effect as I were constructing the rest of the leg. Um, but, you know, from there it's just the legs do become the sort of, you know, to interacting cylinders that we're gonna connect via the knee. But the other important part with the knees is that once you find the location of one, you can use a sort of a Nangle to find the relationship to the other. And so the knees than themselves become almost like the shoulders in that they exist on an axes on. And once you kind of have those points established, you can use those to measure against other things. So, um, you know, So in this case, I could say, Oh, well, from what's the angle of one need to the other. What's the angle from the knee to the foot? What's the angle from the knee to, Let's say the back of the hell here So you can use those as reference points to help you construct the lower half of the body, and you essentially don't treat it any different than anything else. So kind of what you did on the top part of the body. You could do the exact same thing with the lower half of the body. And there's just a lot less variables, because when you think about the level of movement that your legs are capable of, they're not nearly as mobile as, say, like your arms because they can only bend forward and backwards so much. So keep that in mind as your as your building these out. So what more or less once you've kind of established a lot of these points in the body again, like they're just tools to help you measure and hopefully dial in your proportions as you're going along. Um, you know, the biggest thing, obviously, is that every pose that a model takes is gonna be different. And so sometimes you may have to use more. Sometimes you may use less Andi. Everyone will kind of gauge their comfort level about how much information they actually need to put in. But these are things that I always go back to with every single drawing. Whether it's a figure, a portrait, you know, or whatever. I'm always looking for some sort of landmark to base, um, some measurements off of. But the nice thing about doing a figure is that you have all these little things that can just kind of act as a guide so that you don't, you know, hopefully feel as lost as you're developing the drawing, especially in the early stages. Because once really we have these on there, then it's just kind of OK, well, now we have to build the rest of the figure, so we have to start attaching arms. We need to start flushing out. Um, you know, maybe, uh, some contours and not necessarily details, but we just have to further the construction along, so you'll see me do a back view, um, of a similar post because the back will have its own set of landmarks to build off of. But What I'm hoping is that you'll be able to use these to kind of help you at least plots and points and then build your figures out in a very simple fashion from there. So I hope this all made sense and you will now see the back pose. 5. Landmarks (Back Pose): So looking at the figure from ah back view, we still have a few landmarks that we can use to help us kind of figure out the general proportions and uses measuring tools. Now, they're certainly not as many on the backside as there is in the front. But nonetheless, we do have some things to look for that can help you eso even here still be using the top. You know, the top of the head, the bottom of the foot. Those are gonna be like my starting points. In this case, I would also have the edge of the shoulders. And once I know the edge of the shoulders, I can again still find some sort of axes line to establish the general direction of where the shoulders air facing. And that gives me an indicator of, you know, perspective and things like that. But then so the next key point is gonna be this little tiny bump on the back sort of on the neck. Here, it's kind of happening kind of where the trapezius muscle is on the top part of the shoulders and basically what it is. It's theseventies cervical vertebrae of the spine. But it acts as sort of a point, and you can kind of see this triangle pyramid that I'm drawing. Um, and so that would be like a landmark that I would use because then the center line is gonna run right through that, and I can take that all the way down. So using the center line because I don't have a crotch to go to, I would go right to where it meets, sort of at where the the split in the in the rear is. And so, um, that would be sore less my center line. And I would kind of use that as my spine, you could say. And again, that's gonna that center line is gonna give me a sense of perspective in saying that. Okay, well, this poses in some sort of 3/4 in relationship to where I've placed this center line and again, The main thing, at least early on is just getting a sense of OK, well, how is the model distributing their weight? And so again, with the shoulders kind of at this angle here and with stance and the legs, I can say there's a very distinct sort of you know two opposing ends with the axes from the hips and the shoulders. And so we're getting this sort of squash and stretch sort of effect that's occurring from side to side. And so another landmark here is we have these two divots in the lower back and what it is. It's the two. There's too little small sort of dimples on, and that is for the sake room in the inn, part of the spine. And so you can use those to establish another axes line. And so all these he's gonna sort of little angles or just kind of giving you an indicator of perspective and how the model is tilting their body. And then you can use that as you start building out the rest of, let's say, the torso. You know, I would have this, you know, say this tube shaped that's gonna come down and I'm gonna end it. Where about why I think the leg is inserting there, but now it's really okay. Well, this is my torso mass, and now I can start building things off of that. And so another point here, in this case, would say be like where the arm is inserting, and I would get a very distinct cut in sort of the armpit, and I could use that as an angle Teoh. At least compare it to what else I've established and on again from this post to even where , like, the edge of the of the buttocks are. I could use that as an angle to build off and then kind of more or less kind of build the legs out of that. But it gives me a very distinct axes line that are going again. Give me indication of perspective And then and then just the tilt about how the models distributing their weight. So even as far as the torso is concerned, these air kind of the key points I'd be looking for and that would be more or less enough to kind of comfortably say like Okay, well, I have these points in here. I can easily attach the arms and legs. Once I had these in place and I would still measure and hold my pencil out and take angles and make sure that they're all working in relationship to one another, the other the other thing that we could use and it would be dependent on the model is that you could, if you see like a an indication of the shoulder blades sticking out or making perhaps making a cash shadow. You could also create an axes line for those as well. But a landmark like that is actually more sort of model specific and depending on the person's body type is that you'll see a lot of variability in that area and then also, depending on how the model is holding their shoulders and arms and and such so. But in this particular case, there is some indication in the drawing. So that's why I kind of drew it in here for you because that could be another area, at least to consider as you're developing your drawing now, depending on the model, I mean, you could have, um, some other you know, big things like, you know, like there's the back muscles are very large, and so you could Sometimes, depending on how developed the model is, you could use those to help build some of the rest of the torso. In this case, like the Lotus Imus door, Sigh here is a very large muscle, and then I would know the external oblique is gonna be right near there, and that's going to wrap around the pelvis. But if you don't know, um, you know a lot of anatomy that's not necessarily important. You know, you would still want to construct the body and very simple shapes that are easy to draw. And then the anatomy just becomes sort of the details on top of that, so but what the torso established again in this case building out the rest of the body and attaching the arm on the legs would be fairly easy because there's not nearly as much information to put in for those at least from this particular angle. So as we get to the lower half of the body again, I'm still going to use the torso was a guide. And and so, in this case, seeing the pitch of the hips, I can say like Okay, well, this is how the model is distributing their weight and then build the legs kind of according to that, um and then from there again, I would be looking for the knees and depending on how turned away the model is from you, you could use either the knees as much as you see or what I would also then do is use the back part of the legs here because those can create sort of another axes line that you could use to develop. So, you know, if the model was fully facing away from you and this is the pelvis here and then these are the back part of the legs. Those those little bendy basically the little cuts in the legs. You know, as the leg bends, you could use those as a secondary axes line. And then so from here, like, it's a like a taken angle and use the tip of the foot as as a measuring point and say the back of the heels would also be something I would be looking for from a back pose. But then also to where the foot is bending the ankles would be landmarks that I'd be looking for is well. And then again, all of this is just to create points so that you can measure other things and make relationships, too. And even here the model, the artist sort of kind of maybe embellished the Cavs. But you know, if there's a very distinct plane change in the Cavs. You could create an axes line for those on and use those as a guide. But from the lower half the body, Like I said, you're not gonna find as many particular points. And so you kind of sometimes have to just create them yourselves because you have tow, find whatever you can manage to make as a guide or a tool so that you can plot angles in. It's really at the end of the day is just kind of getting your proportions accurate. So anything that you can use to measure something else again, stuff you want to go ahead and do that because what it means is that hopefully, by the end of it, if you've done it all right, that you're drawing is gonna have very accurate proportions. So now that you've seen, you know, like a front and a back post, my main my main sort of goal was this. So you can at least see what these landmarks are and then use them as a tool to help construct your figures Again. The biggest thing that's gonna be sort of the unknown variable is the poses that you're drawing. So if you're in a life drawing class, you know, or anything like that or even if you're just copying photos, every pose is so different, and you may need some landmarks more than others on certain poses. And so there's too many variables to sort of say, like, you're gonna always do this every single time. But as long as you know what these landmarks are, you can at least look for them and then use those as tools to help you measure and help you construct your figure in again. The ultimate goal here is just a have accurate proportions, you know. Beyond that, there's other layers of information you would start adding later on in the drawing. But we're still kind of focused on the initial construction because that really is the hardest part. Once the figures well constructed, then we can start thinking about other pieces of information like anatomy and contour lines . And, you know, ultimately, you know, modeling and shadows and things like that. But, um, again, we're kind of just still in the early stages, and so hopefully this all made sense to you, and then you can use these as a tool, and I'll kind of walk you through some actual drawings and then I'll take the body as well and break it down into very simplified forms so that you can make sense of those as well. 6. Standing Figure Front View: so starting out with, you know, just a blank sheet of paper. The first thing that you would wanna at least establish is what we would call an envelope and basically what that's gonna be. It's gonna be a large shape that establishes Thean tire figure to some degree. And so what I'm starting here with is I'm marking off about and this is a very rough sense , the top and bottom off where I want my figure toe lie. So I could just say for isn't it for an example that the top part is gonna be the top of the head and the bottom part is going to be essentially where I want the feet to end now at any given time, You know, I may end up deviating from this, but it's really more about just giving myself a mental barrier toe work into because I find that if you don't have any sort of boundaries established early on in the drawing, it's very easy to, you know, make a figure really short or make it really long and you end up with the disproportionate figure which will ultimately just throw off on entire drawing. And so here, You can see I'm just basically gonna establish. Ah, very simple. Um, you know, rough envelope shape that is basically representing where I want the figure I'm toe occupy on the piece of paper. And so regardless of whether it's a figure or anything else, this is kind of just for me at least the best way that I like to start any drawing because it kind of sets the stage for the general size that the drawing is going to be. So with the envelope in place, the first thing I like to get established is a general head shape. And this will kind of vary from pose to pose, depending on the angle of the head, the relative pitch. So how much the model is looking down, or straight or even upwards. And so, like, you know, for this particular pose, it kind of do something a little bit kind of geometric. Um, but something that's closer to the actual head shape to begin with. Now, as I'm starting, you know, I like to get the head, neck and shoulders as sort of the first thing I lock onto. And, you know, again that would very from pose to pose as well. But when we're dealing with a front facing posed like this, then I like to get those things locked in right away because I feel like if I can get that working than the rest of the figure will kind of work itself out a little bit easier for me . And so, with the general axes line for the shoulders, I feel, you know good enough to kind of just attach the neck to that. And in this instance, I'm pulling a line from the back part of the head and just sweeping down to create the back portion of the neck down into the shoulder. And so one thing I like to do is once I have even just a simple neck line established. I like to take an angle from the top corner of the head. Ah, and the front and find that angle down into the shoulder. And so what I'm essentially creating is sort of this kind of pyramid trap is weighed kind of shape. Um, because I want to find the exact width of the shoulders because if I have that in place, then once I know the width of the shoulders, then I kind of gives me a good idea of where I can start thinking about the width of the torso as well. And so, with the relative shoulder width established, um, you know, the next sort of thing I'd be wanting to find is my center line. And so I would start with the pit of the neck. Um, and that would be sort of like a general landmark for me that I would use to pull my center line down to relatively about where I think it's gonna end, which in most cases, on a standing pose is more or less gonna be about the crotch area. And so once I have that center line established, I'm just gonna pull some simple lines down to about the same length just so that I can establish a general idea of the width of the torso. And you know, I'm not going to do any contour lines or anything like that. This point is just kind of still figuring out a very general construction. And so, with that in place, I'm gonna then look for the pitch of the pelvis because by going from the shoulder axes and the pelvis. We get a good sense of how the weight is being distributed on the figure. And now, obviously the legs are giving us a very clear indication of that as well, just based off the stance. But if you're ever uncertain by looking for the angles of the shoulders and the pelvis, that really gives you a clear idea about how the body is distributing its weight. And so, with just even a few simple lines, you can see that we can establish a very simple gesture of the figure and that sort of at least for me, the main goal when you're just getting in the first you know that's a 20 to 30 minutes into oppose is just kind of getting some very simple lines to establish what the gesture is. Um, you know, or just the pose in general and the simpler you can keep that looking. Then it's gonna be a lot easier to start breaking it down into smaller sections on get more specific later. And so all my early lines, you know, as I'm you know, build out the legs or the arms or anything. You'll see that they stay very simple and really, the main reason behind that is essentially to stay noncommittal. Um, meaning that odds are that I'm gonna put some wrong information into the drawing on, and that's OK. And if anything, that's something I would encourage because at least you're getting information down. Um, and I'm not drawing very dark by any means, so anything could be taken out at this point. Um, but I want for me. It's just kind of You have to get something on your paper to be able to make corrections as you go. And so, by not getting into any really super descriptive lines like contours or anything like that , anything could be changed at any given moment. And I stay in this method of thinking until, you know, I get everything on the page that needs to be there and then start making, you know, extra measurements to double check everything that I'm putting down. Once I feel everything you know kind of has a good feel to it, Then I can start being more specific with, you know, bits of anatomy or angles or or contour lines or anything like that. And so, with those simple few lines put in. I'm going to start adding some additional information because I have the relative big shapes established. And so I need to start breaking those down into smaller sections so that it can make more accurate measurements for the other information that's in the figure. And so what this means is that in a lot of a lot of times I'll start looking for landmarks in the body. So whether it's the pit of the neck or the armpit, the nipple line, the naval I start looking for these additional bits of information because it's very easy to then hold my pencil up and make Ah very distinct measurement from one angle to another. And I can use those throughout the body so that I can cross reference everything that I'm putting down when ultimately, the goal is to be accurate as I'm developing the drawing into, you know, further stages. And so by using those landmarks, I can very easily make those assessments as I'm continuing to develop the drawing. And so was I worked my way down the torso. I'm just gonna ignore the towel that you see in the drawing, and I'm just gonna create a little bit of an arc so that you can see how the leg might insert with the rest of the torso. But more unless you can see just There's a very little information that I've actually put in, but it already has a very simple feeling of solidity. And that's kind of where you want to go with before you start adding any other superfluous details and the best, the more you can kind of do that, the stronger effect you're gonna have by the time you get towards the end of the drawing. 7. Standing Figure Front View 2: and so was I. Get down to the legs. I try and keep them fairly simplified because, really, when you think about the Leggett such a long, um, you know, muscle between the top and the bottom of the leg and then down to the foot that you don't want them to be, sort of to, um, you know, too many contours or anything like that, because they can start to look really lumpy really fast. And so I I generally like to find long, simple straight lines. And then as I get myself down to the feet, I'll make the feet just kind of simple wedge shapes. Um and you know, ultimately, if I would have, you know, time and everything like that, I could be more specific. But in terms of an initial block in stage, you know, I like to keep the feet just really simple and not too detailed at all. And so as I get back up to the arms and whatnot, all just kind of make, um, some distinct separations, like for the hand. Uh, but really, the arms in this particular instance are fairly simple, so I don't really have to draw too much additional information than from what I've started with. Um, and even the contours through there are fairly simple. So I can just put in a few smaller angles and that will more or less established the arms for me. And so, at this stage in the drawing, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take a different colored pencil, eh? So that you can see very specific changes that I'm gonna be making on top of this rolling. And so it's at this stage where you know, there's enough of a block in there that I can start adding some additional information that will develop the figure a little bit farther. I won't go too far into the drawing in the sense of, you know, finishing it. But I'm gonna just add some additional layers of information so that you can see how you might want to think about developing the rest of the drawing. And so at this point, basically all we're gonna be doing is just embellishing the information that we've already established. So the initial block in was sort of very general and not too specific. And so as I'm kind of working my way down I'm going to start injecting other information so that we get a little bit closer to what's in the drawing, and I'll even add a few other elements just to develop it farther. But, um, you know, you don't have to get these drawings to look, you know, super complicated to get the benefit of just the procedural parts of doing the drawing. And so, depending on you know what the poses and what the model is, you can add as little or as much information as you feel that you might need. But don't go overboard and you know, so if there's certain things that you don't really feel comfortable about doing, get as much information as you can and develop the drawing, Um, as far as you can for where you're at in your drawing level. If anything, always error on the side of simplicity. It's always easy to add extra details to the drawing because, you know, we have this sense that those details might make the drawing look better. But if you can keep it in a very simplified state and have that, um, looking really, really well very often you don't necessarily need to add a bunch of details and you would already have a very strong drawing as it ISS. That's all I'm doing here is really just kind of going and working down the arm. And what I'm really just thinking about is the arm being the cylinders that are in perspective. And then I'm just gonna draw a very simplified hand. Um, not gonna really get too caught up in that. But the rest of the body, you know, as you started thinking about it, I kind of go into maybe a more, you know, sort of, you know, geometric mode of thinking in terms off, You know that the arms are gonna be cylinders, you know, the legs are essentially going to be cylinders. And that was that would be something that I kind of keep with me in the back of my mind. As you know, if we were to take the drawing into a sort of, you know, modeling phase, you know, if if there were shadows, you know, that were in the drawing or anything like that, I would be shading them with same mentality. Meaning, you know, if you know the same way that I would shade a cylinder would be the same way that I would shada leg and the only thing that would difference the differentiate the two would be that there's gonna be some anatomical influence on top of that cylinder. But those anatomical influences are essentially the details. The simple underlying form is the fact that we're drawing and shading the cylinders, and that's kind of how you want to treat the whole body in terms of, you know, how to simplify it down into very basic geometric shapes. And it just makes drawing the figures so much easier without mentally getting caught up in a bunch of details. And so as I get down to the, uh, the foot kind of just draw separation where the angles are, and so that I can get a better sense of how the wedge of the foot is sort of inserting into the ankle bones down there. But I'm gonna just keep the feet and everything like that fairly simplified in sort of that wedge shape that we started with because I don't want to get caught up in drawing them. And realistically, depending on you know, if if you're drawing from life or anything, like that. You may not even have time, depending on the length of the post to really get too involved, Tom with the feet. So for the most part, that's pretty much the entire drawing. Now, essentially, I wasn't really trying to copy this drawing verbatim. As you can see, eyes more important for you to just see me take the pose and then break it down into some simplified shapes and forms and basically just deconstructed from there. Now, I would, you know, more or less. I would kind of do this for pretty much any figure, you know, sort of regardless of the post. Now, you know, every poses going to kind of have its own unique scenarios that, you know, may or may not make it a little bit more difficult to draw than another pose. But my thought process, um, and approach essentially remain the same regardless of you know what the model may or may not be doing. And I would recommend kind of starting your figures out this like this. And, you know, as you get more confident, you may not necessarily have to draw. You know, all these little individual shapes. Um, but Until then, I feel like just by sticking to the simple forms, you'll have a much easier time. I'm taking something really complex and hopefully making a little bit more simplified. 8. Standing Pose Back View: all right. So starting with the, you know, with the back post, I'm not necessarily going to change, you know, on approach. For the most part, I'm still going to mark off the top and bottom of where I want my figure to be. And then I'm gonna build a just a really simple envelope to sort of contain on the entire figure. Now, with the with this sort of pose in the arm being close to the body, it's gonna be a very narrow sort of a shape. But it's still just something to get on the page so that I know exactly what scale I'm working with, and just so that I have something toe work into and not just kind of start drawing from nothing. Now the one thing I'll say that I'll deviate with the back post is you know, even though the head is in full view, what I like to often times do with the back pose is find the shoulder line and from the shoulder line, I'm going to sort of build a base on DSO. What that does is that base and it's basically just the axes, but it gives me something to build the neck off on. And then once I have the neck more or less established, then I could just sort of build the head off of that. And that's really the only difference. You know, for me in any sort of a back pose is thes shoulder line becomes really critical for me to establish the head on. And the reason for that is that basically, I don't have, you know, like the chin of the head to work off of eso. I don't really have a full sense of unexamined proportion of the head. I don't have any other landmarks like the pit of the neck to build off of. So using that shoulder line becomes really critical for me. And so in this case, because I don't have the pit of the next toe work off of, I'm gonna build on my center line from the back of the neck down. Um, but before I get too far, what I want to find is the you know, just kind of the pitch of the hips, and so there's a very obvious sort of opposition with shoulder line and the angle of the hips. And once I have some sort of axes in place. I'll build my center line off of that and just establish the rest of the torso. And so I'm not gonna be looking for Contour lines or anything like that. I just want to get a very simple sort of a couple of lines just to establish a general width for the torso. And then from there, I'll be able to build the legs off of that. And so is I'm working my way down to the legs. I'm not gonna you know, I just want to get some simple lines to at least get started with. And I was a little short from my initial measurements. I'm just gonna add this add It's the tiny bit towards the bottom, but it really just, you know, I'm ignoring all the contour lines at this point. You know, I don't really, you know, wanna get too involved with that. I really just want to find some general lines to get more information on the page, and then we'll start carving in and out of those simple lines and get more specific. And so this far leg is really kind of coming forward. Eso We're seeing kind of a little bit of, ah, shift in perspective and it's not. It's not a whole lot, but you can see how far it's kind of tapering its not as wide as the other leg. And so the arm here is more or less. It's probably tucked across the body, so that's why there's very little information. So I can kind of just at a very simple shape, their against the body. You can see here that we don't have a whole lot of information. Um, you know, in terms of specifics for the Post, But we have enough here to where I could say like, Okay, the general poses established, and Aiken sort of comfortably move on and start adding other information to start getting a little bit more specific. Um, with not necessarily anatomy, but just working into some of the smaller shapes in the body. Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and just kind of add a simple oval for the rib cage because we kind of see where it's kind of coming through there on the side. And I'm looking for the angle of, like the reader there because that kind of creates a very definitive axes in this particular post. So I'm gonna be a good idea, have that in there, and really from down there, I can go ahead and attach it to the rest of my center line that I established earlier, Um, and kind of. We're just I'm basically just following the split in the back because the spine is essentially establishing my center line because I obviously don't have, you know, a front view to work off of. So I treat the spine as the center line in this particular instance and there's these little two dimples in the back here, and it's basically the sacred area of the spine and the kind of create a little bit of a shape here. And you can use those as a landmark as well, because they those dimples create another sort of axes that you can use, and it gives you a very clear indication about how the hips some are tilting in a different direction. And so as I'm working my way down the body and start getting to the legs, but so what I'm gonna use here is the back part of the legs kind of create another axes line and this is where the legs would be bending. And if it were a front view, I would obviously be using the knees to create that axes line. But because we're looking from the back, I would use use the split of the legs to establish that general axes of how the legs are relating to one another, destroying a little bit of an oval to kind of indicate the calf muscle. Um, and I like to do that for whatever reason. I know there's really no not necessarily a particular reason. I just kind of like putting it in there because it kind of gives me an idea of like, yeah, you know, the calf is this rounded muscle and you know, there's obviously some other information in there, but it's a very simple way to just kind of indicate that one particular muscle. And so for the foot again, I kind of just keep them a simple wedges, um, the ankle in the drawings, a little prominence. I put it in there. I'm but otherwise we just kind of working with very simple, um, foot shapes, and, um, they don't have to be more complicated than that. So leave it at that. And so, really, I mean, the majority of the poses is kind of established, and the thing to look for again with something like this is looking for that relationship in the in the shoulder axes and in the hips so that we're getting, ah, very distinct, um, you know, sort of balancing act with the axes in the body and you can see the distribution of weight . Um, there's very clearly established, and even though that, you know, from this particular angle, though, the poses very narrow. But even if you know, if we were looking at the same post from a different angle, that distribution of weight would be very obvious because of the tilt in the shoulders and hips. And so I'm gonna just take my red pencil here and start embellishing some information into the figure. The poses more or less, you know, established fairly well. Obviously, it's not gonna be I'm not trying to do a 1 to 1 drawing with this, um, you know, or any of the demonstration videos. I really just want you to see me. Look at this. Look at oppose how I would start to break it down from nothing into some simple shapes and then get to some, you know, basic level of what I would consider a block in drawing. You know, so none of these air obviously finished drawings by any means, But you'll hopefully be able to get an idea of Ah, you know, kind of how where you going to start with ease and where you can take them even in a very basic level. And so I'm really just kind of adding some simple contours and looking for, you know, areas where I can kind of create of just a stronger sense of solidity on DSO That does mean , you know, inserting some anatomical points, you know, or embellishing some certain areas so that I really get a strong sense of how the pieces of the body are coming together to create a larger unit overall. But you can see it doesn't really take much. I mean, I'm not necessarily, you know, rendering, um, you know, or modeling any anything particular. But I'm really just trying to get a sense of how these shapes are connected to one another , and the more you can focus on that, even if you're drawing has no shading. You know, our modeling or anything like that. You can still do, you know, a fairly beautiful drawing on and just simple lines as long as there's a strong sense of form and how all the pieces are coming together. And that's really kind of what your main aim should be, you know? And when you're just starting out, you don't have to model M any of the drawings to get a great figure drawing. You can have just really simple, beautiful lines and have a very strong sense of form a zloty. As things look proportionate and you know all the pieces, you know of the body have a strong sense of connective ity, Um, and how you draw them. And a lot of that doesn't necessarily have to mean that you have to know anatomy, either. It's really if we kind of stick to our simple, you know, cylinders and shapes like that. As long as those even feel like they have a good sense of connection toe one another, you know, then you can kind of add a few minor, you know, details in terms of like contour or some indications of anatomy and you can still have a very, very believable drawing. And so, you know, we're more or less done with this particular pose at this point, but you can see that there's not a whole lot of information in the drawing, you know, to begin with. But we still have a sense of weight. We have a very simple sense of form. And how the especially in this case, I would say the main part of the poses is the torso and how the hips are being tilted and how the shoulder is opposing that. And that's sort of the main focus of this particular post. So I'm gonna be doing, you know, a seated poses well, and show you how I would approach that. But, you know, for the most part, you kind of run into very sort of standard front and back poses any time you're in, you know, a life drawing class. So I wanted to show you guys just how I would approach those two and how there might be some minor differences. But overall, like I hopefully you get the idea and that it makes sense. And again, just keep all your drawings fairly simple and try not to overcomplicate them as you're moving forward. 9. Seated Pose: So with this particular pose, there's obviously, you know, gonna be some differences between standing, you know, figures. And so what you end up trying to dio is to capture, You're still going to draw, you know, the same envelope that we started with for the other figures. Except now we have to think about, you know, the pose in this particular sense is going to be a little bit wider, so I have to kind of take account of that as I'm drawing my envelope. Now, the one thing in particular with this poses because of the angle of the head. And it's kind of, you know, for shortened a little bit and often the distance. In this particular case, I'm going to start with, you know, building the shoulder line. Um, and the actual arm itself and basically well, that's gonna allow me to do is I'm gonna be able to attach the head on a little bit easier . And so in this case, I can kind of establish a very general sense of the body first, and I'm still working within the confines of my envelope. And I'm just looking for very simple large lines that are gonna help me establish just the general sense above what the the actual figure is doing, you know? So in this sense, we have a very simple, almost kind of like an L shape, you know, for the legs. And because they're cross together, I'm almost going to just treat them as one large unit. So I'm not gonna be too concerned with creating any sort of significant separations in the legs at this point. So with this thes shoulder line, kind of that is acting as, like, my anchor point. And so what I'm going to be doing is I'm basically gonna build the head off of that shoulder line, and that's depending on the pose. A lot of the times I will use, you know, the shoulder as a way of just sort of an anchoring the head on, especially when it's sort of looking a little bit separate from the rest of the body and really just kind of that's kind of enough for now for a head shape, at least to kind of just get me started. And so, you know, feeling good about the general proportions, Aiken, start breaking down the body into some more simplified shapes. And so, you know, even though there's a lot of compression happening within the torso, you know the arm isn't terribly foreshortened. So I'm still getting that kind of simple cylinder effect that's taking place. And there's a bit of information kind of happening in the front part of the body. But for the most part, what I'm looking for is just the little small negative space in between. You know the arms here, and I'm gonna go ahead and put in just a little simple kind of an oval shaped for the rib cage. And there's a very distinct sort of separation here where the pelvis is kind of coming into contact with the oblique in the torso. And so, while there's a bit of information that's kind of happening here in the in the midsection of the torso, I really just want to look for the big key things that are gonna tell me. Um, you know, in this case, I would say, like the perspective of how the torso is twisting in relationship to the rest of the body, like the legs in the head. And so you wouldn't necessarily I wouldn't necessarily draw like every little bit of information in this particular example. But I just want to find the key things that are going to really look for, you know, like like here in the lack and then a little bit here in the shoulder blade. And I think for me in this particular instance, the main sort of thing I want to try and capture is that hunched over effect. And so we get this sort of compression with the rib cage and the torso. I mean, I'm sorry, the pelvis kind of coming together, Um, and that's really the essence of this particular pose. Beyond that, you know, we have the legs which again kind of just start chipping away and separating them a little bit. Some information, but for the most part, they're fairly simple, Um, as they're kind of sitting against the box in the rest of the drawing. And so really, with the legs here, there's really not a whole lot of information that I really have to put in because as the boxes kind of, um, being pressed against the leg, it's kind of compressing it a little bit, and then we don't see very much of this far leg at all either. So I really just have to put more emphasis on the front leg here. And then it was kind of happening towards the bottom with feet. And just like I did in the previous drawings as well, I would kind of keep the feet in a very sort of simple kind of a wedge shape. Um, you know, the only instance here is that they're kind of interlocking with one another, but for the most part, we can still keep them in that sort of simplified almost triangular, um, kind of Ah, wedge shape. And so I'm gonna take my red pencil here and start toe, you know, just develop things a little bit farther, but again, there's really not a whole lot of, you know, additional information that I really have to add on. But, you know, I'm still gonna be thinking about the simple, you know, geometric forms that are kind of occurring within the body, Um, and then just put a little bit more emphasis on some of the smaller parts of anatomy. But even if you were to stop right now, you know the poses more or less established. Um you know, it feels proportional. And I would say, you know, from there then it's just kind of taking the drawing, however far you want to take it, Um, again, the main objective for this particular poses just have something a little bit different than a standing pose. And, you know, there's just there's an infinite number of poses that you could essentially find over. You know, if you take any sort of life drawing class, there's just almost ah, you know, infinite number of variables that the model can hold. And it really just comes down to how much time you actually have with the model Teoh, um, to really develop, you know, perhaps a finished drawing. But, you know, in the beginning, like if you can kind of stick with what we started with in the sense of basic shapes than you really can kind of then just decide how far you want to take the drawing and then relative to the amount of time that you have. Now, if you're working from reference or anything like that, then you can really take a long as you need. Um, it is in those instances where I'd really make recommend spending as much time on the proportions more so than anything. And then once you're proportions, air dialed in, it's very easy to start adding all the extra information and really flush out figure. And so, as they come in, just skin on, get down to the leg here again, I'm still just thinking about you know, the general cylinder shapes that these air kind of creating. And then even though that box is pressing up against, you know, the rest of the leg, it still has that cylinder effect. And in this particular instance, the only difference where I would say is kind of around the knee I would start squaring things off. Um, you know, maybe a little bit more to create more of like a corner for the knee. But for the most part, we're still dealing with these really simple organic forms, and we can kind of just build them out and treat them that way for the rest of the leg. And so, really, at this point, you know, the drawing is more or less done. Eyes. There is really not a whole lot of information in the rest of the legs, but I just wanted to show you guys a different, you know, sort of pose. And the fact that really honestly, the approach does really doesn't change. You know, I'm still kind of working with same approach in mind, but I'm adapting it to the pose that's in front of me. And so, um, just keep that in mind, you know, so, like as you as you're kind of doing different poses is that, you know, you might see a difficult pose that a model takes or anything like that, But you don't necessarily have toe think like, Oh, well, this is entirely different Now. I have to approach it differently or anything like that. Um, the process remains the same, you know, Regardless, you know what the model may or may not do in terms of posts. And so and as long as you kind of have a good sense of that process, you know, starting with the envelope and then breaking things down, it's always a good way to get started on. And then you can start developing the drawing as you go 10. Neck & Shoulder Ideas: - So as we're kind of getting started with, um, you know, figures and whatnot, I still like to always start with the head and basically build out from there. So because for me, the head kind of establishes the overall scale in which I'm gonna do this figure. So if I have a smaller head, that means I'm gonna have a smaller figure and vice versa. So it kind of sets the stage for the rest of those rolling when you're beginning. And so depending on, you know, the angle, you know which the models looking, I'll start with just a simple head shape on and again, This will very, you know, depending on the models pose and how much of the face I'm seeing the tilt of the head and things like that. But it is sort of one of the first shapes that I start with, and from there I kind of build a neck off of that, and I really try and just capture the head, neck and shoulders as quickly as possible. And so for the neck here, I you know, you can really just think of the neck as a very sort of short compressed cylinder, you know? And yes, there's, you know, anatomy that's gonna sort of take place in that. But that's really the general shape that we would start with. And so faras how big or how small that cylinder is. You know, you can use it kind of an angle. You can use angles from, say, the chin or the back of the head. Um, and it's really gonna be a short distance. And, you know, unless the person is, you know, say, super muscular, you know, or anything like that, then you know, maybe they have a thicker neck. But in general, you can say that we have just a very short cylinder. Um, and we have to have some back of the skull here. Um, you know, and then we would have the tip of the chins. You could use those a sort of to measuring points to kind of consider as you're building the base of the neck. And so once you felt, you know like you have the neck on to some degree, you would want to find the pit of the neck, and that's going to be a key landmark, essentially, to help establish the pitch of the shoulders on and the relative perspective. So, um, you know, once again established sort of the general next shape by using this sort of really simple short cylinder. But then from there, go ahead and find the pit of the neck and its relationship to everything else. And then, like I said, it's gonna help you build out the rest of the figure from there. And so just to do another example, if I'm kind of, let's say if this was like a head and profile or anything like that, um, you know, I might start with this sort of sort of triangular shape because it's gonna establish, like the back part of the skull. Aziz Well, as the tip of the chin. But again, from the back part, I can pull a line from the back part of the head, and that's gonna help me establish that cylinder shape directly to the shape of the head and there, and I can just add a little bit of chin and that at least gets me started. And obviously this is kind of keeping the head and the very simplified mannequin ized state , and, you know, we would start adding details and start chipping away, um, towards the end of the drawing. But to get something on the page, this is all you really need as faras in terms of ahead getting established and then because from that neck we can start building out, you know, the rest of the shoulders. And so again, like I was saying, is that that head, neck, shoulders for me is a very critical sort of starting point because then I can start building the rest of the figure a little bit more comfortably once those air well established and so just another example. If I'm gonna draw this head straight on so again, I may start with, like, a symbol oval, find a basic center line and then maybe attach a jaw line just so that there's a little bit more information. But from there looking at ahead straight on, then that could be a little bit easier, because you can essentially just work from the sides of the jaw and establish a very simple sort of neck line. You don't even necessarily have to draw cylinder. At that point. It just becomes more or less parallel lines. But then, once we get down to the base of the neck. I might go ahead and put in just a simple oval just to indicate to myself that, yes, we're actually dealing with a cylinder, and so from there, and place the pit of the neck and then again working out from the pit of the neck, I can go ahead and establish essentially like a axes line, which would represent the clavicle. And so because it's basically from the neck and the clavicle, I can go ahead and attach, you know, a shoulder line, Um, and you want to think of the clavicle because it kind of bends along with the body. Think of it almost like the handlebars of like a bicycle on. And that was sort of like a good analogy that one of my teachers used to use in schools that, you know, you want to start thinking about the you know, the anatomical portions and associate them to other objects you've seen in real life because it helps kind of create like a metaphor that you can remember. So he always used to say that the clavicle just imagine some handlebars on a bike because that's sort of how the bones bend. And then from there, you know, again like you can start adding, you know, information on top of that, but it at least it's a starting point. Teoh established something as you're building the rest of the drawing, and so once I had, like a some sort of simplified, you know, sort of axes line, and I kind of have a sense of where the shoulders may attach. I go ahead, just pull a line from the from the neck to the edge of the shoulder, and this is essentially like the trapezius muscle, even though oftentimes we just call it the shoulders. It's a it's a large back muscle that's very prominent if you were looking at a figure from the back, but from the front you're going to see the very sort of the height of it as it's attaching itself to the neck and then taken out to the edge of the shoulders. And so one thing I like to do to check myself is also from the top of the head. I like to find an angle down to the shoulders, and so what it does is it basically tells me like If if I'm off a little bit or I need to make adjustments, I can see what the relative angle is from the top of the head to the edge of the shoulders . And it essentially makes this sort of pyramid shape that I can use just a za way of making sure that you know I'm getting the right width across the shoulders in general on. And then from there, like I said, weaken kind of make whatever adjustments are needed. But that beginning stage of a drawing like I said in the very beginning of this video, is that I like to get the head, neck and shoulders well established because I feel like it sets the stage. You know, for everything else and you know, from there once once That's in that I feel much more comfortable moving on to light, say, like the torso and then from the torso we start adding the other pieces. But really again, from the most part is if you can get a good start to your drawing just by establishing the head, neck and shoulders, Um, I feel I always feel, at least for me, much more confident. Moving on because I have this sort of unit of, you know, it's comprised of a couple things, but the more solid that feels to me much easier. It is for me to comfortably move on with the rest of the drawing, and so is we're working through this area. You can kind of think of the trapezius and neck and head kind of all coming together in the metaphor that you know, a teacher used of mine, used to use is that. Imagine it like a coat hanger. So the trapezius and and the clavicle are all kind of coming together. And then the head would more or less be where the hook would be. Obviously, you wouldn't draw that. But that's just something to think about. As as you're kind of putting all these pieces together is that all of these little things are part of a larger whole, and that's kind of one of how you want to treat this whole area is that this thing is, even though it's multiple things, they all kind of have to fit in the right pieces together so that they all work. And once I felt good about it, then I would feel much more comfortable, I said, moving on to the rest of the body because it does sort of set the stage for the rest of the drawing Now. One key difference I would separate from drawing the figure from like a front post is that with the back post where I met the head may be obscured or I don't see the entirety of the head is that I would actually start with shoulder line on and then once I have the shoulder line in place, I would feel a lot better about attaching a next cylinder to that shoulder line. As you can see me do here, Um, and then from there I can find some sort of a center line from the neck. But because I don't have a pit of the neck, the other landmark I could use is that there's a little bump on the back of the neck, and essentially what that is is the seventh cervical vertebrae of the spine, and it creates like a little bump and everyone has it on their back. Some we're gonna be more profound than others, but regardless we all have it, and so I could use that as a landmark to base everything off of. And so once I had that shoulder line in the neck established to me, it's a lot easier to build a neck. I mean, I'm sorry, like ahead off of that, um, you know, because depending on, let's say, if it's, you know, if it's a back pose and depending on the position of the head, you may or may not see you know the entire head, the models, you know, Chin could be tucked down. They could be looking up. There's all sorts of variables, but at least if you have a shoulder line in the neckline, um, it's a lot easier to establish the rest of the head based off of that. And you're not just starting from nothing. So again, those air, just like a few ideas about how to start kind of getting the head, neck and shoulder areas toe work together. Obviously, I didn't talk about constructing ahead, and if you feel more interested in that, there's definitely other videos I have that would explain, kind of just head drawing in general. So but like I said at the very beginning of the video for me, when I'm starting a figure. And once I got a few things on the paper, starting with the head, neck and shoulders is always gonna be sort of like the priority Onda. Obviously, that will be dependent on the pose as well. But assuming that it's opposed where everything is in plain sight and so I don't have an obscure angle, you know, or anything like that the head, neck and shoulders is always where I'm gonna want to begin my drawing again because it sets the scale about how large or how small I may work. And then again for me, even though it's a figure, drawing the head is such a crucial a crucial thing, because if it's a finished drawing, people are always gonna look at that head first anyway, and then they kind of work their way down to the looking at the rest of the figure. So if the head proportions are off on a figure drawing, that's the first thing that people are gonna notice, at least from my experience. So just kind of keep that in mind and kind of you'll see the other breakdowns for the other parts of the body. But again, head neck shoulders is the best place to start 11. Torso Ideas: so kind of just isolating the torso. There's a couple ideas that I want to explain that may help make understanding how the torso can get developed over the course of your drawing. And so, assuming you know, we're going to start with the head on and everything like that, and more or less have the head, neck and shoulders at least marginally established. Um, the two key points that we're gonna look for really in the torso is gonna be the pitch of the shoulders and the pitch of the hips. And from there, it's really gonna be between those two points is gonna be your center line. And it's important. Establish those early on because it gives you the general perspective of the actual torso. And from that point forward, you can say that if I know the perspective of the torso, then it kind of clues you in about what the whole body is doing in general. And it would be one of those things where, you know, if this you know, if the body was turning in perspective, you would. But, you know, it's sort of bow your center line to essentially match the direction the bodies facing. And so, if anything, I mean, there's other elements that you can use to help, kind of at least situate that meaning so you could use the angle of the shoulders you could use, like the naval toe all cool you in about the overall perspective of the way the torso was facing. But the center line is gonna kind of establish a base to go off of, because then you from there you can build the rest of the torso fairly easily. So the overall large idea that I like to think about what the torso is. Essentially, we're dealing with this sort of elongated tube, and now obviously, that's a very broad simplification. But when you're kind of just starting to build the basic structures, if you can simplify it down to just one large shape, it becomes a lot easier as you progress through the drawing to just start adding other bits of information on top of it. So whether it's the arms of the legs or even anatomy that exists on the torso by starting with a larger shape, it becomes much easier over the course of the drawing to break it down into smaller sections. And so with this tube, you could still generally, you know, again find the center line so that it's giving you the sense of perspective. Um, but then overall again, we're just We're still just dealing with a very simple shape. And if you think about it more like that than you're gonna have a much easier time building the rest of the figure, because it doesn't necessarily have to be more complicated than that just to get started now. Alternatively, another thing you could do is you could also establish a Siris of boxes to to build out the torso and the benefit of perhaps trying. This would be that there's no sort of denying the perspective of a box or a cube or like a rectangle, for that matter, because it gives you a very distinctive plane or structure that can actually be a big benefit when you're kind of just building some simple foundational shapes, Um, which I mentioned in another video earlier. The Onley sort of tricky part about using cubes and rectangles and things like that is that it's very hard sometimes to transition into something that's more organic. Um, you know, in terms of like a finished drawing. But as an exercise on its own, I find that using boxes can actually be beneficial in terms of under understanding perspective. So and you could do that for pretty much any part of the body. Whether it was a hand, a foot, a leg, an arm, you can really draw a series of boxes and even make an entire figure out of very sort of structural shapes like this and even give you a very good understanding of how things are actually turning or tilting in space. And one thing we used to do in schools that, you know, if sometimes we were doing gesture drawings on and maybe we only had like, a minute or two Sometimes I would just take the torso and I would say I would draw like the rib cage and the pelvis in sort of a box form, and then that way, because I knew I had such a limited amount of time and I wasn't gonna be able to capture, you know, a whole lot of information. Just by doing little practice exercises like that, he was just kind of becomes like a perspective exercise. So that you could understand as a model is bending and twisting, Um, how the body is gonna rotate and how things are going to sort of change. As you know, a model is bending and twisting in multiple directions. And so, alternatively, what kind of building the torso looks like for me is I mean, I would still maybe also. Then you could try the tube thing and build off of that. That's sort of the general idea, but the rib cage itself is going to essentially be kind of like this oval egg shape. Um, and I feel like because of its structure, the rib cage lends itself to being kind of more. That organic form, where is the pelvis below, actually is much more angular in terms of its bone structure. If you were to look at a skeleton, there's a lot more angles that are jagged on a on a pelvis, and so sometimes if I were to draw opposing shapes is that the the rib cage becomes kind of that oval egg shape, and then the pelvis becomes a lot more cube like as you construct it. And again there's no right or wrong really approach to. It is just kind of trying a bunch of things and hopefully some. You know, one method or one approach will click with you a little bit better than another. I just want to offer you up some ideas so that you can hopefully think about the torso a little bit differently if if you've never heard of any of this before and so he's gonna draw the curvature of the rib cage on their and essentially the thoracic arch of the rib cage, that is gonna be a little bit different on everyone. But everyone kind of knows that upside down U shape in the rib cage in. You know, you don't necessarily have to get caught up in the anatomy for a lot of this stuff. You know, the important part is to really simplify it down into basic shapes on And then, you know, it's really easy to get complex, you know, after the fact. But the more you can simplify it down, the easier time you're gonna have. And so, with those two pieces together, I can essentially start building that in between portion, which in this case from this angle is gonna be you know part of the abdominal wall, Theobald leaks and stuff like that. But again, we're still just thinking about that tube, more or less shape that we started with. And now we're just adding other information on top of it. And so this here would be like the external bleak. That's kind of coming from, you know, from the rib cage. Essentially. And then we would have the abdominal wall in between. The external oblique would sit on top of the pelvis. A little bit in that top part would be the iliac crest of the pelvis, and it kind of just sits right on there. And you can start to see how all these little things become like puzzle pieces that are interlocking with one another. And that's really if anything, what you would want to try and get with your figure drawing. Not necessarily in anatomical sense, but even just in the basic shape sense, because if you can get that, then you're your figure itself is gonna have a convincing sense of form as you start adding details. But as you can see here is, even without all that information, I just put in the overall effect that I'm still trying to achieve is sort of this kind of beanbag. Um, you know, thing that you would see a lot of actually more animation books would talk about this in terms of, like a squash and stretch principle as things air bending and twisting and and just how malleable thes shapes are. And you know, to a certain extent, if you were doing like illustration or anything like that, you might, you know, at some point you kind of start cheating poses so that they look more dynamic and you may distort things, but that's essentially what is happening. You know, if it were life drawing or anything like that, and you're working from a model and maybe, you know, to a much lesser extent, but the idea is essentially the same. And so as we continue along, we can start adding you no additional information on top of, uh, the large mass that we've established. And, you know, all the anatomy and stuff like that is important to some extent, but they really are sort of sub forms, and the larger form is gonna be going back to that tube shaped that we started with and if you can maintain, you know, the overall sense of that large form. And then as long as everything else is in perspective, you can really kind of have a convincing figure. Even if it's a mannequin, you get a sense of what the figure is doing and where the you know what the poses and how weight is distributed without having any of these other details in the drawing. So I don't really want toe have people get too caught up in details, especially if you're starting out. You know, I would highly recommend putting more emphasis on the simple shapes and making sure that that looks good first before you get caught up in this and so ultimately will have separate videos like this for the rest of the sort of arms and legs and such, but hopefully gives you an idea about how you can approach this to simplify things down and really just take your time and keep it as simple as possible. 12. Basic Leg Construction: So as we get closer to the bottom of the figure, the last sort of thing that we have to consider is how we're gonna be constructing the legs . No. Obviously, we're gonna probably you're still gonna want to start with some sort of large shaped that you've already established. And you would hopefully have, um, the majority of the torso at least placed so that you know what? You're attaching the legs too. So assuming here that we kind of have that in place, I would just start from the pelvis. So we're assuming this is, you know, my center line down to the crotch, and then this would be sort of the, you know, kind of the corners of the pelvis here on each side. And typically, what those corners would represent would be sort of the sort of the top peak of like the pelvis. And this is sort of where we're gonna be inserting the leg, and you want to just think of the leg as sort of, you know, if it's like this puzzle piece that it's inserting into, sort of like the socket of the pelvis, and then we have you know, this cylinder shape that is sort of wedging itself in between eso that it's that it feels connected directly to the pelvis. And so, really, the legs essentially become very similar to the arms, in the sense that we're still dealing with very simple cylindrical forms. And the only really difference being is that, you know, there are obviously going to be a bit longer than the arms on, and then we're adding a foot on the end. But you want to kind of treat it the same way so that it doesn't get too complicated. And so once I get started, the first sort of crucial thing for me to find is I kind of want to find the general location of where a knee might be. Because once I can get one established and I feel comfortable with its location, then I can make a direct comparison to where the other knee is. And so this would obviously, you know, very quite a bit, depending on the pose. But you know, for the sake of our you know, example, if it were a standing pose, if I establish one knee, then I could make a direct relationship to the other knee and that can basically use that as a landmark. And they kind of create on axes for me so that I can at least say Okay, well, like the relative perspective of the knees, um, and how they're sitting in space and what is the, you know, sort of the distribution of weight that the model eyes taking in with their pose on things like that. So that's sort of the first key thing to look for as you're establishing the legs because they're gonna have a very distinct relationship to one another, probably much more so than the arms, because the arms have much more of a Frida range of mobility, whereas the legs can only really go so far in comparison to the arms. And so once, you know, once we kind of have the knees established, Then I would go and start constructing the lower half of the legs and again the once we get past the knee. The lower half, where, like the calf muscle is down to the ankle again, is more or less just that simple cylinder shape. Except it's coming to a much more gradual taper. So you think as we get down to where the ankle bone would be. We're really just gonna want to sort of taper that cylinder off so that we can create the ankle and then get down into the foot. And so again, once once as we're kind of building the legs out the way I just think about it in general is that we have essentially these two cylinders sitting in between the knee with the knee, acting as basically the point at which the leg is gonna articulate on. And so if I think about it in those terms, it really does simplify the leg down into the sort of a couple of larger pieces that we can use to construct it. And, you know, again, depending on you know, the pose that the model is taking, there's gonna be different levels off. You know of how much the leg is bending, you know, or turning or anything like that. But if you think about it in these terms like this, you can construct the leg really from any angle. Um, the only issue would then be sort of, you know, there's perspective to think about, but, um, you know, if removing those cylinders in space three egg, the leg becomes much more manageable. And so one other thing that I like to sometimes do is I would, uh, basically draw like a little small oval to represent the general mass of the calf and that will differ from post oppose. But depending on the angle, it can be helpful because everyone's kind of calf is gonna be a little bit different and how you know, muscular, they are or not. But we could essentially do is draw that a little oval for the calf and then build the rest of the lower leg off of that. And so, depending on how much taper there is down to the ankle, and then we can simply attach a very simple sort of foot shape in this case, in a lot of times, I like to just draw the feet as almost like a wedge. Andi, especially early on in the drawing. The feet are really just important just to get a sense of how the model is like standing or to give them a sense of feeling grounded. And so it's not just like a figure floating, you know, on a page or anything like that. And so once I established these basic shapes for the legs, I would feel comfortable at this point adding that secondary layer of information, which in this case is gonna be little anatomical things. But I would treat the whole body this way. So whether it was the torso, you know, the arms or anything else is if you get the basic sort of placement and proportions right of your mannequin, it's very easy to just draw on top of that initial structure and start adding some of the details that are gonna make the figure look a little more, uh, you know, like an actual figure and not a mannequin per se. Um, now, obviously, you know, everyone's gonna be at a different level with their understanding of anatomy. Um, and it's something that, you know at some point down the road, you do want to spend some time studying it. But for now, again, if you're just starting out, stick with simple mannequin ized forms because that's gonna be a lot simpler to draw an easier to manage. But just know that once you can get a good grasp of drawing those mannequins that it doesn't really take Ah whole lot of extra information to start giving the drawing a little bit more life with some extra details with the anatomy. 13. Basic Leg Construction 2: And so one of the thing that I wanted to do was draw a leg and profile because there was a specific landmark that I wanted to talk about that could be helpful, especially, is you're constructing just the body in general. It gives you another point to relate other things against. So I'm so going to start with, just like a rough sort of ah, box shape for the pelvis and the top arc. There will kind of represent that, you know, like the tip or the ark of the iliac crest of the pelvis. And so it still build my cylinder, you know, the same way as anything. And I would go ahead. And at least from this particular angle, I would kind of just attach it to the rear, knowing that, you know, the cylinder is inserting into the pelvis that way. And so what it is is there's this little dimple in the hip, and that would be like the landmark you would look for. And so what it is is that it is essentially the great troll cantor of the femur, Um, with the femur obviously being the essentially the thigh bone. But what we have is there is like this big ball shape on the end that's sticking out, and that's what's essentially creating that dimple. And so the way I like to think about it is more or less is if you think about the leg moving on an axes, imagine that that dimple is essentially the pivot point of the axes. So as the leg would swing forward or backwards, it's essentially moving from there. Um, so now and that's and then also, I mean, if we're looking at a different angle, you know the leg obviously would go move, you know, outwards and inwards as well. But again, it's that point in the body that you want to be thinking about, because then you can at least have that dimple there and use that as a landmark to reference against anything else that's happening on the lower half of the body, you know? And so, with that in place, you know, I can essentially continue building the rest of the leg just with simple cylinders and then continuing down through the foot and adding that simple wedge shape that we did earlier. Theo only other thing that you would consider maybe as an easy landmark would be like the ankle bone, because that will be a very prominent thing that sort of sticks out. But from there we could essentially go ahead and start adding other details of the legs. So we might be thinking about the curvature in the in the quads or anything like that, where we would see the, you know, them kind of tied together, down and through the knee. And but we would ever essentially adding, you know, the detail information on top of our basic shapes again and then just building out from there, you know? And so just like before, once we have the basic structures established, it's very easy to start adding all these other little details and getting the leg toe look a little bit, you know, more developed in terms of, you know, kind of the the contours in just the little details that are gonna make it look a little bit more like an actual figure versus a mannequin. So but one thing will kind of notice. Here in the back of the leg is just the levels of, you know, sort of articulation. And in the in the sense of how we have like a curved line here, and then it goes straight and then it goes curved, and then it goes straight, and it's very easy to see that in the leg. But that would be something you may look for throughout the body because there is all little areas through out where you're going to see this fluctuation and by having the nice balance of straight and curves throughout your drawing. In terms of overall aesthetic, it's a very sort of pleasing effect and that what you don't end up with, you know, a figure that's too stiff with too many straight lines or a figure that looks a little lumpy with too many curves. And so the last thing I wanted to talk about is just a little bit of basics about the foot , and by no means am I going to cover any detail about the foot because I feel like that could be its own separate class, you know, along with hands, which will probably do at some point. But what I would like to just talk about is again think about the foot as being just a very simple wedge and the way I like to treat it, though. Is that you? I would imagine that as I'm breaking down the foot, the smaller toes are all making up the bulk of the wedge sort of here. And then that the big toe would be sort of the only sort of separate toe that would stick out from there. And the reason for that is that something you would see it typically in a lot. If you look at a lot of like old paintings or drawings, it's that is a very common way to break down the foot in that way so that there's some variety and the same thing. Kind of think of it like the big toe on the foot is almost like the thumb on the hand. Um, but anyway, so the big idea with the foot is that it's really just a simple wedge. And, you know, as you were building in out, the only other thing that you would want to consider is as you get towards the angle of the actual leg itself, you have to imagine that, um, the foot is like this wedge that is being inserted into the angles, and so we have our ankle bones here that this little wedge shape, Um, that would be like the back of the hell there. But that this little wedge shape is going to essentially insert itself into the ankles. And you can. The analogy almost is that think of the ankles is like a stirrup, you know, that is. And now there's this big wedge that is injecting itself into it. Um, and that essentially, is kind of what's framing where the foot is gonna be. And then from there you break it down into the smaller subsections. So again, like the big toe would be its own little to be its own shape per se. And then the small toes are all kind of part of a larger piece. And then you would set them, separate them individually and treat, you know, kind of. There's so many little shapes that are going on in the foot that it can get really complicated really fast. But if you can stick with just a very simple wedge, um, and use that as the main shape and then slowly break it down as you progress through the drawing. That's the easiest way that I've seen to build it out because beyond that, the only other thing is gonna be like the ground plane. So you would want to find, you know, the very specific angle at which the foot is sitting, because that's going to give it that feeling of actually being planted on a solid surface. So anyway, um, that's more or less it for for the leg again, it's kind of a really basic construction, but I feel like that's more or less how you'd want to approach them in terms of simplifying them down into just a few basic pieces on so sticking with that sort of cylinder effect. And then again, as that gets solved, it's a lot easier to go ahead and start adding all the details on top of that. So, um, hopefully that made sense and it makes a little bit, you know, a little bit easier in terms of constructing them. Uh, and basically now, with all the pieces more or less explained, it's really just a matter of taking the time to just put them all together and start building your figures. This out this way and go from there 14. Basic Arm Construction: So before you actually consider starting to draw the arm or anything like that, you at least wanna have, I would say, you know, a very basic head, neck and shoulders established as well as some sort of simplified form for the torso, because otherwise it just really wouldn't make sense. Um, overall, because the arm is almost like a detail in the fact that it's it's so small relative to the rest of the body. So, um, I'm gonna is going to start with a very simple torso shape on, then all basically attached the arm on top of it. Okay, so assuming, you know, pit of the neck down to the crotch, You know, I have a very sort of simple front facing torso to go off of, so But from the top of the shoulder, I mean, that's kind of where we know that the arm's gonna come from. And then, you know, the other sort of crucial points would be sort of like, uh, you know, the armpit. And so we would essentially have you know, these two points to go off of and more or less establish, you know, the width of the arm and you know, initially, you'd want to keep him in a very sort of Ah, you know, basic form. And you may just establish kind of where the arms are in relationship to each other. So once you found, you know, one point on one side, you may find, you know, the point on the other side and how it relates to say, you know, the chest and and everything else on the upper half of the body. Because at least once you know where the armpit is and the top of the shoulder is You can kind of build out what is essentially the deltoid from there. And, you know, assuming the clavicles in the right place on everything like that weaken, basically find this simple shape on just cut it across. And it kind of makes this triangular sort of wedge where the cylinder of the arm is going to go ahead and insert. And so, essentially what you want to do is, you know, the arm is basically a series of cylinders that are compressed together. So if we think about the top half of the arm where the humorous would be and then we would have the lower half of the arm, which is obviously gonna be the form. Only difference is that the lower cylinder is gonna tape her as it gets closer to the wrist . But you just got to imagine, you know, cylinders, you know, in perspective. And then basically to time together is we basically have just sort of that in between where the elbow is and then where the arm bends on. That's joining those two cylinders together. And so again, what you think about is is that we really just have these simple cylinder forms that that's kind of how you want to be thinking about it in terms of getting started, because once once that basic concept is there, then it's really just a matter of layering information, you know, on top. So if I were gonna start adding, you know, the sort of the bulge you know of the deltoid, you know, and then from, uh, you know, from their start, adding, you know all the other pieces of information. So whether it's the bicep down into the bicep tendon the tricep down into the rest of the elbow, that's kind of how I want to be thinking about my construction as I'm building the rest of the arm. And so again, like the main concept is, we're still gonna have these two interlocking cylinders that we're gonna want to start with . And really, the only main difference is that the the upper cylinder is going to be a little bit thicker because of the shoulder and because of, like, the bicep and tricep area on. And then as we get down to the lower cylinder, we're gonna want to make that a little bit thinner because the forearm down to the risk tapers, you know, quite a bit. And so, essentially, depending on the pose, you know of the arm you could draw like a simple tube, you know, like structure. And at least just get the general sweeping lines of the arm on. And then once those were established, you could Brent, then break it down on into the cylinder shapes. Um, you know, kind of where the arm, the upper arm in the form, are coming together and then separating at the wrist. A swell. And if we think about the arm being in different poses again, the easiest way is to draw the cylinder shapes out in perspective relative to the pose of the arm and start constructing them in that way because it's so much easier to just focus on those basic cylinder shapes to create the arm, depending on how it's bending or twisting, Um, and then start adding those details. You know, once once the rest of the drawing was resolved, it's very easy to start adding, you know, the necessary sort of Ah, you know, Contour lines, you know, for the anatomy on top of that, and get a very sort of believable arm. Um, but just drawing and starting with those cylinders is gonna make your life so much easier as you're constructing. So I would recommend doing that first and to keep things simple. Once you get towards the end of the hand, I would probably just draw like a very simplified sort of block shape just so that you have a very specific ending point. And now, depending on the pose, one thing you may consider trying is that sometimes you may not need to draw, you know, cylinders for arms. That pose might be simple enough to where you could really just draw really simple straight lines to kind of represent the general direction the arm is facing or anything like that. And then from there you can start breaking it down and looking for contours and anatomical . New wants is on and so forth. But again, that might be something that's posed dependent. So but for the most part, going with something like, uh, the cylinders and stuff like that, that might be an easy way to start. 15. Basic Arm Construction 2: And so as we get down to the arm, uh, you know, though, the one exception with construction will come sort of as we get to the wrist area in terms of how we develop it. So, you know, let's just say right here that we're building, you know, kind of the forearm here and that we're now attaching, you know, the elbow. And again, it's gonna be one of those areas that kind of it's going to taper. Its gonna get wide through the form and then taper towards the wrist. And the best analogy that I've kind of seen as imagine, the forearm is almost like a chicken leg, you know, of some kind in that the meaty portion of the chicken leg is going to be the forearm muscles. And then once we get closer to the bottom where the actual bone would be is that's gonna be representative of the wrist in how it tapers towards the hand. And so again, we just have the whitest portion of the forearm, kind of where these ridge muscles are, and then it will gradually taper towards the wrist. And so once it gets to the wrist, what ends up happening is it goes from this sort of rounded form, uh, and then it will slowly taper and the wrist kind of very. If you kind of look at your own wrist, it kind of looks more like more square, like more kind of you could almost say like a small, very, very small two by four. And so that's kind of like how I would attach the rest of my hands. So as we get to the wrist bone, there's a series of bones in the hand that not the actual fingers, but you would have, like the carpal bones on which are basically above were all like your finger bones would be . But what it does is it creates this very sort of, um, squarish type effect that again will kind of as it gets closer to the forearm. It kind of widens and becomes a little bit more organic. Um, and so from there from the wrist, I like to build out my hand and, you know, depending on what pose the hand is taking again, I would kind of simplify it down into a block sort of shape, you know, or if there was some you know, fingers spread out. We could kind of simplify that down, but you'd want to treat it something like that. And while I'm not going to really talk about hand drawing in this video, I'll touch on him briefly and more or less. Just say that, you know, try and keep them simple so it will depend on what the pose, you know, the model is holding. So if they're making a fist or anything like that, you can kind of start with the block shape. If the hands air more flared out, I have a tendency to use more of this diamond kind of shape and then sort of build my fingers off of that So the thumb will be the one finger that's always kind of separate from the rest of the hand. And then it's much easier to just draw, you know, groupings of fingers so that the hand, more or less, you know, stays simplified and doesn't get to, um, you know, to details or anything like that, with fingers all over the place. So back to the arms again, what I'd like to really just emphasizes again. Just you want toe, keep them in a very simplistic, you know, uh, geometric form. It's very easy to get caught up in all the little undulating forms you know, in the shoulders and the triceps on the biceps and everything like that. The more that you can think about them. In the context of these simple cylinders that are interlocking with one another, then the easier it becomes. Because then, even when you get to say, like a modeling stage in the drawing, you know, I don't think about shading on arm per se. I'm thinking about shading a symbol cylinder, and when it comes to a light and dark effect, so long as I can get the right gradation happening with that cylinder, then it's very easy to just build. You know, the contour lines on top of that to create the illusion, you know of that specific arm. And so if you can do that, you can actually get a very believable effect without really having to know. Ah, whole lot of anatomy in terms of the particulars of modeling a very specific piece of anatomy. So just keep that in mind, as you do ultimately get Teoh any sort of shading stage in the drawing. And so the last thing I wanted to talk about is more of like a unique situation, sort of a thing. But I felt like it be worth talking about, because what ends up happening is a unique sort of compression that happens within the musculature as an arm is being lifted up or raised up. And so what? It really what it ends up meaning is that we get the bunching of the deltoid as the arm is being raised. And so all these muscles are being compressed as the arm is lifting and you would see the insertion. You know of this cylinder, sort of in sort of the armpit of the arm. And you would see the chest kind of just drape along with that through there and you might see a little bit of, you know, like we'll definitely see the rib cage in perhaps part of the lattes in the back. But again, the emphasis is just kind of that that cylinder shape of the arm injecting itself, sort of into like the shoulder socket. And so the best way to think about this is if we would imagine sort of like tell rack, you know, So we have this very, you know, small cylindrical Rod, and we're gonna drape a towel over it. And so if the towel is essentially the deltoid, you've got to think about how that muscle is wrapping around the cylinder of what would be like the bicep and the tricep on everything. And so as the arm is lifting, that towel is gonna drape and wrap itself around that cylinder as the arm is going up into the air. And so you have to think about how this towel would wrap around this rod and how things with sort of starts falling and draping across. And that's essentially what the deltoid is doing when the arm is being lifted. Um and so if you think about that, you know, if we get the towel kind of from the shoulder, going into the chest and then in through the back And once we had that idea, then we can start building. You know, all the musculature on top of that. But at least that helps you solve that issue because there's so many little things going on within the deltoid. Um, you know, as it's being compressed against the rest of the arm and how it's interacting with the rest of the upper body. So those were just a few ideas about how it would be going about your arm construction again. You know, there's multiple ways you can sort of try this, but I'd recommend just sticking with those geometric shapes as a sort of a way of, Ah, a starting point. And then again, like I said, you could always start adding the layers of information on top of that with contour lines and, you know, in, you know, sort of insertion points for anatomy on things like that. But in terms of getting started and building your initial structures, this isn't a bad way to start. 16. Book Recommendations & Closing Thoughts: Alright, guys. So I wanted to just spend a little a little bit of time talking about some alternative ways that you can study. Um, you know, at home I would always encourage you to be working from life, though. I mean, uh, what it really comes down to is that you simply need tohave the model time. Um and whether it's, you know, at community colleges or just whatever classes you confined or just dropping in. And if there's like a, you know, a low model fee and like a workshop of any kind, you really do just have to spend some time in front of the model practicing, and it really just comes down toe hours, you know? So, um, regardless of how long the drawings are or anything like that, you really do just have to spend a lot of time in front of the model And just, you know, you just got a clock your time in, but as an alternative, um, I do highly recommend studying from books at home in your sketchbook or anything that is gonna allow you to accumulate those hours when you don't have a model toe work from. So I'm just gonna make some book recommendations that I think are great for beginners on. Just helpful overall, Um, and starting with this guy, this is, um, Andrew Loomis. Figure drawing for all it's worth. Um, this book used to be out of print many, many years ago, and it was very expensive if you even found it. But thankfully, all of his books that he's done have been reprinted within the last probably 456 years or so, and they're all very inexpensive, like 20 bucks. 25 bucks on Amazon. Um, and I would highly recommend getting all of his books. He's just a great teacher. Um, and he has a lot of cool ways of breaking things down that are great to study if you just if you just don't have anything to, you know, toe work from or to copy or anything like that. So I'd highly recommend picking up this book. Um, and it's a great resource, especially when you're just starting out. And so the second book that I'm gonna recommend is, um, this book here, This is the Charles barred drawing horse, and a lot of the, uh, a lot of the diagrams and are the drawings that you see me do in the videos are coming from this book. And, um, this was another book that a long time ago it was out of print and very expensive, if you could find it. But it did get reprinted back. And I think, like 1 4002 give or take. But this is another excellent book. It's very academic and which, so it appeals to me greatly for that, in that sense. But, um, lots of great drawings on and figures that you can copy out of here as well as cast Rawlings. They do make it in a believe a paperback edition now, so it's significantly less expensive than hard copy. Like this one. This is a great book to have in your library. Even if you don't draw from it, the pictures in it are fantastic. Um, but a supplemental means to study this is a fantastic book. And the last one, um, that I think everyone should have, uh, because it's so it's like a $10 book. This is a great book that I used to draw quite a bit from when I first kind of started studying. Um, you know, life drawing like portraiture and figures and stuff like that. He has great analogies about how to break things down. And, you know, I've copied almost everything from this book. At one point in time, he he does. You know, the English is kind of, you know, old English. So he's kind of talking, you know, for when this was made and I forget what year, but a long time ago. Um, you kind of have. You do have to read through it in order to make sense of what he's trying to explain. The diagrams air. Great. If anything, the reprinting is not the best, but it's still good enough toe wearing. You can make sense of way what he's trying to convey information wise, Um, and for how inexpensive the book is, everyone should have this in their library. And so, you know, there's literally tons of books that, you know you may have already that are good, but I'd also recommend some anatomy books at some point in your study. Thes. Um, these books here by George Bridgeman are fantastic. Um, you know, they're very sort of, um cut and dry. They're not, but what he does is that he does break. He does break down the body into very sort of mechanical. Um, you know, sort of like if if you think of the body is like being a machine and not in the sense of just, you know, draw anatomical diagrams, he does kind of simplify things, I think a little bit more. But I copied a lot of these books endlessly. Um, you know, when I was starting out and they're they're just they're fantastic. And like I said, they're just like the Vanderpool book. They're very inexpensive. And so you don't have to spend a ton of money to build a nice library. Um, you know, so that you can study from when you're not working from the model. And so together. Other books I would recommend again, just kind of come down to anatomy like this is another wonderful book on, and he breaks things down, um, in very similar to Bridgeman and by using sort of, ah, metaphors for how the body works. And I would say the anatomy books aren't as important at first, because you really just have to get basic structure. But once you have a basic, you know, a good way to break down a body in making mannequin ized figures. Then you have to start thinking about anatomy after the fact because the anatomy is sort of that additional layer of information that's gonna make your figures that much better. But it's something that you have to do slowly. So you wouldn't necessarily, um, you know, do this. Uh, you know, like you study anatomy over the course of several years. You know, you don't you can't just do it all at once. You kind of what? Oftentimes what I would end up doing is studying it and, you know, for a couple months at a time, Then take a break and then go back to it, you know, So everyone, everyone coming does it differently. But I would start accumulating some some basic anatomy books to use a separate guide. This other book here is fantastic by its on Elliot Goldfinger. Um, it's more of a, um it's more of a diagram book. More than anything, it's not. It's not a so there's not necessarily beautiful drawings in it or anything like that, but it does go over very minute details and in the musculature and skeleton. And he basically it's almost like if you were studying anatomy like a doctor, you could say, Um because it does. It does go into some very, very sort of crazy diagrams, but it's good to know and at least have it as a resource toe look at. And as you can kind of slowly tell that you end up building quite a big collection of books over the course of time. Um, and I hope I have a separate, you know, you know, just anatomy books. This is just a small handful. You know, I have way more, but it's just it's just something you kind of collect. Just like anything else, Um, after a while. And this last book I love and anything by Robert Beverly Hail. To be honest, he was a He was an old teacher at the Art Students League, Um ah, in New York and fantastic Teacher. He has several books that he basically authored, and these are these are fantastic thes have some cool sort of anatomical plates as well, and even if you don't study them, they're fun to look at their because they're beautiful plates. But another great book, um, you know, toe have in the library. I would start off with the more basic ones, like a showed in beginning, like the Loomis and Charles bargain the Vanderpool. And then, like I said, these are great to have. You know, after the fact, once you need to start studying the smaller components of the body and the skeleton and you know where things air inserting, um, and how you know, muscles are connected to each other and what muscles are, you know, on the surface and what are subcutaneous are, you know, deeper muscles in the body that are affecting the surface. But those were more or less my recommendations to get started. So I hope that if you went all through this that a lot of it made sense and that you got something out of it, or at least have a better understanding of how to approach figure drawing as you start moving forward. I wanted to try and keep it. Basic is possible without getting too detailed or too complicated. And I hope I was able to do that for you. Thank you for watching