Transcripts
1. Cafe Portraits in Procreate: This class outlines
exactly how to approach drawing people
from life in real time. It gives you a set of techniques and exercises
that will show you exactly how to tackle drawing people even
when they're moving. In this class, you'll learn how to make expressive drawings in a digital format on
your ipad in procreate. My name is Shavonne. I'm a top teacher
here on skill share. I have over 20 years
experience drawing the figure, drawing portraits,
and teaching drawing, and I'm so excited to share
this approach with you today. In this class, I'm going
to break down the subject of the figure and I
want to share with you four drawing
exercises that can support you to draw people
in a fast paced environment. I'll also explain the difference between what to look
out for when you're drawing the face or
the figure versus worrying about how
to draw something. You'll also learn the one way that you can get correct and accurate proportions
without having to do sighting or measuring. I will also teach you how to
draw when people are moving. Then you and I are
going to head out to my local coffee shop and
spend an hour or so drawing. You'll get to watch the demos in real time and learn
how to explore quick, loose and dynamic sketches. We'll tackle drawing a standing
figure, a seated figure. And we'll look at
the way that you can simply and easily draw
some portrait sketches. You don't need to be super
skilled at drawing or know much about figure drawing or portraiture to take this class. These are very loose
free and fun sketches that you can do
with no pressure. I believe that you
can't fully develop your natural response in drawing by only ever drawing
from photographs. I think if you love drawing, if you're really keen to
develop your drawing skill set, then you need to draw from line Cafe sketching is the perfect opportunity
to do just that. So I'm excited to share
this approach with you and I can't wait to get
started when you're ready, meet me in the next lesson
and I'll explain how the class is structured and I'll explain about your
class project.
2. Introduction to the Class: In this lesson, I want to
welcome you to the class, and I want to explain
how the lessons are structured so that you
know what to expect. Plus, we'll talk about
your class projects. But first of all,
I want to discuss a little bit about the overall
approach in this class. Drawing from life opens a set
of opportunities that you just don't get to explore when you're drawing
from photographs. That's the biggest distinction that I want to make
at the outset. Being able to
observe people make expressive and dynamic
drawings based on that is very different to
drawing from a photograph. More often than not, the
drawing that you make, you might not think
it's as good, but to be really clear,
that's the point. Take this next hour or
so as an opportunity to explore something different in your drawing than
you normally would. In this class, we're
in a unique position to work with digital
drawing tools. Meaning that we can undo
marks that we don't like. We can scale things up and down. We can move our drawings
around if we need to. But we're firmly applying a traditional drawing
approach to this medium. The main focus really is to use your ipad to make dynamic
gesture drawings. In the first few
lessons of this class, we will go through procreate. We'll go through the brushes. And I'll explain which
brushes are best suited to do this
style of drawing. I'll also tell you what to expect when you do go
out to draw in public. In the next section,
I'll go over some techniques for
drawing in proportion. And I'll also share some tips on how to draw people
when they're moving. Then you'll learn four
distinct drawing exercises that you'll get to apply later
on in your class projects. I'll also explain exactly
what is a portrait sketch and what you need to look
for when you're drawing the features of the
face or a full figure. Then once the
groundwork has been laid for a successful
drawing session, we'll head out to
the coffee shop. We'll work on three
separate drawing projects. Quick sketches, full figures, and a portrait sketch. By the end of this class, you'll have a complete
understanding of why you should be using
this drawing practice. As often as possible, you will have
experienced for yourself the transformative
power of using your observation
and your expression to make dynamic and
exciting drawings. I can't wait to see
the work that you do. I'm excited to share this
process that has helped me so much in my drawing.
Let's get started. In the next lesson, we'll test drive the procreate brushes, and I'll point out which ones are best to use for sketching.
3. Drawing with the Brushes in Procreate: In this lesson, we're
going to look at the different brushes
in procreate, and explore some of the options. Plus I'll give you
my recommendations on which ones I
think are going to really help you within
the context of drawing people and sketching life
when you're out and about. For this class and for
this project specifically, I wanted to use the native
brushes in the procreate app. So that means that the brushes I'm using a default
within procreate. You don't have to
go off and download these brushes and install them or create brushes yourself. But it is worth mentioning
that if you wanted to explore some options for
different styles or different kind
of sketching tools, then there are tons of
resources online for you to check out and brush packs that you
can go and explore. Percy. My go to marketplace for looking for brush
packs is gumroad, so just head over to Grow.com and there you can check out brushes that other
artists have made. They normally say
that a brush pack is not necessarily going to
improve your drawing. That is true, but
sometimes it is nice to have different kinds of brushes that give
you different effects. So with that being said, let's just quickly
go through some of the brushes inside procreate and I'll let you know the brushes that I tend to use
for sketching. Obviously, if you're
familiar with procreate, you will know that
all of your brushes exist under this icon here. If you tap on that, you're into your brush library
at the beginning, it shows you some reason brushes
that you might have used and then underneath that are all the categories
they're sketching, inking right the way
through to painting. And even some abstract
texture brushes down here. So what I want you
to do before we start anything is just
go through all of the brushes and literally experiment and test
each of them out. Some of them are going
to give you great lines, some of them are not going
to give you great lines. It's really worth spending a few minutes to figure
out which ones you like. Some of these drawing ones, for example, have
quite heavy textures. And since we're just
focusing on sketching, I wouldn't be going for
something like that. But it's up to you
and like I say, try to go through
them and make a note or pick a few that you think are going to
really work for you, right? For me personally, the
brushes that I like to draw with are actually here
under the inking section. Specifically, I like to use
this brush called dry ink. I find that it's got a nice thin line but it's
also quite textured. I would avoid a line that's say, something like maybe gel
pen that's very even and doesn't have any
tapering effect on it. These brushes are very nice
for doing a cleaned up drawing if you want to
make specific outlines. But for sketching,
I think you want to go with something
that's a looser, a little bit more expressive and has that
textured look on it. Something like dry ink
works really well for me. Obviously, you could
make it bigger by increasing the
size over here. You need to. You can also work with the
opacity a little bit, but I tend to keep it
at 100% obviously. The other thing that I like
to do is pair that line with a wash. Let's say
down under painting, you'll find a lot of
these brushes that are big flash blocks of color. I like to work with one of these alongside a very thin
and tapered line. Again, I'd encourage
you to explore these and see which
ones you really like. For example, another one that
I quite like is Salamanca. Salamanca is wonderful. It can give you some
amazing effects over previous lines that
you've laid down and interact with
them really nicely. Then obviously, this is
all monochromatic work, but feel free to look
at color as well. Maybe you want to sketch
in a different color, or maybe you want to lay down
your line work in one tone and your wash or block of
color in another tone. But the point is to experiment
now before we head out, so that you have an
idea of what brushes you might like to work
with when you're ready. Then meet me in the next
lesson and I'm going to talk about what to expect
and how to prepare.
4. Preparing to Draw in Public: In this lesson, we're
going to look at how to prepare to
draw in public. Because it's definitely
something to consider. Rather than just
pitching up unprepared, I think you'll have a much
better drawing session if you prepare in advance. Now, the process of
sketching in public, it should be very relaxed and very supportive to
a relaxed approach. But having said that, I
think it's good to be intentional and
specific at the outset. So when you do head out, think about how long, how long you're going to give
yourself to draw me. I'd suggest give yourself
at least an hour or two. So that's the first
consideration. Give yourself enough time to
have a good drawing session. The second thing is
bring your ipad, obviously, and make
sure that it's charged. I've gone out a few times
with my ipad not charged, and it's very frustrating. So make sure it's fully charged. I would say if you wanted to, you could bring a sketchbook
along as a back up. If you're not used to
drawing on the ipad in a very loose
and sketching way, then it can be difficult at
first to get used to it. The last thing I want is for you to have a frustrating
drawing session. That's why it might
be useful to have a sketchbook as a
backup to draw in. The main thing to know overall, is to keep your set
up light and simple. Don't bring along a wet media like inks or paints
unless of course you're very comfortable with that and with using those
materials in public. I'd say just stick to your ipad and maybe one
sketchbook and one pencil. Now, what to expect when you do get there and you're
drawing in public? Well, one of the first
things to expect is that you might not actually see something
to draw straight away. And that's something I just
want you to be aware of. It might be that you sit
down, you get there, and there isn't the
perfect portrait waiting for you to draw
right in front of you. Or maybe you get there
and there's not that many people around, I would say. Be prepared to get to
your chosen coffee shop. Order yourself tea or coffee
or whenever you like, just give it a few minutes. The other thing
to expect is that your first drawings
might not look great. That's just the way it goes. It's good to know that it's
very often towards the end of a drawing session that you actually start to make
really good drawings. Don't be too disheartened if the first few sketches that
you make aren't great, it always takes a while
to warm up and to get into the flow of
it from the beginning. I want you to give yourself
time to loosen up. I'll be showing you later on exactly what exercises that you can do in order
to loosen up. But I know that you only
start getting very good at drawing towards the end of the drawing session and
that's part of the process. When you're ready, I'll meet
you in the next lesson.
5. Four Drawing Exercises to Warm Up: In this lesson, I'm
going to show you four drawing exercises that I want you to start
practicing every day. These are great techniques to develop an expressive style of drawing and you can use these either as warm ups before
you start drawing, or you can use them as specific drawing
sessions themselves. The first is continuous line, the second one is the
search or mapping line, the thing, and the
F is to drawing. Now don't worry yet about making perfect drawings
of these techniques. Let's just firstly
explore them and get comfortable using these kinds of lines in a loose and free way. Let's just firstly start
to incorporate them into your warm up sessions and then bring them into your
daily or weekly drawings. The first exercise is to
draw in a continuous line. And to do that you're
literally going to try to keep the pen in contact with the
screen for the whole drawing. Just firstly, try it out on
your ipad and get used to the free flowing quality
of this line work. Then when you are drawing
a specific subject, it means that you'll
be going over and back again and again over certain
areas with your line. That's very intentional
in this exercise. If you're going to practice
this with a reference photo, I want you to start
to take notice of exactly where you are going over and back with your lines. It's likely that
these specific areas are important features. This is going to give you a clue about drawing the features of the face or the figure and how to know what it is
you need to look out for. But more of that later
in the next lesson. For now, let's just simply use this technique as a simple
line work or drawing drill. The next exercise or technique is to draw
with a searching line. Now this exercise is
where you use the line to map things from
one point to another. You can practice
this very loosely. It's quite similar to the
continuous line exercise, but here what you're
doing is getting one step closer towards being more intentional
with your marks. Again, if you like, you can
practice this beforehand with a photo reference or
with something at home. And just try to get your lines to go you from one
side to the other, up and down from one
specific point to another. It's almost as if you're measuring the subject
with your line. The next exercise or
technique is contour drawing. This is where you aim to draw the outer edges or
contours of a subject. The key to this exercise is to look closely
at what you're drawing and to try to move your pen at the same time
as you move your eyes. It's an exercise that is much slower, much more thoughtful. And it's very helpful because
you can rely on following the lines of the edges without having to worry too
much about the structure. You can also follow
lines that are inside the subject and these are
called inner contour lines. Then the fourth and
final exercise that you can start to work with now
is called tonal drawing. This is where you
choose something totally different to line. You work with a much
bigger something, maybe from the
painting brushes or I quite like to use one
of the charcoal brushes. Just choose anything
that's soft, large, and maybe has a
slightly lower opacity. With a lower opacity, what happens is the tonal marks will build up and get
progressively darker. It's very nice to work with that with this technique, you're trying to build up
your drawing with shading. It means that you work around your drawing just like a
continuous line drawing, but now you're
working with tone, it can create an amazing effect. It's very much like sculpting the forms
and trying to pull shapes out of the tonal
marks that you make. When we get to the project
section of this class and when you head out to draw
people from life in a cafe, you can apply any or all of these techniques
to your sketches. Or you can rely simply on
the way you normally draw. But think of these techniques as something to fall back on. If your drawing is
not working out, just switch it up and try
a continuous line drawing, or a contour or a contour
line drawing draw, maybe a fully tonal drawing and add line
work on top of that. In the next essen, I'll
go over what exactly is a portrait sketch and I'll explain the main features that we're going
to look out for.
6. What is a Portrait Sketch: In this lesson, I want to explain some points
to look out for when making either a
portrait sketch or a quick drawing of
the full figure. Now just to be clear,
I'm going to show you what to draw on the face
and not how to draw. Each feature will depend
on the exercises that we've done to develop your line work and your
confidence in making marks. It will also depend on your own natural and
unique way of drawing. This is quite a
subtle distinction, but I think it's important
to talk about it. Most people who start out
learning to draw tend to think in terms of how do I draw an
eye or how do I draw a nose. Really, I think what
beginners need to first know is to be aware of what it is they
should be looking for. For this class,
we're going to step back a little bit from
thinking about how to draw things perfectly and we're going to
focus on what it is you need to look for on any face that you're
trying to draw. Then, based on your drawing warm ups from
the last lesson, how you draw that will
take care of itself. But before we do all of that, let's talk first about
what is a portrait sketch. Now the points that I'm
going to show you are going to help you to
make quick sketches, as opposed to making
a proper long, fully finished
portrait that focuses on accuracy in terms
of a photo likeness. That's not really what we're
exploring in this class. So it's important to realize
the merit of a quick sketch. A quick sketch is actually a dynamic and
expressive drawing. And this kind of
drawing not only has a much better
chance of capturing the essence that you
see in your subject, but it also very firmly stamps your signature
in the work. Whenever you erase out or
try to perfect your drawing. I think you also run
the risk of erasing out your own first
impressions of what you see. These first impressions
are so powerful, it's what I call
your expression. Remember that in
a loose drawing, you try to capture the
expression of the person, but you're also imparting your own expression
into the drawing. Now I'm going to show
you the main points that I look for
when I'm drawing. Obviously, the main features of the face are the
nose, eyes and mouth. But what's crucial is to look for the distances and the relationships between
each of these features. Personally, if I start
drawing the eye, the first thing that I'm
going to do is look to see where the eye is in
relation to the nose. Then I'm going to
quickly judge where the eye is in relation to the bottom of the
nose or the nostril from the nose. I'll then quickly judge the
distance to the chin. And then I look for
the angle distance to the mouth and try to get the space between the lower lip and the
chin, just like this. Then the next thing that I
look for is where is the ear in relation to either the eye
or the bottom of the chin? That'll give me pretty much
the whole face at that point. The last thing that I need
to look for is the space between the eyebrow and the top of the head or
the top of the forehead. And then from the
top of the forehead I will look at how high the top of the head is and how it rounds its way
towards the back. Those are some very simple
points that you can start to explore
over and over again. Either if you want to draw from imagination and work
it out for yourself, or if you want to draw
from a photo reference. But basically, if you
practice these points, by the time you get to draw from a real person in real life, it'll be much easier because you'll know
what to look for. Okay, let's look at quickly
sketching a standing figure. What you could do is start
with a line of action. To simply map, a simple
line of action to give you the feeling or the idea of the whole length
of the figure. But normally, if I start
off with the head, what I'll do is look first for the angle
of the shoulders. Then from there I always
tend to trace a line down to the waist to find
the waistband of the person. Or I'll draw a line from
the shoulder to the elbow, and the elbow to the wrist. That immediately gives me a sense of how the
figure is standing, what the aspect of the pose is, and what the overall
proportions are. The great thing about
drawing people in public is that the
clothing can give you clear indications or markers
of the whole figure. You can easily look out for
the folds at the elbow. You can look for the color or the waistband on the person, or the folds at the knee. These points will create
distinct sections of the figure that you can
build up for your drawing. Again, just to reiterate, these points are what to draw you and your
searching line or your loose marks for the
how to draw and don't be afraid to make really loose
almost messy drawings. That's the point of this class, is to give yourself the
freedom of expression, to explore line, and to use digital drawing tools as an
expressive method of drawing.
7. One Tip for Drawing Correct Proportions: In this lesson, I
want to give you my number one tip for
drawing proportions. I believe that the
reason most people can't draw proportions or make drawings where the
proportions are off is not because they can't
draw the figure or they can draw correctly. It's simply and only
because of one reason. That reason is that
most beginners, when they're drawing
the figure or the face, we'll concentrate on one area at a time before they
move on to the next. This is a normal thing to
do for most beginners, but it means that
drawing one area, you tend to give
emphasis to that area. That's why it is bigger than
the rest of the drawing where you probably didn't give as much emphasis
to that section. All that proportion is, is understanding one part of anything in relation
to another part. Once you can see that,
then you'll start to draw in proportion much
more instinctively. There's no need to do
sighting or measuring. In fact, you don't need
to know anatomy or the names of muscles and
bones to draw like this. All you need to do is, while you're drawing one
section of anything, draw it while you're looking at or checking another section. That's my tip for understanding, for learning, and for getting
really good at proportion. Always think about
the thing that you're drawing compared to
something else next to it. For the face or the figure, look at what you're drawing and compare it to a
feature next to it. If you learn to do this
over and over again, eventually you'll be drawing
by constantly checking and looking at something else in comparison to the thing
that you're drawing. When I'm drawing the eye, I'm constantly looking at where the nose is
in relation to the, where the eyebrow
is in relation to the eye or where the
cheek or the ear is. Then if I move on to the ear, I just immediately check
where's the ear in relation to the back of the head or the top of the
head or the eye? I look at the mouth
and as I'm drawing it, I'm checking where it is in relation to the nose
or the bottom of the chin. If this is new to
you, then a good technique to actually make a practical exercise
out of this is the searching or
mapping line exercise that we covered previously. You can literally use your
line to do this comparison. It's almost like mapping
the drawing out. It helps you to visually
measure on your drawing and it really helps you to
instinctively develop a way of comparing
one thing to another. The same with the figure. If I'm drawing a
standing figure or even a seated figure and I'm drawing the
elbow or the shoulder, looking at that,
I'm drawing that, but I'm looking where
that is in relation to either the head or the
hands or the back. I'm constantly checking one section against
another section. I have a go at practicing
this exercise. And then in the next essen, I'll give you some advice following on from this on how to draw people that are moving around while you're
drawing them. When you're ready, I'll
see you in the next essen.
8. How to Draw When People are Moving: In this lesson, I'll
be sharing some tips on how to draw when
people are moving around. Because that's honestly by far the biggest challenge when
it comes to cafe drawing. Drawing people when
you're out and about. Unless you're drawing someone
who is sitting very still. Most people are either moving, they're talking, or
they're looking around. Or if you're drawing full
figures, you might think, well, no one stands still
for more than a minute. How can I draw a full figure? Here are my solutions. I firstly try to get down the most important
aspect of the person. If that's the face,
then I'm trying to get the location of the
eyes, nose and mouth. If I managed to do that
as quickly as possible, that more often than not is
what captures the look of the person then if they move
on or turn away or get up. And if I feel like
the drawing isn't done and I need to
add more to it, I'll then do one of two things. I'll either try to finish the sketch based on the
memory of the person. If I can remember that first
impression that I got, I'll try to finish the sketch
off that way, but you know, I'm somebody who actually
needs to have the person there in front of
me in order to feel like I'm capturing the
drawing truthfully. So if that doesn't work, then the second thing that I
do is I will simply look at someone else who's in a similar pose or
a similar posture. Because really, it
doesn't matter if the sketch you're making
looks like the person. Exactly what you want
to do is be able to reference what you're
doing with someone. And that's really what I do. I just look for the next
person that I can see in the same pose in order to try to quickly make more of what
I started in the drawing. Now, the third alternative is to just move on
to another sketch. This might seem like you're getting nowhere
with your drawing. You're not able to
finish any drawing, but honestly being able to
make a quick sketch and then move on to the next one is
a really important skill. It's as important as anything. It means that you're
able to just jot down really quickly
with your own drawing, what it is you see in as quick a time frame as
almost a few seconds. And that you don't need
to fuss over it in order to make it look
right over time. You'll really appreciate
the value of this. All right, those are my top tips for drawing people
who are moving.
9. Setting Up in a Coffee Shop: Now it's time to head out to your favorite cafe,
or coffee shop, or wine bar or pub wherever you feel
comfortable, people watching. In this lesson, I want to share some tips that
might help you to set up in a public space in order to start
your drawing session. When I get to my coffee shop, my main concern
is that I want to choose a spot where
I can see people, but where I'm not going
to really be that conspicuous or stand out because you can draw a lot of
attention to yourself if you're sketching
away in the middle of, you know, a public space. I'm a bit shy about people seeing me
sketching or drawing, so I often try to find a place where it's
not so conspicuous. Here's what I suggest. You could choose a
seat that's near a wall or somewhere towards
the back of the coffee shop, someplace that there
won't be anybody behind you that might make you feel a little bit more
comfortable about drawing. Another good option
is to choose a seat at a window or somewhere
where you can look out. I find that's an
excellent spot for people watching and it's
not too obvious. I managed to find a place in my local coffee
shop that's perfect. It's behind a shelving unit, so I can actually sit behind there and look through the shelves to see
people which is great. They don't really notice me
sort of staring at them. Another thing that you can do if you really feel shy
about drawing in public is you could bring your laptop along and set
it up in front of you. Then it looks like
you're working on your computer and you don't draw too much
attention to yourself. Now, I wanted to mention, be prepared to have people
come up and interrupt. You know, folks are usually very curious and very interested
to see someone sketching. And there's nearly
always somebody who will want to stop and chat you and
have a look at your work. Just be prepared for that and
you won't mind it too much. And hopefully it won't
be too disruptive to your process and you can
get back to sketching. All right, so in the next
lesson we're going to go out into the coffee shop and
start out drawing projects.
10. Project 1: Quick Sketches: So the first thing
that I do when I start a drawing session at a
cafe or any public space, is that I'll make a
few quick sketches. And this might seem
totally obvious, but I think it's very
good to be intentional about setting aside
a few minutes at the beginning to
warm up and to get used to drawing
in a way that you might not normally be used to. It does take a while
to get used to this, especially when drawing fast
sketches of people moving. As I said, firstly, you have to get used
to people moving. As I mentioned previously, if you're not used to drawing
gesturally on the ipad, then this also might take a
few minutes to lean into. I will usually make a quick circle just to start off when I'm
drawing the figure. And from there I'll use a
mapping line to try and pluck angles and try to
plot the overall pose. You can do this
with surprisingly few lines and it's perfect. Remember no details
at this stage. I also love drawing faces, so this is something that
I work on for my warm ups. It absolutely doesn't matter if your sketch looks like
the person or not. Simply try to follow the
person that you're looking at. As a guide, try to jot down
the location of the eyes, the nose, and the angle
between the nose and the chin. Get the ear in, check the back of the distance from the ear to the
back of the head. If it's a profile, that's all that you really need
to try and capture. Also bear in mind that these don't have to be fast drawings. Even if it looks like I'm drawing quite fast
at this moment, they just need to be loose. In other words, I
want to stress that a gesture drawing is not about drawing the figure or the person that
you see really fast. It's really more about
drawing the overall sense or the impression that you get when you at a pose or you
look at a figure. That's what a
gesture drawing is. Focus on trying to capture the absolute main essential
aspect of the figure. Then later, if you could
work up the drawing a little bit more if you felt
like you wanted to finish it up a little bit. But as I said to
try and warm up, just stay as expressive as you can and try to
enjoy that process. The idea is to
build up a page or two of these really
quick sketches. If you feel comfortable drawing full en figures,
that's also great, but faces and seated poses at the very beginning are perfect
for your drawing session. If anything is too
difficult or too complex, then, you know, rely on the scribble mark to
indicate that area. Like for example, if
I'm drawing hands, somebody holding a phone
in this case, or a coffee. I'm not going to spend any time trying to
get the hands right. Literally make a mark
in that area that I know is going to actually read
just fine in the drawing. And the reason why I
am stressing so much that you don't have to
focus on details and just, you know, use the figure
as a reference point. As a reference at
this point is because drawing from life is
very challenging. It's completely different to
drawing from a photograph. When you draw from a photograph, you'll have so much more time to study the details and get
things looking right. But when you're
drawing from life, there's an awful
lot more going on, especially when the
subject is moving. So the idea is to
actually just start to get used to being in this
dynamic between you, sketching somebody in person, and also if that person is
actually moving around. So it's a complex dynamic and we're just going to
take it step by step. Hopefully this process gets you into a free flowing
drawing mode and helps you to warm up to drawing people in a fast
moving environment. I hope especially
that it helps you to draw gesturally in
a digital format. Above all, I want you to make this process your
own, by all means, find your own rhythm, your own style and
flow that works for you and feels
natural to you. So I'm showing you these demos
not as a prescriptive way of saying this is how you do your warm ups or this is
how you draw in any way. This is really simply to give
you a starting point for you to explore your own
drawing language yourself. When you're ready, I'll see
you in the next lesson.
11. Project 2: Full Figures: So if drawing the full
figure is difficult for you, then I would suggest you warm
ups again of this subject. Draw as many quick gestures
as you can on one page. And I find that
this really helps me to get used to
the proportions of the figure and to capture the overall pose in the people that
I'm looking at. Once you've done three or
four warm ups like that, then you can start focusing
on one person at a time. Now granted, one of the challenges that we
discussed earlier is that most standing people in
a coffee shop are likely not going to stay standing
in one pose for very long. So you do have to be very
economical about your marks. And the lines that
you put down here, for example, was a guy standing, waiting for his coffee. So luckily, I had
a minute or two, but he was still moving
around quite a bit. And what I did was
stuck with the very initial pose that I had seen him in at the very
start of the drawing. And then I just kept
drawing it even as he moved and shifted
his position. You can actually
keep referencing the as they move around, even if they turn around, keep referencing the person and continue the drawing
in the same way. You will get used to this
very quickly and it's quite easy to capture a study
of the figure in this way. I also drew the woman who
was standing beside him, and luckily she was
wearing a shawl, so that made the figure
quite easy to draw. It's great when the clothing of the figure gives you a bit of a free pass or a bit of an easy way to draw
the overall shapes. The next thing that I
did was a drawing of a woman standing nearby,
waiting at the counter. This was a very easy pose. I kept the sketch very loose and aimed to get the
proportions right, more so than the details. But then once the figure was
blocked in a little bit, I started to add a
few more details to the overall picture. And even in this case, I added some shading and some
tonal values to the sketch to give it a little
bit more depth and a little bit more interest. Sometimes the line work alone can make a drawing
seem unfinished. I don't mind that personally. But you might be
more inclined to add tones or even colors
into your sketch. That's something we'll
talk about later. But by all means, if you
have time to do that, I'd love to see that in your
work and in your sketches, So definitely include
that if you'd like to. I also quickly sketched this lady who was in the
line behind the first woman. But I aimed to make this pose a little bit bigger in my
overall composition. My last full figure sketch for this drawing session
was of a seated figure. Now that's going to be
the best option, I think, for full figure drawings, if you want to get in more detail or if you want to make a more
finished drawing, because a person who's sitting down is much more
likely to be staying in that one or in that one position for longer
than someone who's standing. A seated figure is likely having coffee or working
on their laptop, or looking at their phone. And that is perfect. That's going to give
you a full 5 minutes or 10 minutes to draw something, which is really awesome for this kind of work
that we're doing. The only real
challenge I faced here was getting the overall
proportions to work for me, you have to give room really for the waist and
legs in a pose like this, or what you could do is you could just draw the
figure from the waist up. That's also an option for you. But what I did was I tried to get everything down and I had to scale the drawing
down a little bit to fit in the lower half of
the figure, the legs. What happened there
was that I made the lower half of the
body a little bit bigger than the top
half proportion wise. That this comes back
exactly to what I mentioned earlier of not drawing while you're checking
or referencing the whole figure and then giving too much attention
to one section. So what I'd like to
see in your drawings of the full figure is either a standing figure
or a seated figure. But I really hope
that you can keep in the loose gestural
approach that we've been working with in
our warm up sketches, because that's
definitely going to give you the overall
main aspect of the pose and will help
you to actually capture a likeness of the people
that you're drawing. It also helps you to capture
the movement so clearly. And that's something that you do want to be able to bring into your work and you
want to be able to express in these quick
cafe style drawings. Movement is an incredibly
important part of a drawing, especially a drawing
of the figure. You never want your
figure drawings to look like a still life. You want to be able to indicate movement because
movement indicates life and loose gesture line work is the best way to capture
that movement in a subject. I really hope you enjoy this project and then
when you're ready, meet me in the next lesson and I'll share with you my process for
drawing a portrait.
12. Project 3: Drawing Faces: In this lesson,
I'll share with you my process for
drawing a portrait. When I'm doing cafe drawings, really this is
nothing too complex. But I wanted to let you know that if it's too
daunting to start drawing the features of
the face right out of the gate, especially from life. One thing that you
can do, which I find really useful is
to start off with just putting down some
tonal values on your page. This can be useful
because it helps. Not only does it make
some marks on the page, the drawing gets started
without too much pressure. But it goes back to that exercise we did
earlier of tonal drawing, where you can start to build
up your image or build up your drawing using progressively
darker tonal shades. And it's really useful way
to work at the beginning. Then I switched over
to my drawing brush and started to work into it. Because I had put down these loose tonal
marks, it was much, much easier to just
start simply placing in a few simple lines where
the features would go. What I love about this
technique as well, is that the two marks or the tonal values and the line work can work
so well together. And they blend
together extremely well to create a cohesive
overall drawing. The other thing to point out
is that when you're drawing a portrait in a coffee
shop or a public space, it's likely that you'll be doing a profile because you don't want to be looking directly at somebody and drawing
them intently. And it's very easy to eyeball or reference people from a
profile point of view. The main things to look
out for in a profile, I find is definitely the distance between the ear
and the back of the head. And the ear on the
top of the head. Most people will tend to get those two distances slightly
off in their drawing. And it's really important
to keep checking the relationship between those two areas on
your own drawing, make sure that you're
getting that right. The other important angle to look for is the angle
of the nose obviously, but also the angle from the
tip of the nose to the chin. You can see here that I'm
making corrections in my drawing where I got the top of the
head slightly wrong, in the wrong place, and
I'm just erasing out those marks to make the correction and
make the drawing a little bit more correct. I want to stress
and reiterate again that you're making these
quick sketches from life. I don't really want to
see details of the eyes. I don't want you to
have to focus on how the intricate shapes and anatomical details of the
eye socket and the eye lids. More often than not, when
you're looking at somebody, you don't see that
complex structure at all. What you see is a
set of shaded areas. It's usually as simple as that. You can just make
sure that you're getting the dark spots or the dark places down into your drawing and it'll
actually read as an eye. One of the most important
things that I learned about making a portrait
drawing of anybody somebody once told me is to make sure that you get the shadow
shapes in the right place. If you get the shadow shapes of a person's face in
the right place, you will have captured a
likeness of that person simply because the shadow shapes are what indicate the
underlying structure. And they're the ones that
everybody's face is different, so if you get the shadow shapes specific to one person
in the right area. You will be able to capture that person's likeness
in your drawing. So for example, if you
look at somebody's face, the shadow areas around the
eye are very important. The shadow shapes around
the bottom of the nose, the mouth, and even the
structure of the cheekbones. Those are the areas that I
want you to try and capture. Not necessarily to be able to draw the structure or the details of each
of these shapes, but simply look at where
those dark shapes are. If you squint your eyes, even I know you
probably can't do this when you're sitting
in a coffee shop, starts squinting at somebody. But if you practice
looking at things with a little bit of a close
your eyes slightly, you start to see these shadow shapes much, much more clearly. You start to see less of what you think you
should be looking for in terms of detailed and
anatomical structures. And that's going to
help you to make these gestural drawings
very, very quickly. So I'm going to now
leave this over to you. I really hope you enjoy this process and that
you feel confident about heading out to a coffee shop or some public space where you
can draw people from life. I can't stress enough how
important this practice is for anybody who is wanting to improve
their drawing skills, but particularly for people
who are interested in portraiture or
figure drawing and they want to get good
at drawing people. This practice or
this one exercise, let's call it, was
actually the thing that made my drawing
improve so much. When I started doing this, suddenly I was able
to draw people. I was able to draw
in proportion. And I was able to tackle drawing face a portrait much
more confidently. And that's what I want you to be able to take away
from this class. I hope that you've gotten
some inspiration here and some inspiration for, you know, trying
this out yourself. If you've never done
cafes drawings before, I highly recommend it is a really powerful
drawing exercise to do and it really will help you to improve your
drawing skills overall.
13. Wrap Up: Now that we've covered the
process and the techniques, it's time for you
to grab your ipad, head out, and draw
some people from life. When you're done with
your drawing project, I'd love if you could
post them up in the project gallery and leave a comment on your
fellow classmates work if you feel
inspired to do so. It's always so great to see supportive comments
from other students. I'd also love if you
could share some of your process and tell
me how you got on. Did you find drawing
people from life really challenging
or did you enjoy it? What aspects of the process
did you love the most? And most importantly, have you started to see an
overall improvement in your drawing process? And you're observing. My last piece of advice that
I want to leave you with is that drawing is
all about seeing. And seeing encompasses so much more than just
flat two D visuals. Really the only way to fully encounter that wide
range of seeing, in a true sense, is
to draw from life. The beauty of this
is that you can then take that experience back to your regular drawing practice of drawing from photo reference. If you have any questions or thoughts yourself
on this process, be sure to drop them
in the discussion tab. Thank you so much for
taking this class with me. I really hope that it
has inspired you to push your drawing practice
to the next level with some challenges. And to improve drawing
figures and drawing faces. I can't wait to see your work. Thanks so much for watching, and I'll look out for you in the next class. De.