Drawing Figures: Modeling the human form

1. Introduction: Hey guys, it's moving here. In this class you're gonna be drawing the human figure and graphites. I'm going to share with you my favorite techniques and a deep dive with the process. So this one, we're gonna be working with a photograph, the singular dominant light source, and wearing the picture from start to finish on like my previous class on figure drawing. The focus of this one is going to be on the modelling of form. That is to say how you can shoot the figure to make it appear more three-dimensional. This class is for all levels, but he'd been a prior experience drawing will make on a stunning some of the terms that I use in lessons a lot easier. It will be approaching this drawing in three stages. First, the block in my little separate light and shadow IT rendering stage, but we'll be describing the large and medium forms may detail stage that will comprise mostly of the fine-tuning of edges and describing smaller forums, as well as the tactile qualities or figure. At the end of this, you'll be ready to take on your class project. Will you be able to assess what you've assimilated or put your new-found theory into practice. I had a lot of fun making this and I hope you enjoy it. There's a lot to you all. See you soon. 2. Block In: Alright, so we are officially at the start of the block in this class, our focus is going to be on creating the illusion of form. And I'm making our drawings look three-dimensional. So for that reason, I'm going to skip the outer life stage and just trace the drawing on paper. If you're curious about how I normally get my drawings on paper, you can check out my last class and figure drawing. And then there I show you my process on how I free-hand a figure drawing. To start. First on the agenda, we want to divide the values. We've seen our reference into two families, light and shadow. The shadow we will find in the areas receiving no direct lights signaled to us by virtue of their darkness. In this photo, the form shadow is located around the crease of the back, the left arm glutes and lower leg with a cast shadow extending leftwards away from the body. Based on the location of these shadow shapes, we're going to assume that the light source is located in the top left-hand corner and our values are going to move from light to dark. These directions. The hair on our model, why not in shadow per se, will be grouped as a shadow value of its darkness. And for the sake of simplicity, what I'm thinking about in this moment is creating an even shadow value with minimal variation. I want to make sure that I'm improving upon the contours of the drawing as I go, keeping my focus on the border aspects of the picture. If you're struggling to get your tone to be even, I suggest varying up the angle of your pencil, a plant layers first with a lighter pencil than a darker one, keeping a light hand and taking our dark spots between needed to Risa as you see fit. Moving into the left shoulder before adding value, I go in with my pencil and better define the shapes I see my reference. I want to ensure that I have a good balance of C curves, S-curve, and streets. I find this beneficial because the values only makes sense within the boundaries you create for them. So Justin, we outlined beforehand, reduces the likelihood of errors. Later on. You might have noticed that the values in the hair darker than the shadow on the left shoulder and you'd be right. My block, and I prefer to downplay variation like this and keep the body's more similar. It allows me to stay more organized mentally. But if you want to highlight that difference, you're free to do so. In the shadow are on the glutes. We can clearly see core shadow, reflected light and occlusion shadow. Once again, we want to keep our shadow values unified. So I'm going to minimize all that into one tone, the same value as everything else. It's very easy to be tempted to show a whole bunch of variation in this region. The more you stare, the more you see. However, in order for our lives to really shine later on, our shadows need to be somewhat muted. Ergo, at this stage, our focus should be on smooth gradations in value, even tone, a well-designed shapes. If you squint your eyes and your shadow values merge optically, you know you're on the right track. Hands and feet are generally pretty tricky to draw and shade because you only takes a few mistakes before they start to resemble something out of a hurry. My advice is less is more vis-a-vis the amount of detail, whether that'd be in its contours are, and how you modeled the form. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. As I make my way down the lower leg, I'm utilizing both the negative and positive shapes I see to properly determined the boundaries of my shadow shapes. I'm understanding that it won't be perfect, but do my best to get it to a good place. At this juncture, we have a simple two to unblocking the white of the paper seven as the lights and the values we just created seven as the shadows. In the next video, we'll be building upon this for some halftones and gradually bringing this picture to life. Thanks for watching. See you soon. 3. Modeling the form Pt.1: With the blocking behind us, we will now introduce halftones to give form to the lights. I always like to start with the darkest tones because they are closest and value should the shadows. This is important because a cardinal rule of realism is that our darkest half-tones have to be lighter than a lighter shadow values in order for the light and shadow families to mean separates. Before I get into all that, I'm going to lightly indicate some value for this tool beside the model. My thought process here is simply, I don't want that area to be stark white. So our pi a few layers of graphite to my H pencil before moving on to the lower leg. Lower leg you can think of as a more complex cylinder with a shadow on the left, the lights on the right-hand side. The form of the leg is slow turning. The consequence being that our values are going to be compressed with very little variation. So just focusing first on creating an average value of the light shape of the lower leg. Once that's completed, welcome to transition along the bed bug line, filling in the intermediate value that will merge the shadow with the lights. Beyond this, you can begin to walk carefully, inspect the edges you see me reference and modify yours to match e.g. the shadow edge and this region is sharper than the shadow edge further down. And the shadow edge here is known as soft as the transition state in this region of the torso or the like. Somebody I find useful in creating smooth tone is going back into region like the one we're working on with a lighter pencil than you would otherwise use. A for-each or two each eye filling in those nagging white spots. It's a bit tedious to do, but it goes a long way in creating that plate-like finish. Going back to the transition between light and shadow. If you use say to the pencil primarily for the shadow, then each V4 your lights, it's easier to transition that to one. You use an intermediate pencil I could be, prevents you from going too dark or too light. In addition to choosing the optimal pencil, controlling your pressure is key. Try not to push too hard with your pencil. That way if you make a mistake, it uses the paper is still in good enough condition for you to rework the area. On the right leg, we have values that are similar to the ones we just observed. There are two main value shifts in this region with smaller forms embedded within them, creating more variation. To start, I will focus on the major forms and try to capture the correct shape would be appropriate edges, which in this case, I'm mostly soft. Wow, good. And my values on the right leg, I'm occasionally glancing over the left leg to make sure that I'm creating here similar to what is over there. Besides that, as you probably already know, if you dry pencils, you can shortcut the process, so resist the temptation to draw faster, whatever that means, by zigzagging all over the place or pushing harder to get quick results. Getting values where you want them is just going to require many layers and a ton of patients. So now that we have an approximation of the values we're seeing, our model of attention to detail must increase. Squinting your eyes will enable you to determine if there's too much contrast, but truly to contrast in this region relative to your reference while doing so, we also alerted to address them, it'd be too hard such as whether the two major value shapes. The glutes heavy lights or local value than the legs degrees orientation in relation to the light source. However, there are parts of it that are closer to a drug SAP zones around the shadow on the left side, e.g. in the plane connecting the right, Let's roots. We add some darker half-tones that only slightly lighter than the values and the lower leg visualizations needs to be solved. So pay close attention to how the values in the lower leg connects to the rise in each. Periodically I'll revisit areas that I've worked on before. If I detect an imbalance, if you've got a certain error cannot be improved upon the additional contexts. In this slide, cheaper on the left arm we have some var doc is happening in the picture. Very subtle movements in the values and edges in this small area. The b's value of this region should be dotted and all the half-tones we have so far, but only by little. The edges are fairly subtle around, slightly sharper towards the right border with the shadow than the left. More often than not, people tend to make an error like this lighter than it really is. So when in doubt, go darker. In the middle backup, identify this band of dark halftone along the spinal column. It's about as dark as the lower leg or just slightly lighter as it tapers worth bottom. This value shape will serve as an anchor for all devices come in this region that is quite possibly the darkest value shape and thus establishes and upper limits for my values in a drawer switches this, we're going to have very few truly hard edges on the inside of the form. So make it a habit to double-check where your value shapes needs, particularly along the bed bug line, and make sure that transitions are not too harsh. At this point, I'm going to start rendering the values are on the trapezius, the simplified form, It's basically one big balance sheet. We're going across the traps into the neck and ending around the red deltoid. You can think about it as one continuous value shape with soft edges and the local value equivalents what we have here, it becomes simpler to draw. In the next video, we'll finish up this area and begin to introduce some lights I have to give like what we have here. 4. Modeling the form Pt.2: In this video, we're going to continue developing our half-tones, moving systematically from our darkest values to our lightest at the end of which will result in a more complete expression of our subjects. Currently, I'm modeling the values across the upper back, attempting to get it smooth and connecting it to the existing value shapes surrounding it. The average value of this region is interrupted by a light plane on the neck here around the ear. And this depressed group possessing a darker value, right? I'm happy with I have round the upper back, so I'm going to move on to what I perceive as some triangular halftone shapes similar in value to the error we just worked on. Procedure is as follows. I lightly sketch out the shape of that band of halftone. So I focused on joined first. Once I'm happy with that, I begin to darken the value to match what I see on the model with the joint in place and the value accurate, I start to alter the edges, how soft or hard I make an edge with dependent on what I see on a bit of understanding of that part of the anatomy. Cross comparison is the best way I've found to determine where on that spectrum. I just need to be. Looking at the screen. I've identified some of the hardest edges in our picture, the softest and a few in between. Having an anchor such as this will prove invaluable and determine what edges to have where. In addition, we must remember that every part of the picture has an edge. We can't afford to have good ideas in one area and then on the opposite side failed to address what we see in lighter parts of the forums such as this. It will save us and sticks on for age to age and need to be pencils prevents us from accidentally getting too dark and completely eliminating the impression of three-dimensionality. Don't know. The models right arm, we once again encounter familiar cylindrical form. Presently we have the shadow values already established. So the logical next step is to render out our dark is halftones. To elaborate on the lights. This is the shape greeted by this band of dark halftone. Before getting into the medium and small forms most first creates its local value, or average value. That value is going to be a little bit lighter than the balance sheet we have in this region of the back. Once that shaded, I can then begin to darkness values towards the edges of the form rows away from the center line. If you look closely, you also see that there is a lighter plane around the olecranon or elbow, which you can indicate by putting awesome graphics in that region by Reesa, some other things I'd like you to pay attention to the shadow edge we have here and making sure it's a soft as you've seen the picture, not to mention adjusting the contours, the actual shape of the arm, you feel like it looks wonky. The rest of the upper arm is lighter than the region we just finished my thought process here is to first grade that basal value with the lighter pencil start by running the dark is halftone shapes, which are by the fingers and this area of the hand. After that, they can begin connecting those dark and half-moon shapes, the rest of the hand with the intermediate values. Along the way, I'm continuing to make microns is more specific insurance. What I see my reference, this era of the hand is when I returned to where my putting enough finishing touches just to make it look a bit more realistic. Returning to the back, we have this band of halftone value, define the rest of the red deltoid. It's lighter than the values adjacent to it. That is the values we've shaded in, but darker than the rest of the deltoid, as well as the region containing the terrorists major, infraspinatus, teres minor, and a bit of the Isthmus. The values and the rest of the arm because cities, one of the lightest planes in the picture, the very pronounced highlights. And I'm watching the way of contrast in the form. Its average value significantly lighter than the vantage surrounding it. Like all the cylindrical forums to this point, the vantage get darker as you migrate away from the center, only slightly, but when you go to parts of the figure as light as this, but changes in value or subtle. There's a law known as Lambert emission law. I spoke about this, my fears class on this topic, but I think it's worth pointing out again. It stays that value change very slowly near the lightest lights and darken more dramatically as they approach the terminator. They tap into being where light and shadow, aka the bed bug line. So keep this in mind, careful of making the license halftones to dark. Once I've created a sense of roundness and the shoulder, it's time to define the highlights. You can do this a multitude of ways. The pencil eraser via crosshatching with the kneaded eraser like I'm doing here. Well, by just leaving a part of the paper whites and highlights, although it's somewhat superficial elements, requires equal treatment as the rest of the drawing. By that I mean, pay attention to where the edges might be softer or harder, the actual shape of the highlights and its location in space. In this moment, I'm just going back to the church era as I previously worked on, adjusting the value slightly, picking out dark spots and altering shapes that need some work. As I returned to the middle back, the same procedure will be followed as I render the other value shapes, software specific should be your mantra as you work through this section, make your shape specific. Let the edges to be soft. Also, be wary of getting tunnel vision and losing track of the relationship between things. The halftone values we have here are considerably lighter while we have lower down the ribcage and document what we have in this region of law arm. That's it. Good. Okay. On the left side of the back, we already have in place our shadow values are dark is half-tones. So all that remains of the lighter values, including the highlights by the scapula and the spinal column. I'll start by applying a few layers of graphite on my porch pencil. It's not down the whites of the paper and fill in the tooth. From there I'll introduce my two h to get the value two full saturation. Beyond that point, I can begin to soften the transition between the value shapes are owning it. If you look closely, you see the edges on the right-hand side. I'm what sharper edges towards the left, especially further down. This is because the form of the bacterium is more abruptly from this region into that, It's not from that region into this. I know I say it a lot, but now's a great time to squint your eyes. Take a step back and glands back-and-forth between your reference and your drawing. Ask yourself, what is calling my attention? What's popping out as in congruence, what looks out of place, focusing on those areas and modify them to fit your reference. Hi. As usual, I see the high life last carbon out that shape with my kneaded eraser before pulling out my pencil, emerging its edges with the surrounding values. The highlights is the brightest in the middle and gets slightly darker towards the extremities and the edges on the left side and slightly sharper than the edges towards the right. Took me awhile and there was a lot of pushing and pulling to get this highlights. It'll just writes. So don't be afraid to spend some time here. So you feel like it looks natural? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're the left side of the back finished. We're left with the lightest plane is in the picture. I'll cover the entire area with some tone before diving into the left glute and increasing its sense of roundness. The glutes are kind of egg-shaped form. So if you can imagine drawing and shading a sphere could do in a very similar thing here. We already have our shadow and the dark is half-tones in the form of this triangular groove and these halftones. So all we need to do is connect those values to the rest of the back. Nice, smooth and unified way. The right glutes the two shapes you're trying to measure these, we want that transition to be soft, so we have to layer carefully. We also need to be specific. So if you look closely, we can tell the difference between the two. While I'm doing this, I must preserve the lightness in this region for that sense of light to really shine through. As I rendered the form of the glutes, I made sure to indicate some darker half-tones around the border of the torso. Let's increase the sense of turning. Three-dimensionality. I'll leave this area phenomena returned to the back or somewhere I liked his paintings needs to be darkened and edges needs to be softened. Foremost in my mind is connecting the value shapes together, keeping those changes in value shuttle and creating even tone. At this stage, I'm going to be jumping on war, trying to correct errors as soon as I see them, wherever they may be. We're far enough in the drawing that I think it's a good time to add more information into the shadows in the entire drawing. I stopped by darkening the part of the shadow around the glutes, receiving the least amount of lights, as well as the form shadow around it to keep the level of contrast the same. Whenever we introduce a darker values, which is this occlusion shadow, everything around us is going to now appear lighter than it was prior to be a good thing or a bad thing, in this case, the latter. So much now adjust the values around the rest of the shadow. What's enjoy the same balance we had previously. Once I'm done with the glutes are moving through the shutter on the left arm and indicate the darker region here. It's a common mistake to go overboard and make these variations to pronounce, you, squint your eyes and the values and coalesce, it's probably too much contrast at this juncture, most of the information I picture will contain has already been established. Over the next couple of minutes on document has slightly to match on newly defined shadows of the body or on the light shape of left arm and better define the half-tones and the right arm and leg. That's going to be it for this lesson. In the next video, we'll be treating solve the smaller forms and the figure and better define our shadow shapes. Thanks for watching. See you soon. 5. Modeling the form Pt.3: Picking up where we left off, I'm making some minor adjustments to the figure, filling in white spots, documents, and values, and modify some shapes. Not much is going to appear to be happening on screen, but these final touches are very important in getting our drawing to look the best that it can. Begin on the table. I'm going to start reading the values on the left-hand side, which is entirely in shadow. There are two main value shapes, one much darker than the other. However, all the values here must be darker than anything else we have in the lights on the rest of the figure on the right side of the table. The table is covered with a piece of cloth with drapes around it obscuring most of the faster that is on the table. For that reason, the edges we have here mostly soft, the exceptions of these two regions which are quite a bit sharper than the rest. As you build your values in the table, make sure to cross reference them with the surrounding forms in the legs and hand. The relationship of these parts is essential for that table to sit back in space as it should. Much of what I'm doing now consists of me scanning my eyes and looking for things that jumped out to me as uncomfortable to look at in there usually lies and opportunity to change something to potentially enhance the drawing. There is no perfect sequence of procedure for doing this. All I can really say is you should be spending more time looking at your reference and less on your drawing. At this point. We're turning back to the table. I'm trying to get those values even and connect the edges with doors of the fingers. I tried to be systematic in my approach. By that, I mean, I'm not trying to draw the entire table at once. I take it as section on your time, get each one writes and then ask myself what difference exists between what I just finished on what I'm about to start. In this case, I'm moving from a darker parts of the shadow to light, so one less defined edges. The right side of the table stands in complete opposites. Left side, it's in full light. Values be much lighter. A cloth on this side does have some creases which you can consider shadows. But I prefer to keep those values of dude for near like this. I'd like to first get obese value that's equivalent to the lightest value there. Because the lightest value in this case is the white of the paper. I'll be going with the second lightest value. Next, I establish my shadow shapes, paying close attention to the edges and contrast you for modelling the half-tones. On the left-hand side, there's always a temptation to rush through ancillary parts of the picture such as this, which you find in grit figure drawing an arts in general, attention to detail in every aspect is what leads to great results. On that note, it's clear to me that the main light shape on this table is the brightest aspect of the picture. So I'll leave that as the white of the paper since we can't go any farther than that. I just noticed on the right leg around the hamstrings that there's this light band of value. This is a perfect example of a smaller forum and something that's been addressed at a later stage of the drawing. I'm going to focus first and getting the shape right before working on the values of finally tweaking the surrounding edges. Right? Currently I'm sketching the cast shadow, which for those of you who don't know, is the shadow being cast by the figure exactly what it sounds like in this particular picture, it's lighter than most of the form shadow. But of course, as we learned earlier, still darker than all about half-tones because we have to keep the shadow and light families separate. In the past, I used to outline the cast shadow and then fill it in. But I found that this always lead to hard edges. So now I just sketching an approximation of the correct shape, build up the values, and then use my elasto, my eraser to carbon to that tone to get the shape that I'm after. It's important to realize that the cast shadow merges into the rest of the background, soft edges, and those edges get progressively harder the closer you get to the figure. Or in other words, they get progressively softer, the further away you get from the figure, horizontal and vertical stroke. That's typically how I like to layer my value. I find that when there is consistency in your application, you get less noise and the tone and have to do less erasing with the kneaded eraser to get to a good place. Also, use of the brush and tissue paper can accelerate the process, getting the soft smoky effect we want in our cast shadow adjacent to the cashier that we have, this irregular light shape doesn't appear to be part of the shadow. So if you had to stay true to our reference, we must preserve its lightness. Personally, I'm going to make it darker than I see in the photo because I think it disrupts the center of turning in the larger forms a bit. Everything in this region is pretty dark and I would like to keep it that way. And as much as this is an academic exercise, it is also arts. And as such, you must allow room for individual expression. The triangular shape here we have some of that cast shadow coming through. The major difference between it and the rest is that the shadow here as the lighter local value. Unlike most of the picture, the edit surrounding this value shapes are fairly hard to make sure to preserve that quality as you render that area. Good day. So much of what is required to make good figure drawing standing orders from our physical dexterity, but our ability to see directly, ask the right questions and pinpoint the differences between our subject and our slowing things down, stepping back to see the whole and remembering that our issues can only be that I'm drawing edge of value is extremely helpful in this drawing because we traced it. Very few of our issues will be from the drawing aspect. So most of the time, if you are tracing, the problem is going to be one value or edge. Having said that, it is possible to trace the drawing and still have it look incorrect proportionately, but it's less likely. Part of the rationale for beginning destroyed by tracing is, I hope you understand that you can attack these elements in isolation. As a beginner, it can sometimes be too difficult to juggle all those three elements at once. So creating a joint practice, are you focused on shading and rendering like we're doing here, are just the linear aspects, like in the joints you see on screen. Can make learning a lot easier than when you feel better equipped. You can attack all aspects at once. Returning to the goods, something about the shadow seems wrong to me. It's for next couple of minutes. I'll be trying to change some shapes, document licensed and values, until it starts to look right. This part of the drawing I found particularly tricky. And at the end I think the core shadow values with too dark and the occlusion shadow extended beyond its borders. Sometimes if you want to try your hardest, certain things will still escape your vision. So from Mirrlees, that's something to work on your future drawings? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. As you get to the end of this video, I would like to suggest that you make it a part of your process to conduct an after action reports. It's a military term, but in this context it means coming back to your drawing a data. It's finished with fresh eyes and picking apart what you like and don't like about it. From there, you can now chart a course of action. It's getting better. That course might include doing master copies, finding a mentor, doing more preliminary sketches are giving yourself more time to finish your particular drawing. All in all, this is a marathon, not a sprint, so we must enjoy the journey upwards, despite its many bottles, I want to say big thank you to all of you for watching. You guys are amazing for moving all the way. And I trust that this lesson will be a boon for you in your drawing practice. Much love, Bye bye. 6. Class Project: Alright, we're finally at the class projects. And despite this a signature of this video, it's probably the most important one for you. Having watched all that you have, very few of the concepts will remain with you if you don't actively put them into practice. So the class project is pretty simple. I want you to make a figure drawing from a photograph or from life, lit with a single dominant light source with graphite pencils on a white sheet of paper, the specific lighting is important because it creates a clear separation between light and shadow. And that makes the task of rendering form easier as you just white paper because you don't have to create the lightest value in the picture, which necessitates a slightly different approach, shading the figure. As you work on your project, you may find it best to work on each stage immediately after the accompanying video lesson. That way the contents is fresh in your mind and its application made easier. My guess is if you're watching a class like this, you are probably passionate about arts. I just want to encourage you to enjoy the process. The disappointments, the failures, and the eventual woman's are trying. Expectation really keeps pace with ability. And so even for the best of us, success is always somewhere in the distance. If you do create a class project, I'd really appreciate if you shared it. Now just so I can be of value to you and provide some inputs so everyone else can be inspired to try by your effort. You are the reason that I do this and I just want to say a big thank you to you all. And until the next one. Bye bye.