Transcripts
1. Introduction: Seat are often the forgotten
part of the human body. They're usually
covered by shoes, are people leave them out of
their drawings altogether. They're often
disproportionately drawn, either too small or
awkward at weird angles. This class will guide you
through understanding foot anatomy and
drawing 3D feet in different poses step-by-step
so that you feel competent and including them
in all your figure drawings. I've been studying and drawing
figures for over 20 years, learning from master artists and practicing from live models. I'm passionate about
teaching because I love helping my students
achieve their dreams. And I believe that
figure drawing is one of the fundamental
milestones in learning art. Because when you're
able to confidently draw a figure or foot
out of your head, you can draw
practically anything. In the next set of lessons
all guides you through how to draw realistic and
proportionate 3D feet. You'll learn how to
use my GSL method to construct feet in a variety of poses and
shoes, including high heels. We'll practice with
five-minutes speed drawings to help build your confidence and
will make you feel comfortable with the
dynamic shapes within feet. If you're new to figure drawing or have trouble
with proportions, I recommend starting
with our beginner friendly less than
on the GSL method. Otherwise, get ready to level up your feet
drawing skills. I can't wait to see what
you create at the end, so please share your
artwork with our community. See you in class.
2. Drawing Feet using 3D Forms: When you draw a foot, you really want to make
sure that it feels 3D. That it feels like it has
structure and it doesn't feel like a flat shape
that you cut out. Even though shape is sometimes
more important, then form. In the beginning when you're
mapping everything out, right, you want to
focus on shape. But today we want to look at the breakdown of feet
and how that works. So right now, if
you look at a foot, just kind of looking
at feet in general, you can kinda see that you
can break it down into forms. So you can grab a colored pencil if you want to do
this in layers. I'm probably going
to do that as well. And I'm going to start out by blocking out the
shape of the foot. You can kinda see the
ankle is simplified, a circle because the ankle can move in so many
different direction. Simplifying into
a circle as like any kind of joint is a
good place to start. And then underneath that circle, it's almost like a pyramid, but with a flat top. So it's like a cube
that's tapered, that's wider at the bottom
and thinner at the top. So what we're going to
do is we're just going to extend this shape. Just extend it from that
circle into like a cube, like a pyramid shape. If you wanted to draw
the other edges, you can do that so that it
looks like a true form. So, so far you have a sphere on a tapered cubed that's kinda
like a trapezoid shape. And then from there
we're going to find halfway on this trapezoid shape. And then from here down to
the bottom is like a wedge. But the way this foot is drawn, you can see that
it's a combination. So the toes are a separate form. So let's follow this
example and we're going to draw in a wedge
from here to here. And then the bottom. What kind of stay consistent? The wedge is going
to get a little bit wider because the toes are
a bit wider than the heel. So go ahead and draw
your wedge-shaped. Right now you can
see that my wedge, there's a plane here. The way that you see
it in the example, it actually goes all the
way into a flat shape. So however you want to draw it, it's fine if you want to
draw it as a flat shape. If you feel this is
easier, that's fine. But the feet, the toes will actually connect on top and
being a little bit bigger. So I'm going to just
leave mine kind of tapered as like a tapered wedge that's kinda cut off. So I'm going to leave that plane in there and then
we're going to draw the toes so the toes are
going to come out slightly. And you'll notice that the toes, like the big toe here is a lot longer than your little toe. So if you want to make
your big toe bit wider, and then I'm going to put
a bit of a curve to this. And then if you wanted to, you can show that there
is an additional plane. So you can kinda make it
into more of a 3D shape. So the toes are a
bit more curved. So then once you have the basic building
blocks of your form, then we can start to draw
the line around the form. And the last step
before we go further is to actually
divide out the toes. And the fastest way to divide
the toes is to think about the big toe taking up 1
third of this space in here. So if I kinda like break
this up into thirds, keep in mind this is
going in perspective. So this third should be
visually smaller than this. One and this one
should be visually smaller than this one. So if I break that up, There's my big toe. And then if I break this
up further and further, there are my other toes. Right now, what we've drawn
is we've drawn the form. If you think about forms, you've got a sphere. You have a trapezoid
shape like this. And obviously it's in 3D
and kinda look like this. And then you've
got a wedge shape. Something like this
would make sense to me. Then for my toes, if you want to turn to draw
the top view of your toes. This form is more of an organic form, right? So it's like not as
geometric as the other ones. So you can name this
whatever you like. Like a round rectangular
prism, they mean. So now what I'm gonna do is I'm going to draw
the line around it. What is the purpose of line
versus the purpose of forms? Let's look at the
different types of line that is used in
the example here. You can see that the lines
are a lot more descriptive. So you can see that they get a little bit thicker and then
they get a bit thinner. There's more variety in lines, so there's like soft lines. These lines are a lot
more descriptive. We have more sketchy lines. We also have more angled
lines and more curved lines, so you can't really
see it well up there. But let's say an angled
line is more like this. And here's more
of a curved line. So angles and curves are
also more difficult. So when you combine these, you get a lot more
variety in your lines. So now with your lines, you can describe your form. So your line generally
touches your form, except it might
emphasize some areas. So you can see here, right the line that's
like over here is emphasizing some of
that bone structure. So it's definitely going
to curve up a little bit. So if I curve this up, I'm also going to curb this up because everybody's
foot is different. So you want to express
using your lines. Your lines are going to
modify that form shape. So if I look at
this and I say, oh, that might be a
little bit too much, like it might be a little
bit too exaggerated. Then I can kinda go in and
just modified a little bit. And then I'm going
to draw in my toes. So you can see my
toes are going to follow the form
that I've laid out, but it may not fit it exactly. Your lines are always
going to modify your form. I also like to use really
thick lines wherever I sink, the form is touching the ground. So here I've made
that line thicker, make it a little bit
thicker in the feet. And you'll notice the toes, like the toenails
kinda curve this way. The curve this way. And toes in general are
kind of the opposite. Hands because toes
are wider at the top, like fleshy are here
and bony or here. So the pads of the bottom of your toes are really
round, the bony. And usually my little toe
is like really squished. So that's kinda how
I'm illustrating it. This is just kinda
out of my head. We do have a bit of a reference, but you can also feel free to modify it however,
it feels right. And you can see my line
here is very descriptive. And then it kinda goes away and then it's more descriptive
up at the top. And then we do have
an ankle bones, so that bone is somewhere here. Okay. So those are all of the different parts
of a foot and form. The ankle bone is roughly in
the middle of that sphere. The thing is about feet is, if you touch your feet, you'll notice that
the ankle bone is higher on one side and
lower on the other side. So your ankle bone
here on the side of your big toe is actually higher than the ankle
bone on the other side, which is why it's on a circle. Because if it's on
a circle, right, one bone can be here and then
another bone can be here. But it's like relatively
still approximate. Like you can estimate where
it is on that circle. You could also, if you're
just simplifying a foot, like very simply, you can simplify it into a
wedge like this. Because sometimes you
don't have time to break it down into
all of these shapes, like there's just no time. So what you can do is you
can draw a wedge like this. And then you can kind
of understand, okay, bit of a curve in the bottom of that wedge and then there's
a curve in the heel. So this part is more curved. You'll notice that
the wedge is kind of, it's not straight up and down, It's a little bit angled. And then I would kinda
like curve the heel and then I would like her Leno
put some toes in here, modify that shape like that. But it's kinda like, okay, this is how you would
carve into that wedge. And then the circle or the sphere kinda sits
on top like this. So it kinda like there's
the trapezoid shape. There's the wedge.
3. Drawing Feet using the GSL Method: So now what I'm going
to try to do is draw some sketches of feet in
different directions. So with the first one, let's start off like
when you're approaching feet and just kind of
drawing feet in general, you probably want to
capture the gesture. So remember the GSL
gesture shape line. That's always a
method that I default to when I'm trying to
capture something. So let's start off
with the gesture and I'm going to use a
different color for my gesture. So I'm going to use
orange gesture. There's the gesture of the foot. I tend to exaggerate the
gesture to like you always want to exaggerate
gesture because that's what's going to
give you more action. You never want less action, you always want more action. So I generally like put the gesture right in
the middle of the feet. And then I'm gonna do
like the top of the foot, mark the bottom. And then whatever
this distance is, I'm going to try to match
it for this distance. Then if you wanted to, I think it's important to note where the legs
start as well, but that's kinda not
part of the gesture. I feel like if you wanted to create a secondary gesture,
it's kinda like okay, that's kind of where the
leg would go and then maybe here this is where leg would go right now it just looks
like a bunch of lines. Next, what I'm gonna
do is just kinda draw in the shape like as
geometrically as you can. Because shapes are
generally geometric. The more geometric
you can keep them, the more obvious your angles. Where things turn, all of
those things would be obvious. So draw angles where there's more bone and then draw more curves where
there's more like flesh. Another gesture that
I didn't draw is actually the
alignment of the toe. So like if I wanted to
indicate where they are, I can draw them in as
a secondary gesture. And then I'm going to use my
shape layer just to flatten out and identify where the
shape breakdowns would be. So if I remember this part
of the width of the toe, if I find kind of roughly 1
third and then divide it up. You can see that this
person has a bit of a space between the toes. So I can see I made
the foot really wide. Like I made it way too wide
while I was exaggerating it. So I can either
make this side less wide or I can make
this side less wide. I kinda like the angles
that I put on this side, although it looks a little
bit too exaggerated. But if I was to change, I'm probably going to make this side a little
bit more curve. Just like slightly
less saturated. It's always better to
be more exaggerated. Again, that's just my opinion. But now I can kind of
break down those shapes. And then you can
see this is where the slope starts to happen. So where that wedge
really starts to appear. And you'll notice that
the legs overlap. They overlap the foot. And if you want to put in the roundness like that
sphere of the ankle, It's kind of up here. So now I'm gonna do the same
thing for the other foot. I want to try and capture the shape of the
foot without putting too much detail but notating where there are angled changes, for example, like he's a very, very distinct angle right here
on both sides of the feet, like right here and right here. The toes look a little
bit wide to me, but I can fix that
in the lines stage. But for now I'm just trying
to figure out where things connect with a sphere
of my ankle is, I'm going to try to
keep these two circles relatively consistent. So now what I'm gonna do is I'm going to
use my pencil for the line part and just focus on making adjustments to
the shapes that I made. And then keeping
in mind whether I want to use descriptive lines, angled lines, curved
lines, and etc. So now we can go in and modify our lines and make sure that you're
kind of accenting things that you
feel are important. So parts of the feet that
are maybe on the ground. And then the toe, the subtleties and the toes are
really hard to draw. It's good when you have a shape mapped out so it doesn't add to the complexity of the term
structure in general. Again, I'm going
to keep the tops of the tones fairly round. You'll notice that
there's a lot of redness, lots of redness in
between the toes. That's actually
subsurface scattering, which is when your skin
is very translucent. So it really depends on the
person that you're drawing. So I can kinda see these toes getting
significantly smaller. So those are
adjustments that I can make when I'm doing the line. And I can kinda see where my shape might be
off a little bit, but it's like your
second chance at making your drawing look very
solid and accurate. Like three chances you
have one where you the action in your gesture to where
you figure out the shape. And then three where you
get to put lines on. So I'm going to make
the second toe a little bit longer
because in my feet, my second toe is longer
than my actual big toe. And this might add a bit
more character to this foot, and I think it's
doing that right now. Also, my fourth toe is
longer than my third toe. My third toes just kinda
short and messed up. But anyway, this is kinda
me referencing my own feet, trying to capture the
character of my foot. Now I'm going to use
my sketchy lines and I'm going to just kinda put in some shading just to indicate that the
feet are slanted. Your toes are generally darker than the
rest of your feet. So if you wanted
to indicate that your toes are a
little bit darker, you can add some
slight hatching, slight shading to it. So now I'm going to
finish this foot here. So my foot looks a little bit different from the
reference because again, I'm referencing my own feet, so feel free to reference your own feet if you want to add some
more character to it. And I want to keep
my toes consistent. So whatever I do for
my tones on this side, I'm going to try to do the
same thing on this side. Remember that your
toenails curves this way. They curve up. And also toes my turn in
different directions. So sometimes you're
looking straight up, but the big toe points a little bit more to
the right and this one might point a little
bit to the left or maybe they're not balanced. So again, I'm going to add
some slight hatch marks. The tones slightly darker. Here I'm creating actually
values with line. I'm showing the viewer, okay, This part is actually
a little bit darker. So this is kind of like
a simplified drawing that shows those things. You just want to do some
checks to make sure that this bone here
echoes on the other side. It's not as noticeable
on the other side. So I'm going to make
it a little bit more noticeable so that the
feet feel consistent. Maybe this one I can kinda
tone it down a little bit. Maybe not make it super pointy. But let's say you take a
ruler and you put it up against one side of
your foot there. And then you can look
at the negative shape. Now, do the same thing with your other foot and see if that negative shape
is roughly the same. Okay, and then that
will give you an idea of where to adjust that curve. You can do the same
thing with this side. So if I kinda go straight, I can see that there's
a negative shape here and there's a
negative shape right here. So keep those in mind. And then when you
do it on this side, I can see my negative shape
here is a lot wonky here. This shape feels okay, but this shape field is wonky
compared to this shape. So that fast way that
you can double-check your shapes and your lines just using negative and
positive space. Space is actually
another element of art. And I'm actually going
to notate it because I feel like negative space
and positive space is something that is really useful when it
comes to correcting your drawings are when
it comes to even just learn figuring out
what's wrong in a piece. So I'm going to write a
note here about space. And using positive
and negative space. Here, I'm going to draw
my negative space. You just want to make sure
these angles are the same. So now I can see this is
my negative space here. Here's my negative space. Does it match? It doesn't have to match a 100%. It just has to kind
of make sense. Almost like if I filled
this with sand and then I fill my other
negative space with sand, is that sand going to be enough
to fill the other space? Base helps you figure out if your shapes are correct and if your proportions are correct.
4. Foot Studies: Timed Drawing Practice: We are going to do a
foot from the bottom, and I also wanted to
do feed in heels. So the next few feet examples, we're going to try to draw
these all in five-minutes. Again very quickly. What we did before
sketching out the gesture, kinda containing
everything into a box, then working on the shapes. So I'm not going to
use different colors because this is kind
of like life drawing. If you're drawing
something from life, you're using one tool, you don't have too much time. So you want to make sure that your feet are relatively
the same size. They look like they belong to the same person and that they have like general similarities. So once you have the
big shapes blocked in, then you can go in and
refine your shapes. I'm going to take a
slightly darker pencil now. So when you're drawing
toes from the bottom, you can actually draw the
toes is like little circles. They're really cute and also like much easier
to place that way. And you'll notice that
there's a harder the heel that's kinda white, like
right in the middle. That's because it doesn't
really touch the ground as much as the other
parts of the heel. I really liked these
wrinkles also in the feet, so I'm going to try
to capture them. You want to capture the
nuances of the seat. Okay, so we've got one do
I'm ahead of the game. So since I'm ahead, I'm going to add a
little bit of hatching, just a little bit of shading
to show which side of the foot is like
the footprint part. I find that whenever
I have a timer, I draw so much faster and
also more competently. All right, So we've done feet bottom now we're gonna do
the feet from the side. Again, we're going to
start with the gesture. So I'm going to
indicate the bottoms. One is lot more curved
than the other. These are just like very,
very casual observations. Going to draw my gesture and then I'm going
to draw my shape. So you can see one of the
feet is very wedge like the other ones
because of the angle. It's like I still see the
wedge the wedges here, There's the side of
the wedge, the front. Let's put that circle in. There we go. Now I have my basic structure. Now I just want to double-check the reference picture
to make sure that I have everything in relatively
where I want it to be. And now I'm going to
start with the left foot first only because I don't
want to smudge my drawing. Just start by drawing the leg. And then that ankle
bone, which I can see. Even though this person
has a flat foot, you can still see
that there's a bit of a shadow right
underneath here, which tells you that the
foot isn't exactly flat, but it's in the sand. So the part that
you don't actually see is the part
that's in the sand. And so I might want to express that a little bit
more vividly in my drawing. And then it's hard
to see the toes. So I'm not going to put
in too much detail. Instead, I just want to focus on the shape and the line work. Okay, so now with this foot, this foot is very
different because they're both on a slightly
different angle. You can tell this ankle bone is lower because it's on a different side on the
outside of the foot. So it's gonna be a lot lower. Okay, and then these toes
are a little bit tricky, so I kinda want to
map them out first. You can see them,
but just barely. You can see the bottom
curves of these toes. So I'm just more drawing the bottom curves
than really much it because you don't really
see too much of it. And then I'm just going to
imagine where the toenails are just to give
it some more form. Just giving you a
little bit of hatching. You'll also notice
that this heel here, it looks more
squished just because of the way it's laid out. Okay. And then the last
five-minute study is going to be feet and heels. Feet and heels are also
really difficult to draw. And let's try and
capture this together. So you can see that the feet and the heels are really vertical. I'm starting off with
more of a shape gesture rather than a form or rather
than a complete line. Note your negative space here. But both of the feet come
down in a very vertical way. This foot is a little
bit wider than the other one because
you see more of it. Notice this heel and kinda
where this heel goes. Okay, so you want to
draw the feet as if the shoes aren't were
not there first. Okay. And then you can draw the shoes on as
part of the shape. I've drawn the straps together because they
are in different angles. You want to draw them together so that they make more sense. There's the bottom of the shoe. Focus on your shapes. Focus on getting your shapes right. Once or shapes, right? Everything's easy. Alright, so I have
the basic shapes. So now I'm going to
refine those shapes. You can really see
the ankles here. I feel like the ankles are
pretty important to the story. These feet. I think it's important to
understand how fit in shoes, how it all relates. Because I only have
a minute left. I'm just going to make
the shoes a different color than the feet and try to add some
toenails in there just to indicate the
direction of the feet. If I put the big
toe nail in there, I should be able to
figure out the rest. Pay attention to
this line because this line is very straight. That's all our
studies for today. Great job with the feet. You can use this GSL
method of drawing to try anything from hands to feed
two objects to people. This method is a proven
and tested method that works really well
for me in terms of breaking down all of
those little details into simple lines and
shapes and forms. Again, great job and
keep practicing. And I will see you soon.
Winged Canvas, Classes for Art Nerds
