Figure Drawing Fundamentals: From Stick Figures to Gesture
Figure drawing intimidated me until I broke it into fundamentals. Here is the progression from stick figures to gestures that actually work. Figure drawing was the skill that intimidated me most. The human body is complex, with hundreds of muscles, joints that bend in specific directions, and proportions that vary from person to person. Trying to learn it all at once left me overwhelmed, and my early figure drawings looked like mannequins that had been through a car crash. The breakthrough came when I abandoned the goal of drawing a realistic figure and focused instead on fundamentals, each one isolated and practiced until it became automatic. Here is the progression that took me from stick figures to figures with life and motion. Start with the Stick Figure, But Make It Purposeful The stick figure is the most mocked drawing in art, but it is the correct starting point for figure drawing. A stick figure captures the skeleton, the underlying structure that every figure is built on. The difference between a careless stick figure and a purposeful one is that the purposeful one captures the pose: the angle of the shoulders, the tilt of the hips, the weight distribution, the line of action that runs through the body. More guides are on the Draw Perfect Blog.