Figure Drawing Blog Post

Learning about figure drawing with Tommy Van Auken was really informative and helped me understand how to set the foundations for making good figure drawings. Before I learned a lot from this experience, I think I tended to try to make figures in a backwards fashion, aiming for detail without the necessary structure. After learning how to do proportion correctly, I always noticed there was something off with the figures. They never felt alive, and their poses were always weird, even if I tried to directly copy some reference with actual movement in it.

However, learning gesture drawings was extremely helpful. Exaggerating the movement in the skeleton of the drawing like you were constructing an actual human with motion and spirit really helped how much more real the figure drawings I was able to make could be, and it really helped me a lot. Gesture drawing was super enjoyable and I think I will definitely continue it in the future.

Also, Tommy's lessons on understanding the human figure's topography as if it were a landscape and not a person was really interesting, and especially helped me understand how to make figures on a smaller scale. Normally, I found it hard to fit all of the features of the human in because I drew them like they were icons and not shapes. However, after his lessons regarding following the shape of the person with searching, I finally understand how to zoom out and simplify features into values rather than trying to make cartoonish blocky copies of eyes, noses, and mouths.