LIFE DRAWING
My figure drawing class in college lasted three hours, three times a week. This is to explain that the skill of working from a live model takes time and drill. For high school classes, each period for a couple of weeks should be used in order for students to gain a footing with the technical skills needed.
I have observed that people outside the discipline do not understand this approach. Students assume they must develop a completely realized image with accurate rendering of all details each time they draw. Consider the examples of student work below. The most significant quality in each drawing is accurate measurements. The surface rendering is not important because the proportions of the major shapes are the most essential skill to gain first, before details are considered. The rendering of the surface detail comes later.
The quality of a drawings does not just depend on accurate eye-sight. Every student drawing the model also has a body. As someone who took naturally to figure drawing, I realized early on, that it was the sensation of my ow body that informed my drawings as much as what I saw.
Students volunteer to model and take turns.
Notice., in these drawings there is no attention to detail, but a conscious effort to recored accurate proportions and attitude.
Artists move from the general to the specific. No details are recorded in the initial drawing, and for figure drawing classes, detail is ignored until the student can master the major proportions.
People unacquainted with the technical skill involved in visual art, see the surface of what they are drawing first, with all its details. But drawing from life requires that the entire subject is seen at once, surface detail is ignored, and the correct measurements are recorded first.
These examples of student work demonstrate the method of drawing without seeing detail, only the larger placement of shapes. Values are added, but surface detail is not rendered. Below, students work from “art horses” the department had built. Large format paper against a drawing board with conte (a kind of charcoal) is used.
Notice the student on the left has already recorded the entire figure first, before she begins to develop it.
I have learned that showing students how to develop the head, before they try drawing the whole figure is a good place to start.
I found it was useful to students to have some knowledge of the skeletal system. I borrowed a skeleton from the Biology department and hung it from the ceiling in the classroom.
Knowledge of how all the parts of the body fit together (and at what angles) helped their judgement when drawing a figure; particularly, how the head fits to the spine.
