Figuary Week 4
The final week of figure drawing month.
Hello! Welcome to fishing with John, the newsletter that isn’t about fishing, by a guy that isn't named John.
We have made through the final week of figure drawing month and it’s been a great month of drawing, and refining my gesture techniques. While, I have spent most of the month developing my “open line” method, this week I mainly focused on using the “continuous line” technique (which I also like to call “wire mannequin”) I had talked about last week. While, the open line is an advanced approach, the wire mannequin is a foundational basic.
Personally, I think the continuous line/wire mannequin is the best gesture technique for beginners. Probably the other most common technique for beginners is contour. Contour is a popular method, used in both gestures and finished drawings alike, where it focuses on outer edges and lines. It has been a long-time favorite of beginners and masters alike - including Picasso. Traditionally, it is also done with a continuous line, keeping your eyes on the model as much as possible. Both methods have this in common, however, while contour is thinking about edge and line, the wire mannequin is thinking about shape and volume. It causes you to look at the parts, but also how they relate to the whole. Because it focuses on representing volume of the form, it is an excellent resource for drawing foreshortening.
This approach was drilled into me when I was first learning in high school, and something I used through college. I Believe it has played a major role in helping me develop a strong grasp of representing form. Over the years, I have adopted a more intuitive freeform approach (which has also been called “the trial and error method”). So, this is actually the most I’ve used it in quite a while, and I’ve been reminded how much I like it.
If you would like to see it in action, I filmed a demo of it yesterday.
So now that you have a sense of the technique and how I use it, here is my collection from this weeks video sessions:
Here we are at the end of the Figuary drawing challenge, and I hope you’ve had some fun following along. Once again, all the reference videos are at croquis.cafe and I highly recommend this excellent resource! Figure drawing month is over and so are these weekly check ins, but I will keep drawing and see you next time.
Until then, thanks for fishing with John!
-Calvin