Torso Studies and Bold Lines
Greetings Friends,
I can’t believe we’re halfway through January already! Which means we are getting close to FIGUARY! If you are not familiar, Figuary is an artist challenge for the month of February, encouraging artists to sharpen their figure drawing skills all 28 days. It was originally created by Sharyn and Larry Withers of Croquis Cafe and they continue to host it with a special set of reference videos. (By the way, I highly recommend Croquis Cafe as one of the best figure drawing resources out there! It’s a very comprehensive library of both photos and recorded life drawing video sessions all at an affordable yearly price.)
Anyway that’s something to look forward to for next month. In the meantime I started this month with a nice torso study from one of my old anatomy reference books:
Here, my main goal was paying attention to the anatomical structures and landmarks of the torso and breaking them down into simpler shapes. This was the first time I’ve done this in a very long time and a great exercise.
Yesterday I had the opportunity to participate in an international figure drawing session hosted by @helenroetenlifedrawing and @strakyhutch inspired by the life and work of Kiki de Montparnasse. For this session I used HB pencil, graphite stick, and a carpenter pencil. The poses were 5, 10, and 15 minutes (although I did go back and continued to work the longer poses so they were probably closer to 30-40 minutes each.)
Some of the foreshortened poses are a little flat, but I’m mostly satisfied with the set. As I have been developing my comic and illustration skills over the years, I have gained an affinity for bold lines and I guess that’s definitely showing up in my figure drawing. How have your techniques changed over the years?
Speaking of my comics and illustrations, you can check out my other newsletter for those.
Until next time, thanks for fishing with John!
-Calvin