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Life Drawing

HAN VAN
Jan 18, 2019
2 min read

Life drawing sessions were put in place to teach proportions and to learn to draw from objects around us rather than images from a computer screen.

The first thing we learnt as a life drawing technique was how to measure using a pencil. We were taught that this method would work best when using two pencils - one to measure with and one to draw with. We would first hold the top of the pencil up to the top of the object we were drawing (e.g the top of the head) and slide the thumb down to were that object ended (bottom of the head). Once that area was drawn out we could use it's proportions to work out the measurements for other body parts. This was done by taking the pencil measurement for the head and then multiplying/dividing it for the next subsections of the object we were drawing (the neck measurement was around 2/3s of the head measurement).

Proportions are important as they add realism to the drawing. There's a rule in art called 'The perfect 7' which depicts the measurements for a 'perfect' human. The majority of people however don't fit into this rule as people come in all different shapes, heights and sizes.

Putting the measurement techniques we had learnt into practice helped me draw the life model a lot as when drawing from visuals I usually struggle a lot with proportions. The proportions I drew still weren't perfect as the arms turned out a little bit shorter than they should have in retrospect but I was really happy with the way my sketches turned out as I'd never practiced anything like this prior to this lesson.