When we draw people, we want to them to seem convincingly human, with bones and muscles, even though we are using two dimensions, not three. This applies even if the drawings are abstract and not meant to be realistic.
The illustrator or painter uses the power of observation to understand where bones and muscles are in the body. Changing reality is fine, but, you must understand what is being distorted or changed before that can successfully be easily done. This shouldn’t be a struggle. This takes patience and time!
One way to learn about what the human body looks like is to draw from a live, posed model. The model will be either nude, a life model, or clothed, a costume model. We might do this kind of drawing in a class. or hire models to sit for us in the studio.
Poses might be held for a short time so that we can just catch the gesture being made. other poses would be longer, probably between 5 and 20 minutes long, depending on how complicated the pose. Sometimes a model takes the same pose for long periods of time, taking breaks. It’s hard to sit very still! Sometimes we might have two models posing together.
Additionally, another way to learn about the body and how we move is to draw quick sketches of people we might see sitting at a meeting, on the bus or train, possibly having a meal with others at a restaurant or in a bar.
I take out my sketchbook and a pen or pencil whenever I can to try and capture all that I can about how people are when they are just being themselves.
This practice helps us understand the actions of the body when a person is sitting or standing in various ways. Maybe someone is holding a cup or a child, leaning into a conversation across a table, or sitting on a bar stool facing the bar. Drawing everything you can think of that people are doing and how they look doing it helps us make our paintings and drawings even when we don’t have a model in front of us.
Sometimes all that can be gotten down on paper is a few quick lines. other times, we can get more. Here are a few sketches of people I have done while at meetings or when I went out and about looking for people to draw.
