Gesture Drawing – Make your own Human Figure Manikin

Seeing-Drawing the ‘gesture’ is a fundamental skill in being able to draw a human figure. I teach drawing at Emily Carr and elsewhere and developed a sequence for correctly scaling a gesture so as not to ‘go off the page” in life drawing. Here are some pix of an 11 inch aluminum wire sculpture armature I made to create poses for drawing without needing a live model or manikin. I also include a handout I give my classes.

To create your own wire manikin: Draw a stick figure on 8 1/2 x 11 paper first. Bend wire on top of your drawing to get a proportionate figure. Aluminum sculpture wire from an art store is best, and use a pliers to bend accurately for the initial figure. You can photo about 10 or 20 poses to create a library to sketch from for practice.

Faces, Scale Figures & Perspective for Life Drawing (5 videos) {Nov 2016}

There are two main ways of approaching the figure. They complement each other. One is OBSERVATION (Life drawing or copying reference photos). The other is CONSTRUCTION  (Using scale and proportion methods to create a figure with little or no references). The two can and should be used together for a full skillset. Both depend on  the armature of ‘gesture’ for liveliness and composition. These five videos are an introduction to useful methods of CONSTRUCTION. You can also look under the Category: “FACE AND FIGURE” for many more videos.

Faces, Scale Figures & Perspective (1 of 5)  {Nov 2016}

Faces, Scale Figures & Perspective (2 of 5)  {Nov 2016}

Faces, Scale Figures & Perspective (3 of 5)  {Nov 2016}

Faces, Scale Figures & Perspective (4 of 5)  {Nov 2016}

Faces, Scale Figures & Perspective (5 of 5)  {Nov 2016}

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