A Stack of Figure Drawings and Aching Feet

My Saturday afternoons have been reserved for figure drawing sessions with a group of artists in Oracle. A lot of hard work, aching feet, and a pile of figure drawings are the result. And what is the point, you might ask?

Well, I view this as an exercise in training my eye, brain and hand to cooperate. It's really the process that's important to me, more than the actual product. When I do figure drawings, I stand at my easel and work with my whole body engaged in capturing the movement in the model's pose.


The process works best when I'm not worrying about the outcome. When I get back to my studio, I look at the results of the three hours of drawing. Above are a couple of examples of gesture drawings from last Saturday's efforts. Below are several examples of drawings from longer poses. 15 minutes each, I think. All the drawings from this session were done in compressed charcoal.

Figure Drawing? One Time and I Was Hooked

The ongoing or sometimes occasional foray into figure drawing is something many artists do. Surrounded by myth and mystery, I daresay the ordinary (that is non-artist) person on the street would find the practice of drawing live, unclothed human figures unsettling, to say the least. And I'm sure that to the uninitiated it would be.

My first encounter with figure drawing happened oh lo those many years ago, during my first studio art class at U.C. Santa Barbara. Although prepared for what was happening, it was still something of a shock to set up my easel and have a male model drop his robe. I think this was a first for just about everyone in the class.

After a few instructions from the teacher, we all started drawing. First, are the gesture drawings. They can be anything from 10 second to one minute drawings wherein the artist strives to capture a sense of movement in the figure. It's hard work to look and draw that fast. Next comes longer, 2 or 3 minute poses. After that, a series of longer, 5 or 10 minute poses. Within a few minutes, I was totally absorbed in drawing. The next thing I knew, the three hour studio class was over. I was hooked. And totally exhausted.