Part 1 of a step by step workflow for drawing figures. This lesson emphasizes the fundamentals and lessons covered in first 5 parts.
Newest
Maria Bygrove
10d
Visual lesson notes, the stages step by step.

@julienf
1mo
I did another one in about 20 minutes so the information would stick more in my mind. I had a blast doing it!

Maranda
1mo
Notes from the lesson. These were drawn on top of each other, but I separated them for the sake of viewing each step individually.
Ole Straumoy
2mo
Gesture stage only for now. Slow and steady wins the race and what not. These aren't done on a timer, it stresses me out too much. I struggle to reconcile the fluid, out of bounds essence of gesture with the "rigid answer" that is the reference. Hopefully that's something that comes with mileage. Shoulders are also never properly connected to the rest of the gesture, at least not at this stage which leaves them floating. And I don't care for that one bit. I might have to swap things around as the head, neck, spine approach eludes me and I struggle to place rib cage and pelvis properly. Which in turn makes the overall gesture too rigid.
Josh Drummond
3mo
Notes from the lesson. I learned similar steps from Figure Drawing for All It's Worth but it's very helpful to have a teacher guide you through them.

Carl Harrison
5mo
Hi all and Michael, here is my attempt at the lesson, would really appreciate any feed back or comments. Really learning a lot from the concepts in the course. Onto the next lesson. All the best!
Piyush LALWANI
6mo
hi sir, i have one doubt in work flow, many of time we are been asked to draw line or lines of action why i said lines casue (in some case we are asked to draw two lines like c and s curves). but in workflow you seems to omitted that part any particular reason behnd it ?
•
6mo
There are lessons on the gesture later on in the course. If you do have questions there feel free to jump ahead and see if those videos help. Otherwise, please feel at liberty to augment the workflow any way that feels comfortable.
B
8mo
S. Michael Hampton figure prac
Eyes of Lamia
8mo
Wow these are so good!

@lucastoonz86
8mo
I find I’m not the greatest with proportion or perspective but it maybe improving
@bumatehewok
8mo
Very information dense lessons makes my head hurt after each video!
I am curious if you use this process for live quick figure drawing.
Would you still try to go through step by step for say a 2 min pose? Would you limit or expand the number of steps you try to achieve based on the length of a pose? I guess this assuming you do quick poses at all.
•
8mo
I do use this as a framework for life drawing, definitely. And sure, I'll sometimes collapse, edit, or tweak steps. After a while though, once you internalize the lesson of each step, you can really just collapse it down into a direct line.
@tap3werm
8mo
Thank you Mr. Hampton.

Ter L
9mo
I made some drawing combining what was discussed in this lesson with what I've already been doing. I feel like the biggest challenge is to ignore the silhouette and essentially drawing the skeleton only. I do see that with this method, you get much more appealing gestures, since you aren't mistaking the bumps of flesh as part of the gesture. I definitely learned a lot here!
•
9mo
Excellent work!

@casildius
9mo
I'm likely going to revise this lecture since I was exhausted prior to starting it, as for the drawing I think the legs and the distance between the hips and chest are clearly the most erring (do add any observations if I messed any else)
I understand the approach, you're laying down the gesture lines and then adding shapes to better place the anatomy in later stages ( if I'm correct)
But is it possible to do just the gesture lines and immediately begin filling in the details of the body? If so do you demonstrate that in later lectures or know any artist which does what I've described?
Also here is the picture of my attempt
•
9mo
I'm sure there are artists that lay in the gesture and then go right to details, unfortunately I'm not aware of any. And, no, I don't do that later on. You can, however, check out the rendering videos. Those might have more of what you're looking for.
@amaka45
10mo
Had to revisit this assignment...

sara keyes
10mo
Martin Vrkljan
11mo
Approaching this in stages as described really keeps thing simple and helpful in later stages. I found it helpful to turn the cylinders into a kind of a "bread" shape by just "slicing" off one part of it to give it hard edges.
maciek szczech
11mo
240316 Sakura sketchbook, Mechanical pencil HB.
Nia Kovalevski
1yr
maciek szczech
11mo
I like how the lines "flow", giving a sense of movement.
•
1yr
Nice drawings!
JJ
1yr
Tried to take my time through the course. I struggle greatly with perspective, "clean lines" and form intersections. I found having the list to fall back on was helpful when I would get stuck or confused.
•
1yr
Great to hear! Studies look good. Just keep at it. It's all about repetition. No doubt you'll get it with more time.

@boltart48
1yr
I've been using your gesture methods for a while but I never went further than that despite my efforts, this video got me into attempting Construction over gesture properly for the first time. I'll make some attempts with some different gestures while doing this process.
•
1yr
Awesome!
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About instructor
Educator, painter, writer, and art historian. Author of Figure Drawing: Design and Invention.