Photography is an immediate reaction. Drawing is a meditation.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
The RAWness of Life Drawing
Life drawing has long been seen as the base-line for artists. Learn to draw the body and you can draw pretty much anything. At least that was the old-school way of teaching. In more contemporary terms, life drawing has been ousted to the backrooms, only to be visited by drawing club enthusiasts and dedicated artists. Go to art school because you can draw and you may never draw again. But, here’s the thing: the human body really is the base-line for everything. It is our shared experience, in whatever wonderful form it takes: big, small, long, lean, twisted, heavy, delicate, broken, scarred or damaged. Our bodies. The place where we speak from.
Learning to draw the human body is much more than line on paper, it teaches you empathy and understanding, not only about the human form but about being human.
It helps you to tap into your intuition and what you already instinctively know about the body through lived experience, alongside the inherited knowledge of millions of years of evolution.
In the case of life drawing, as in all drawing, the more you practice the more perceptive you will become, gaining the ability to read how the body behaves and how emotion and mood is expressed through stance. It is a very useful life skill to have!
Moreover, the life drawing studio can often feel sacred. The process requires a focus and intensity, of looking, scrutinising, thinking and reflecting. It can feel like an immersion and a privilege. How often do we get to study the live human body so close at hand, in a shared and supportive communal space?
Some tips:
Look and look and look again. Study the model before making marks, situate the body in relation to the surrounding space, notice where the horizontal and vertical lines of the room sit against the body. As a general rule, for every two marks you make on paper look back to the model, and don’t be afraid of making marks on the paper whilst looking at the body. This intuitive way of working will become more familiar as you practice.
Find a flow. Use fluid lines to express the sweep of the back, curve of the shoulders, angle of limbs. Charcoal is a good starting point as it allows for sweeping strokes whilst able to capture solidity through tone to reflect the curves, bumps and hollows of the body.
Practice. Practising is different to just doing. Practising is striving to do better, to refine and improve. It is a never-ending pursuit, we are always learning. And this is your time to grapple with the hard bits: foreshortening, faces, hands and feet. It will take time but with regular practice you will find a way through.
Sharing. Drawing alongside others can be hugely rewarding and inspiring and it is often where you learn the most. In the life-drawing studio, no-one is judging, everyone is locked in their own challenge. More experienced artists know the struggle and are keen to offer encouragement and tips to help others. They are also learning and have learnt that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. But, always there is something to learn.
The Bare Essentials
Paper. The larger the better. It is hard to fit the human body onto a small sheet and large paper will encourage confident and bold lines. Either loose sheets or a sketch pad (preferably A2 or bigger) is fine.
Board, or hard cardboard to lean on, with a dog clip to fix the paper down.
Willow charcoal is great to start with, as it encourages a variety of lines from sharp to smudged and you can repeatedly rework over the image.
Apron/ old clothes. Working with charcoal or other media can be messy and you want the freedom to make marks without worrying about the mess. Clean up afterwards when you can look back at your achievements!
Images
1. Merry Pann, Movement & The Body workshop, August 2022. Mixed media.
2. Sarah Chapman, Movement & The Body workshop, August 2022. Oil stick.
3. Mona Nasser, Movement & The Body Workshop, August 2022. Ink and brush.
