How to Draw Figures from Imagination

How to draw figures from imagination

In the previous video, I showed you the template for sculpting the ribcage that every Life Drawing Academy Correspondence Course student will get for doing a task of figure drawing. I also demonstrated how to make a small, but anatomically accurate and proportionate model of a ribcage. This clay model was used to draw a ribcage from life from various points of view.

Now, it's time to continue the topic of how to draw human figures from imagination. Previously, I promised to show you how to make a measuring tool for sculpting and drawing. You will need a piece of wire. I cut it in half. The size of this tool is rather small, but it will be sufficient for the purpose of this task. Two bits of wire are bent and I connect them together at one end. The whole process takes under two minutes. It is very easy to make such a measuring tool.

Here is another template that Life Drawing Academy Correspondence Course students will get free of charge in the personal tutoring course. It is well-proportioned and can be used for measuring the model's skull. A small model of a human head is made of wax-based clay. It is not ready yet and I am checking its dimensions. This head will be in the same scale as the ribcage model made in the previous video. Like with the ribcage model, the head has to be polished and shaped with precision. Also, it has to be proportionate and symmetrical. For sculpting, I am using the Monster Clay. The hard grade is the best for model making. This clay is sulfur-free and oil based. So it will never dry and will hold its shape well.

There are various measurements that can be taken and checked when it comes to sculpting. The more checks you take the more accurate your model will be. It is very easy to take measurements with high precision using this metal wire tool. Another DIY wire tool I use is handy for scraping off excess clay. This wire loop is a very simple, but effective tool. If you wish, you can make more detailed facial features like eyebrows, eyes and nose. However, for the purpose of this task, such details are not necessary because how to draw facial features is covered in depth in other sculpting and drawing tasks of the Life Drawing Academy Correspondence Course.

One of the main proportions of the human face is the rule of thirds. This proportion is easy to check with a piece of paper that divides the height of the face into three equal parts. Such thirds give two horizontal levels at the top and the bottom of the nose. Also, the line of the ear is not vertical, but tilted at about 15 degrees. Such an angle has to be depicted in this model. The lateral end of the eyebrow points to the bottom part of the ear. The face can be outlined as well. Also, keep in mind that in the top view, the skull is not oval. Its sides are narrower at the face and wider towards the back of the head. Once again, all dimensions can be double-checked before finalizing the head model.

I will now make a quick sketch of a head to explain the main proportions of a human head. I do it in pen and ink for two reasons. First, it is quicker to draw in ink and secondly, every line is clearly visible for you in this video. Drawing in ink is a great way to train your hand and improve sketching skills. Because ink lines are not erasable, you would have to pay more attention to accuracy and precision of lines. This will help you to learn how to draw without mistakes. If you make mistakes in ink, fixing them would be problematic. The only way is to start another drawing. Making multiple sketches is faster in ink than in pencil. Quantity will inevitably turn into a better quality. That is why I love drawing in ink and would recommend you doing the same. When traveling, I always take a sketchbook and the fountain pen with me to draw while waiting for a flight and in museums. Drawing in museums, making copies of the Old Masters and sketching classical sculptures is a great way not only to practice drawing, but also to get a good taste in art. You may see numerous videos where I sketch in museums. Recently, I came back from Vienna where I visited several museums, and will make a new video presentation about it.

Now, with the rough sketch completed, let's talk about proportions. The main proportion is easy to remember - the height of the head divided in half gives us the level of eyes. The next rule is also very important. The height of the face can be divided into three equal parts - the forehead, the nose and the distance from the base of the nose to the chin.

Here is the head model. I used thin wires to give contours of the face and also its levels according to the rule of thirds. Now, I will connect this head model to the ribcage. To make this connection semi-flexible, I will use a metal wire. It is optional. The neck can be sculpted in clay, but you will see why the wire is better. Actually, the wire spring is too flexible, so I will put a piece of plastic inside. One spring will be used for the neck portion of the spinal column. And another spring will be the throat and windpipe.

Check where the spinal column connects to the base of the skull. This place is right between the ears. I take a bit of clay off this spot to give some room for the spine. The spine connects nicely to the skull, so does the throat. The template can be used to check the distance between the head and the ribcage. You can see that the neck is flexible like the real thing. This is the beauty of this model because we will use it for drawing from life. To outline contours of the ribcage, I will also use a thin wire.

Here is another important proportion to keep in mind. The height of the face is comparable to the height of the breastbone. We can check this proportion on the model.

To make the neck more stable and three-dimensional, I will add two sternocleidomastoid muscles. Such a muscle originates from the sternum and collarbone and inserts to the mastoid process of the skull, which is located at the skull's base right behind the ear.

This model is now ready. It only features a simplified ribcage, the stylised head and the very basic construction of the neck. The breastbone and face dimension is also comparable to the length of the sternocleidomastoid muscle. This is another important aspect for this lesson. I will check this size using the metal wire tool.

With the model fully assembled for the purpose of this task, let's make different sketches from various points of view. In the next video, I will show you how to make this model more realistic by adding the necessary bones and muscles, but for sketching we will do in this lesson, all those details are not necessary. Instead, I want you to learn the most basic things about how a human head connects to the neck and how the neck connects to the ribcage. The fewer details we have in this model, the easier the task of drawing such a model.

Here's the ribcage, how to draw it was explained in the previous video. The height of the breastbone can be used as a measuring stick for the sternocleidomastoid muscle length. Keep in mind that all people are different and therefore proportions will vary from person to person. But knowing such proportions is necessary to have a good understanding of what to measure from life and apply in drawing.

I depicted two sternocleidomastoid muscles that spiral around the neck going upward and backward. The axis between these muscles is divided in half. This is the spot where the spinal column connects to the skull. The base of the skull can be outlined as an oval. At the front, this oval is the level of the base of the nose. It is an important landmark of the human head. The thing to remember when drawing portraits, is that the nose ends at the level where the base of the skull is.

The breastbone, which is called sternum, can be used as a measuring guide. We can divide it into three equal parts. These three parts are the same in size as thirds of the face. That is why, now we can take one-third and mark it above the sternocleidomastoid muscle. This is where the level of eyebrows is. This is also the height of the ear because an ear is equal in height to the nose. At the top of the ear, we can put an oval contour of the eyebrows. Also, one-third goes above and below the ear. I will indicate the thirds of the face in this sketch. At the top, there is the contour of the forehead. At the bottom, there is the contour of the chin. The central line of the face goes vertically. This is the face symmetry axis. The height of the head can be divided in half. This is where the level of eyes will be. As you can see, there is very little guesswork when you know the proportions of the head and body. Once again, an important dimension, which is the height of the face, the height of a breastbone and the height of the sternocleidomastoid muscle, is a very helpful guide in portrait drawing. I will mark it as "A". A measuring tool can be used to double-check this dimension.

To complete this sketch, I will outline the face and head. I have to say that when drawing a portrait, an artist does not have to depict all those virtual helping lines of levels and proportions on paper. At the same time, a skilful artist must know and use such proportions, keeping them in mind.

Let's make another sketch. I will start from the ribcage. The first pair of ribs is not horizontal, but tilted. Its diameter is the size of the neck at its base. A human body looks better when it is depicted in the parallel perspective. That is why I draw virtual lines of horizontal levels parallel to each other. Because a ribcage is tilted, its contours are seen from below. We covered this feature in the previous video lesson.

The pit of the neck is an important landmark. This is where the breastbone ends and the neck begins. Two sternocleidomastoid muscles point upward from that landmark. In this sketch, I will rotate the head and therefore the axis between two muscles is tilted. The height of the ear is one-third of the breastbone and this ear defines the locations of the facial features levels. The height of the face is divided into three parts. Its height is equal to the height of the breastbone. The nose takes the middle third. It is between the level of the eyebrows and the level of the skull base. The lateral end of the eyebrow points to the bottom of the ear. The eye level divides the height of the head in half. Because the head is tilted and rotated, the sternocleidomastoid muscles are not equal in size to each other. Muscles will flex and extend, and their dimensions are not constant. The lower third divided in half gives us the bottom edge of the lower lip. This is a classical canon proportion. In real life, it will vary from person to person. Making portrait sketches on a small scale is faster, but it also gives less space for depicting facial features. That is why separate video lessons of the Life Drawing Academy course are dedicated to the topic of how to draw portraits and facial features.

I will make another sketch with a bit of a different tilt of the head. The ribcage gives a good indication of the body position. The torso is turned to the left. We see it from the same point of view as in the previous sketch.

The contours of the ribcage are seen from below while the outline of the first pair of ribs is seen from above. This is because these ribs are not horizontal, they are higher at the back and lower at the front. The ribcage, however, is tilted backward. I'm talking here not about the ribs, but the overall volume of this part of the body. The plane of the first pair of ribs contains two small ovals - one is for the spinal columns and another is for the throat. The head in this drawing will be rotated down. That is why the base of the skull is not horizontal in this case, but tilted. Also, you can see how other lines are tilted - the line where the ear connects to the head and the contours of the head levels according to the rule of thirds. The central line of face symmetry is not vertical for the same reason. With all main levels in place, it is now easier to depict facial features. Such a task would be more challenging without considering the construction of a human head. At the back, there is the outline of the shoulders. In the next video lesson, where we will talk about bones and muscles, I will explain how the anatomy of the shoulder girdle influences its geometry and how to draw it in a realistic manner. But for now, let's continue with the topic of drawing a head, neck and ribcage.

It's time to make another sketch. The first pair of ribs is outlined as an oval. Its axis is tilted because the plane of these ribs is not horizontal. The breastbone is tilted at an angle as well. At the bottom, it protrudes forward a bit. The virtual line at the bottom end of the ribcage is seen in perspective. Three more parallel lines are drawn at the same vanishing angle. The curved vertical lines are the borders separating the bone parts of ribs from their cartilages. In its normal position, the ribcage is tilted; therefore we see its contours from below. The cylinder of the neck is not vertical, it is slightly inclined forward. The sternocleidomastoid muscle wraps around this cylinder. Above this muscle, there is the level of the base of the skull. This is where the bottom edge of the ear is. The horizontal contours of the face are depicted as curved lines. They are parallel to each other. Because the head is tilted to one side, the central line of the face is not vertical, but tilted as well. All these landmarks are very handy to draw a tilted head. Marking such levels on paper really helps to avoid guesswork and distortions in drawing. Of course, a proficient artist would keep such virtual lines in mind rather than on paper, but to learn the head's construction and proportions, you need to make multiple sketches of what you know instead of drawing what you see. This is what constructive drawing is about. You draw what you know about the objects you see rather than copying what you see without any knowledge of anatomy and proportions.

This is what we teach in the Life Drawing Academy online course. This course is suitable for figurative artists who already have some experience and skills in constructive drawing. Principles of constructive drawing include linear and aerial perspective, drawing all objects as if they are transparent, using axes of symmetry, alignments, cross-points and intersections. They also include the theory of contours. When you know such principles, it is much easier to learn human body construction including anatomy and proportions. If you want to self-learn constructive drawing, you can check the Drawing Academy online course. This course comes with 46 multi-part video lessons on various topics including perspective and anatomy. However, if you feel that anatomy for artists is your weak skill and want to fill this gap in your drawing education, check out the Anatomy Master Class. This online course comes with 26 video lessons on the anatomy of a human body and head. It is easy to study at the Anatomy Master Class because it only gives what is important for drawing - the skeletal and muscular construction. Also, in this online class, we do not use complicated Latin names and refer to all bones and muscles by their

common names you already know, like ribcage instead of thoracic cage, the collarbone instead of clavicle, the breastbone instead of sternum, and so on.

I will keep sketching this ribcage and head model from various points of view. You can appreciate that this is not really drawing an exact copy of what you see, because I add facial features and tilt and rotate the head in various positions. At the same time, such a model greatly helps to see relationships of masses as well as angles and curvature of contours. It is very easy to handle and rotate such a small model at any angle. This would not be possible should you draw a classical marble statute at a museum for example. Of course, such a simplified model lacks many details, but this is also its advantage. At this step, we are not interested in all bones and muscles of the torso, head and neck, but simply want to learn how the head connects to the body. If you can draw the overall shapes of the torso and head, going into smaller details later will be much easier. That is why making a small simple model and sketching it from various points of view is an important step in your figurative drawing education. The correct drawing process is to draw whatever you want from big masses to small details. This is exactly what we do now - learning to draw big masses. Details will come later. Such exercise will assist next time you draw a real human body. There will be no confusion about how to connect a head to the body. This will help you to avoid many amateur mistakes. For example, many beginner artists draw the neck as a vertical cylinder sticking from the top edge of the torso.

This is not the case in real life. As you can see, the first pair of ribs is not horizontal. Its oval is tilted and such an oval has to be depicted as if you see it as fully transparent. This way, you will start drawing the neck the right way. Also, knowing the construction features presented in this video, you will understand how to use relative proportions. Such proportions will vary from person to person, but understanding their relationships will give you good guidance of what to measure from life and see how your model deviates from classical proportions. For example, you can compare if the height of the face is equal to the length of the neck in your model, or maybe your model has a bit longer or shorter neck. You can also check if the thirds of the face are true in life, or maybe your model has slightly longer nose and higher forehead. There are also some other facts that you will know without even measuring. For example the base of the skull is the level of the base of the nose. It is also where the lower edge of the ear is. It is also the level of the bottom edge of the cheekbone. And above all, this is also the level where the neck connects to the head. The axis that goes between the ears is the rotational axis of the head. You must know and understand this feature without even measuring it from life because the atlas , or the first vertebra, is not visible inside the neck. Nevertheless, if you know how it works, it will be easier to draw a head tilted or rotated at some angle. I will give you one explanation that will help you understand this important axis. If you stand before the mirror and put your index fingers into your ears, the imaginary rotational axis will be very close to the direction of your fingers. Now, rotate the head up and down. In the mirror, you will see that although your head rotates, the fingers stay in place. This is because this axis is where the head connects to the neck and where it rotates up and down. Such knowledge helps in portrait drawing. Now, you can imagine that if you draw a neck correctly, the head will be connected to the first vertebra of this neck in the spot between the ears at the base of the skull.

To get good portrait drawing skills, you need to make numerous drawings of a head connected to the ribcage. At the beginning, draw the virtual lines of levels, depict the spinal column of the neck and the throat as two slightly curving cylinders. And mark down the rotational axis of the head. All this construction will help to position the head correctly.

When drawing figures and portraits from life, many amateur artists do not understand the construction and anatomy of a human body. This results in various mistakes. If you want to get good drawing skills, the way to begin is by learning how to draw good quality lines, flat geometric shapes, such as squares, triangles, circles, ellipses; then to learn how to draw three-dimensional geometric solids like cubes, spheres, cylinders, cones, prisms, etc. The next step would be learning rules of linear and aerial perspective. Do you know that there are 16 different types of perspective? Many contemporary art college graduates don't; so, if you can name all 16 types, you are not alone. I have to say that not every type of perspective is suitable for drawing from life, but general knowledge of such types will give you a wider view on how to draw in perspective. Also, there are 21 rules of drawing in perspective. Can you name all of them? If not, how would you use them in drawing? In addition to perspective, there are also many more constructive drawing principles. There are 34 of them. Such principles include such topics as how to intersect objects, how to get the best contours for depicting the three-dimensional nature of objects, and many more. In this lesson, I keep referring to two different meanings - outlines and contours. They are not the same. While there is usually only one outline for a given object, there are indefinite contours that can be obtained for such an object. Not all contours are good for drawing purposes. Some will flatten its shape, but others will make it appear three-dimensional. Do you know how to obtain contours by intersection and which contours to choose for drawing? There are many other know-hows that a proficient artist should know and use for figurative drawing. All these topics are covered in depth in the Life Drawing Academy Correspondence Course.

This is one of the best personal tutoring courses available today on the Internet. It is also the cheapest one-to-one tutoring course. It comes with unlimited tutoring for a one-time fee. This course is unique. To begin with, every student in this course gets a dedicated art teacher, who is also an accomplished fine artist with many years of creative and teaching experience. Every student gets a specially designed curriculum that is tailored to students current level of skills. Also, such a curriculum takes into account what a student wants to learn and achieve. Before you will get a personally designed curriculum, tutors will assess your level of drawing skills. Your curriculum will cover all the topics that you need to learn or improve. Some drawing topics are mandatory. For example, if you are a complete beginner, you would have to learn proficient ways of handling a pencil, professional techniques of hatching and cross-hatching, rules of perspective and so on. If you do not know the 15 elements of composition, or how to achieve depth in drawing, you will learn all those topics as well. Such topics are needed for every non-abstract artist who wants to get good skills of drawing whatever you see or imagine.

When it comes to drawing human figures and portraits, we teach all you need to know about the anatomy for artists, classical proportions of a human body, head, and face; how to use constructive principles in figurative drawing and so on. This lesson is just a very small part on such a topic.

In the Life Drawing Academy Correspondence Course, you will get 100 drawing tasks one by one. Every next task is given after you complete the previous one with needed quality. Every task is explained and demonstrated in every detail you need to know. That is why it is very easy to follow this course. Just watch video lessons, read the description, look at step-by-step illustrations and follow the instructions. Every drawing you will make in this course will be checked by your tutor and you will get a full feedback on your progress, as well as on all mistakes you made. The tutor will also advise what to do to fix those mistakes. In this course, there is no way to fail. If you need additional instructions or demonstrations, you will get them as well. The tutors will work with you one step at a time until you successfully achieve good results in every task. There are no limits, no deadlines, not time pressure. You come up with your own schedule and as long as you work on the given tasks, you will achieve the advanced level of drawing skills by the end of this course.

You may wonder how personal tutoring works if you do not see your tutor face to face. Actually, there is so much useful information that it is better that you get all the instructions and feedback in writing. This way, you will never misplace the information given. You can come back, reread and redo the tasks if needed. At art colleges, you won't get such tutoring and service. Even if an art college teacher will give you some information, do you know that less than 15% of such info would be remembered by the next week. In the Correspondence Course it is different. You can check 100% of give information at any time in the future as long as you do not delete our written tasks, feedbacks and critiques. Also, in this course, you will be asked to take videos from time to time to demonstrate how you do certain tasks. We give advice on how to improve when we see mistakes in such videos. Such video communication works the other way as well. If you need some explanation or demonstration, we will make special videos just for you. This is much better than seeing an art teacher doing something only once in front of your eyes, because you can rewatch our videos as many times as needed and come back to them at any time in the future. Once again, no art college would do such service for you.

Our experience shows that only after 15 drawing tasks, our students are able to make artworks with much more knowledge and understanding of constructive drawing principles than the majority of contemporary art college graduates would learn in four years. And this is only after 15% of the course. Imagine how much more professional our graduates become after completing the entire Life Drawing Academy Correspondence Course.

Because in this personal tutoring course every student receives a custom-tailored drawing curriculum, this course is available for complete beginners as well as for advanced and accomplished artists. Every student learns something that is missing in his or her art education. For example, a complete beginner would learn all the needed topics to get proficient in drawing whatever one sees or imagines, while the advanced artist would work on improving the skills one lacks, for example, drawing human figures in motion, depicting emotions in portraits, working on engaging and beautiful compositions that evoke emotions and tell a story, and so on. To enroll in this course, visit the Life Drawing Academy Correspondence Course.

Let's come back to our sketching. I made several more drawings of the ribcage and head seen from the front. Now, it is time to draw this model from the back. There are several things you need to keep in mind when drawing a ribcage from this point of view. To begin with, the plane of the first pair of ribs will be seen not from above, but from below. Also, the contours of the ribcage will be now seen from above, not from below. This is the reverse situation when we had the front view. Although the breastbone is not visible now, you can depict it anyway if you need it. Alternatively, you may keep this dimension in mind without overloading the sketch with invisible lines. This depends on your imagination and drawing abilities. The back view of the head follows the same drawing principles as before. The base of the skull remains an important landmark. The cranium will be located above this level, while the chin will be one-third of the face lower than that level. Even though the upper part of the trapezius muscle is not sculpted in this model, I depict it anyway to indicate what covers the back side of the neck. The outlines of the shoulders are also not present in the model, yet I draw them anyway.

I will now make another sketch of this model in the back-side view. The axis of the spinal column is depicted as the "S" shaped line., The neck part of this column is bent forward, while the ribcage part of the spine is curved backward. Once again, the virtual levels of the ribcage are depicted as parallel lines in perspective. These lines are used for marking the contours of the ribcage.

These contours are seen from above in this view. Even though the pit of the neck is not visible from the back, it is a good idea to mark this important spot because the distance from this pit to the base of the skull is comparable to the height of the breastbone and the height of the head. This dimension is an important measurement in the human body. For example, the height of the face is also equal to the length of a hand and to the height of the shoulder blade. Such proportions are fully explained in multiple video lessons of the Life Drawing Academy course. I actually presented three different canons of classical proportions of a human body in this course. Together, they give very useful information on what to look for and measure both in life and in drawing.

You can see that even in the back view, I use the rule of thirds of the face. Three levels are marked as curved lines. The middle section contains the nose and the ear. And the top and bottom contours mark the top of the forehead and the bottom edge of the chin respectively.

In these quick sketches, I schematically mark the shaded areas by hatching. This is optional. If you make just linear sketches that would be fine. The purpose of this task is to learn the construction of the torso, head and neck, not to practice tonal rendering, which will be covered in other tasks.

Let's make one more drawing. If you wonder how many sketches to make, the more the better. Repetition is the key to learning. As you can appreciate, I'm not striving for perfection in every sketch. If I draw some line not as intended, I leave it as is and make another sketch. Every sketch is different. There are slightly different poses and also different tilts and rotation of the head. There are different points of view. Ideally you should make at least 300 sketches from different angles. This will embed the needed knowledge of how to draw the ribcage and head from any point you like. So, next time you need to draw a human body from imagination, this would not be a challenge for you.

I understand that making 300 sketches may sound like too many. Actually, it is not. When drawing in pen and ink, it takes about 90 seconds to do one small sketch. You can see it in this video. At this speed, it would take under 8 hours to complete 300 drawings. Some artists take a much longer time to draw just one fully rendered figure. However, this exercise is different. It is about quantity and variety of angles and poses. Fast sketching is as important as long studies for developing strong drawing skills.

That is why if you are a student in the Life Drawing Academy Correspondence Course, I want to see you making at least 300 different sketches. Also, I would recommend sketching in pen and ink. This will train your fine motor skills as well eye-hand coordination. You can fit four sketches per each A4 sheet of paper. For that purpose, I use a sketchbook. It is easier to keep all sketches in one place. Which sketchbook to use is up to you. There is no perfect art material that will make your skills better. Go for smooth paper with fine tooth. Such paper is more suited for dip pens and fountain pens because they will glide in any direction easily. I like drawing in brown ink, but any color would do. Black is good as well.

You may notice that sometimes I turn the fountain pen 180 degrees. This is because it is not flexible and different boldness of lines cannot be achieved by varying pressure on the pen. So, this way, I achieve slimmer and thicker lines. Many calligraphers would find this technique not acceptable, but for calligraphy, I use a dip pen with a flexible nib that can produce variable boldness lines. Anyway, you may draw with a fountain pen without rotating it. Also, different pens have different widths of nibs. Which one to use is down to personal preferences. I have a collection of fountain and dip pens, and draw various things with different pens.

This model doesn't have any facial features, so it is totally optional to draw the nose, eyes and mouth. This exercise is not about drawing a portrait, but the overall shape of the head. However, it is necessary to draw the ears because they serve the purpose of constructing the three levels of the face. How to draw a portrait is the topic of multiple video lessons in the life Drawing Academy course. However, if you want to learn more about portrait drawing, you may check my book "How to Draw a Portrait: Step-by-step Instructions for Beginner Artists" https://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-Portrait-Step-step/dp/B09CRTR7BQ It is available in eBook, paperback and hard-cover formats on Amazon.

I will flip through pages of my sketchbook to show you more sketches from different points of view. As you can see, the head is tilted and rotated at different angles. Even though I made small portraits, you can just outline the head without facial features and only indicate the contours of the face and its three levels. Hatching the shaded areas is also optional. Four small sketches comfortably fit on the page. If your book is smaller, then you may end up with one sketch per page.

Now, let's continue sketching. By the way, in the next video, I will show you how to make the shoulder blades for this model and the upper arm bones. Also, I will explain the main anatomical features of the shoulder girdle and which muscles are important in this part of the body. I will also sculpt those muscles and explain all you need to know about them.

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