The eLearning Center for Gatlin Education Services

In this six-lesson course, learn how to make your figure drawings come to life. Following traditional methods, you’ll learn the standard measures and proportions artists use to achieve naturalistic and expressive figure drawings. Illustrations and activities will guide you through the structure of the human skeleton and help you understand how the body’s anatomy shapes its external form. The course builds progressively from the fundamentals to the challenges of portraiture, three-dimensional form, composition, and expression.

LESSON 1 Measurements and Proportions Lesson One establishes the fundamentals. You'll begin with an orientation to your art materials: charcoal, pencil, sharpeners, drawing pads, and more. You'll learn standard proportions for the male and female figure and how to measure proportions as you draw, using your eye, your pencil, a plum line, and other guides. In the exercise, you'll do figure drawings in pencil and charcoal, focusing on proportions, negative spaces, and angles.

LESSON 2 The Human Skeleton The knee bone's connected to the… To draw figures well, you'll need to understand how the skeleton is put together. Lesson Two explores the main reference points inside the body that help artists represent the figure: ribcage, pelvic bone, head, shoulder blades, arms, hands, legs, feet, and vertebra. Did you know when drawing a figure, the first thing you want to do is to establish the angle of the pelvic bone? Or which differences in the skeleton differentiate men and women? In the exercise, you'll build your familiarity with the skeleton through gesture drawings of posture and motion.

LESSON 3 Muscles and Anatomy In Lesson Three, you'll put meat on your bones. Building on your knowledge of the human skeleton, you'll study the anatomy of the body and learn how to represent muscle structure in your figure drawings. Looking at anatomical drawings, artistic works, and your own body (!) you'll take a tour of important muscle groups, learning their defining features. In the exercise, you'll practice representing muscle mass and do a contour drawing using a model or yourself as a model.

LESSON 4 The Portrait In Lesson Four, you will study the proportions of the human face. You will learn to see the important differences between male and female faces and explore techniques for drawing the forehead, the nose, the mouth, hair, eyes, teeth, and ears. Do's and don'ts will be discussed to help you avoid common mistakes in proportion and perspective. The exercise will open your eyes (literally) to the challenge of portraiture through front, profile, and three quarters view drawings and a blind contour study.

LESSON 5 Volume, Perspective, and Shading Unless you're an ancient Egyptian, your life drawing will involve the representation of three-dimensional figures. Lesson Five focuses on this challenge. You'll learn how to create volume in your drawings by breaking down the figure into three-dimensional shapes. You'll discover how concepts in perspective such as the horizon line, eye level, and vanishing point affect your figure drawings, even in close up. Finally, you'll look at how the application of line, value, and shading can influence the appearance of perspective and depth in drawing. In the exercise, you'll explore the concepts of geometrical shape, perspective, and value contrast.

LESSON 6 Composition and Expression Lesson Six rounds out your figure drawing course by exploring concepts in composition and expression. You'll discover how texture, balance, rhythmn, variety, unity, and emphasis can each be used in drawing—or in any art form—to give shape to a piece. Rules of composition such as the Golden Section and Divine Proportion will be discussed along with expressive considerations to help you develop your artistic approach. In the final exercise, you'll explore both formal and expressive approaches to your drawing subjects.