The idea for the necessity of this forum was inspired by lancruz thread on life drawing class.
So here we can list web links to sites, books, ebooks for those who cannot take a class in their area, some of my pics on a famous gymnast, and everyday sketches that members might wish to post for an opinion or just for a gallery of figure drawing artwork.

Figure drawing lab

Figure Drawing

Human Figure

http://www.modelalisa.com/ interactive 5 languages

structure of man


ebooks

Drawing from Life

Life Drawing in Charcoal


Here I have a few positions from the olympics in 1976-78 with Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci.

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Ballet poses
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Good luck and good drawing.Please add your web links to sites and resources on figure drawing.

coool....i love this thread..i will probably do them all..you know how i love to try figure drawing

Thanks kay, now take a look at my challenge.

here is my attempt at one of Nadia's poses.
My mistake is that i did a close up of the pose on a full page of 9"x12" sketchbook.Next time I will do a smaller figure sketch.

here is my attempt in charcoal..i want to try that blue one in color pencil..my sketch book is also 9x12

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Yes, it takes lot of practice to render the athletic look of the pose. My sketch was the first one of this kind.And I want to see how I will do just small sketches. I want to capture her elegance.Right now we both sketched the pose only.

This is great, and I like the subject matter! I'll try and squeeze some of these challenges and post. I didn't see this discussion until now. Thank you Elena!

I will continue with my discussion on my experience with this subject matter. I've completed my second week, and have posted some additional drawings.

From my experience so far is that it is easier to draw on a large pad. The class requires a 36"X24" news print, but I also see that some students are using a 18"X24". The purpose for such a large support is to allow for drawing by using the entire arm as opposed to the wrist which would be the case of a smaller area to draw or even paint.

Regards,
Gilbert/lancruz

good job Elena - I like the hand

very good Kay - ur drawings just get better and better!

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this is certainly an extreme pose..it was a challenge to begin with but doing it in charcoal made it even more of a challenge for me..

this is awfully good, Kay. Bravo!

thank you very much..it is the encouragement of all my friends here that is causing me to grow..

hugs to all

Gilbert I think I know the reason for large sketch pads in life drawing classes. You see a real life model and is easier to do it big, but from a picture I have the feeling that i missed the overall aspect of my "model" by doing a close up. So for beginners is better i guess to do small sketches first from their ref photos.I don't have any expertise whatsoever and a teacher with figure drawing experience is much appreciated to contribute to this thread.

I'd always encourage people to draw large, rather than small. The main reason for this is actually that you are giving yourself more leeway in getting placements correct by drawing larger.

People often seem to feel the need to draw small out of some sort of sense of misplaced modesty - "I'm only a beginner, I'm not a proper artist. I'd just be showing off/wasting a lot of materials".

For example - if you take a painting or drawing by another artist, and try to copy it smaller, you are actually giving yourself a more difficult job than they originally had - it means that all your brushstrokes/pencil-marks have to be that much more accurately placed.

I'm a painter, and I know this is a drawing site - but in painting realism, there is an emphasis on starting with the biggest brushes you can, blocking-in broad shapes first. Detail is only put in towards the end.

One problem with pencils is that there's something seductive about the fact that they come to a pointy tip, which encourages beginners towards miniaturism and noodling around with fiddly detail.


Dave

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just great, kay.

Here is my try from the picture. It just doesn't seem quite right yet, but here it is. Perhaps you can tell me what I might not be seeing? Her legs look pretty good, her upper body seems ok, perhaps the head is to small? Arm to long?

This was done in charcoal. I start out with the vine, then finish with medium charcoal pencil.

it looks very good to me;however looking carefully maybe her left leg is too short, i mean should be higher up the inside leg.Also she seems more arched an element that i also missed in my sketch.So her chest is more outside her buttocks exagerately arched.

Thanks for the additional pointers. These things I need to be more aware of when I'm drawing which can be overlooked. The trick is to catch them when initially drawing. I hope to recognize this through time and repetition.

Regards

for those interested in ballet poses i just added a reference page of 40 positions in the first post.

thank you for that Elena..i have added it to my draw instruction file..

I'd recommend several books for figure-drawing:

Anthony Ryder "The artist's complete guide to figure drawing"

Juliette Aristides "Classical Drawing Atelier"

Ron Tiner "Figure Drawing without a model"

Gerald Ackerman "Bargue drawing course" (contains a chapter on sight-size drawing by Graydon Parrish) (available from the website of the Dahesh museum)

and (don't laugh!), Stan Lee and Steve Buscema "How to draw comics the Marvel way".

I am also currently reading Ted Seth Jacobs "Drawing with an open mind" (this one's out of print, but can be found second-hand).

(I'd give links, but I don't yet have enough posts here to be able to do that)

Dave

Thank you Dave.Just copy and paste your link in the text box and we will try to find it.

Elena, this site automatically bins posts containing links, if you have less than a certain number of posts, as a way of defeating attempts to post spam.

I'll add links once I'm able to


Dave

I wonder if that happens if tyou send a message to a member.Maybe you can put your links in your message and send them to me.

I think if I make a few more posts, I'll be able to go back and edit it in?

I was mainly wanting to give the link to the Dahesh site, for the Bargue book.
http://www.daheshmuseum.org/museumshop/ind...p?productID=285

The others can be readily found on Amazon.com

Dave

I did this for figure drawing sketch of Cristina Sanchez bullfighter.

and a flamenco dancer sketch

Nice poses Elena!

Here are my two first atempts.

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excellent, Clara.

this wants to be the dancer #13 on the ballet sheet but I made his legs too athletic.

A lot of those ballet poses are very difficult to interpret because they are silhouettes - they show unusual postures (which most people just wouldn't be able to pose at all), and considerable overlapping and foreshortening of different anatomical parts. The images are also very small. You have to really know your anatomy in order to be able to interpret them correctly.

In short, you are giving yourselves a very hard time with them, and would be much better off finding better reference pics - I appreciate, Elena, that you are trying to stimulate activity here (which is great) - but one of the commonest things I see in people starting to seriously learn to draw, is being prepared to work from ref-images which give them far less visual information than they actually need. Professional artists wouldn't work from tiny images, or blurry ones, or faded old photos - so why should people who are trying to learn? Give yourselves the best possible chance, by working from high-quality refs - drawing's difficult enough, without imposing a handicap on oneself by trying to work with poor reference material.

Dave

I think I'll give it a shot. I'm still pretty new to figure drawing, but I'll never learn unless I keep practicing, right? I tried to do pose #38; not overly happy with the result. I don't like the way her hair came out, and I think I may have messed up her breasts a little. I also struggle with hands and feet...

I like these poses though, they're good practice. I think I'll do another one.

This is splendid, my friend. a beautiful body you have drawn.Bravo.

Really? Thank you!

i agree.. a wonderful job on this drawing

i FINALLY went to the deviant art website and holy cow..tutorials up the butt..some really great stock reference photos too...you guys should go check it out

Which website? Would you mind posting a link? I'd love to check it out.

here you go..it is their resources page..great stuff here

deviant art resource

an attempt at the cup bearers, a wet fresco from the Palace of Knossos, Crete. They are identical but I coudn't get them to be in my sketch so they look like real life people different in size and shape.I plan to do a tempera and oil pastel version of this.

from magazine

Fantastic drawings, ElenaM!

I decided to do another pose; made her legs a little too long.

excellent drawing, Trooper.

A photo from a magazine.

beautiful, Trooper.