29 lessons · page 2

Sketches and sketching

Gesture, rhythm and proportions in a few minutes. The shortest way to build up a pile of drawings and stop being afraid of a blank sheet.

Lessons in this category come with the Basic plan — $12 a month. Choose a plan

subscribers only21:22

Carrying on with quick sketches

Hi everyone! This is the continuation of the video lesson on sketching that I published last week. Now we’ll refine the figures — we’ll tighten up the forms and the proportions, add accents with simple lines and some inner volume with value. I picked two of the five figures drawn in the last lesson. You can follow along with me or take other sketches of yours and work them up. Thanks for watching, and I’m waiting for your work on social media.

Sketches and sketching

subscribers only21:08

Drawing quick sketches

Hi! In today’s video lesson I’ll explain how to draw quick sketches — where to start and how to go about it properly. We’ll be guided not by volumes and anatomy but by arcs and straight lines. We’ll draw five figures in different positions in all — 3–4 minutes each. You can draw along with me or set a timer and sketch from your own references. I’d be glad to share your progress in my stories! Thanks for your attention and support!

Sketches and sketching

subscribers only4:35

Timelapse. Quick sketches

In the timelapse I show how I work on quick sketches. Often, during a sketching session, an artist has only five minutes to draw the figure. In that case detail takes a back seat, and the main thing is to catch and convey the movement, land the proportions and get the model’s pose down in broad strokes. You can practice quick sketching by copying the drawings from this video, and then set a timer and sketch from references. Good luck!

Sketches and sketching

subscribers only50:18

Female figure sketches

Hi everyone! The video lesson for the second assignment of the marathon “The Human Figure”! I show how to sketch the female figure, we go through two fairly difficult poses, catch the movement and the proportions, then work on the details.

Sketches and sketching

subscribers only56:39

Sketching the male figure

And here’s the video for the first assignment of the Human Figure marathon! For almost a full hour I talk about how to sketch the male figure and how to make those sketches expressive and dynamic.

Sketches and sketching

About “Sketches and sketching”

Sketching in this section means fast drawing of the living figure, not decorating a sketchbook. There are 29 classes here: lessons with a sketch of the male figure seated, bending, from the back, lying down and in a deliberately awkward pose; sketches of the female figure from the mass and from the line; recordings of streams where a figure is drawn in a matter of minutes and reviewed on the spot; two weeks of the marathon “The Human Figure” given over entirely to quick studies; short timelapses from one to eight minutes.

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After them your whole approach to the first minute of work changes. You stop starting from the head and working down until the figure runs into the edge of the sheet. First comes the line of action and the overall size across the full format, then the large volumes, and only if time is left, the details. You start putting your figure sketches on a timer: two minutes, five, ten, with a different task on each interval.

The main breakdown here is not in the hand. A sketch gets made like an unfinished long drawing: the silhouette is carefully traced, you get as far as the knee and the time runs out. A gesture sketch works the other way around, it records not the edge of the figure but what the figure is doing, so the first line runs through the body from the pit of the neck to the supporting foot. The second place where fast figure sketching falls apart is support: the figure stands, but the weight is not distributed, and the plumb line falls between the feet although the person is leaning on one. In these classes that is caught at once, before a single contour has appeared.

The first things to watch are “How I draw sketches” and “Sketching from photographs”: the speed and the order of decisions are visible there. Then take the recorded stream of fast sketches of the female figure and draw alongside it without pausing the video. After that comes a series of lessons on poses, and the reference packs shot with live models are useful with them: the same person in a dozen positions gives you more than a hundred random photographs from a search engine.

What the section does not give you. It is not a course on markers, fineliners and keeping a sketchbook; there is no urban sketching and no food here. It does not give fast results either: the first hundred sketches usually go in the bin, and that is a normal part of the work. It starts to make sense on the second hundred, when your hand begins to put the line where you are looking.

FAQ

How long should one sketch take?

For a gesture, 30 seconds to two minutes is enough; for a study with volume, five to fifteen. The point of the timer is to cut off fussing: in two minutes you physically cannot trace a contour, so you are forced to take the essentials. Long forty-minute studies are a different task, they are covered in the figure section.

What is better for a sketch: pencil, marker or tablet?

A soft medium that does not let you erase: sauce crayon, sanguine, charcoal, marker. An eraser is harmful in fast drawing, because it drags you back to fixing lines instead of looking for the movement. A tablet works if you turn off undo.

Can I sketch from photographs?

Yes, and the section has a lesson devoted to exactly that. A photograph flattens foreshortening and loses the halftone, so it is easier to get depth wrong from one. The reference packs in the Club plan are shot with live models under decent light, and with them this problem is smaller.

Do I need anatomy to start sketching?

Not at the start: in the first weeks movement and overall size matter more. But when your fast sketches stop improving, the reason is almost always not knowing how the pelvis and the rib cage are built, and then it makes sense to go off into the figure section and come back here in a month.

How many sketches should I do a week?

Aim for thirty or more, in short fifteen-minute sessions rather than one sitting at the weekend. Regularity matters more than duration here: ten minutes a day gives you more than three hours once a week.