Mini-courseIntermediate
Sketching from the mass
Twelve lessons on sketching from the mass: female and male portrait, a simple pose and a complex one. Breakdowns with timelapses, in pencil or in Procreate.
- 5
- modules
- 11
- lessons
- 3 hr
- videos
About the course
Twelve lessons in five blocks, about three and a half hours. An intro, then the female portrait — the silhouette and two timelapses for it, a male portrait with a breakdown of mass, line and texture, a simple pose on a female and a male figure, and a complex pose in a twist. Most lessons come with a timelapse where the same piece runs without commentary at real speed — it shows the order of the moves rather than the explanation.
A sketch from the mass works differently from a sketch from the outline. First the mass goes down, the whole silhouette, with no borders inside it, and only then the line cuts into it and takes away what’s extra. The outline approach wrecks the proportions, because you’re refining the nose while the position of the head hasn’t been found yet. Working from the mass simply doesn’t let you: until the mass is there, there’s nothing to cut.
The practice is simple and repeatable. Take a reference, put down the mass in a minute, refine it with line in three, set it aside. Twenty runs like that in an evening give you more than one licked-over portrait. You can draw on paper or in Procreate on an iPad — the lessons show what to work with digitally so the edge of the mass stays alive instead of turning into a flat fill.
The mini-course comes with the Club plan and isn’t sold separately. The subscription opens all the mini-courses, the video lesson archive, the reference packs and the marathon recordings.
- Format
- Video lessons with practice after each one, your own pace
- Materials
- Working files and references for the lessons — yours to download
- Where to watch
- In your account: your progress and the rest of the plan’s courses live there too
What you’ll be able to do
- 01Working with references
- 02Working with shape and line in the portrait
- 03Working with shape and line in the figure
- 04Working with the silhouette of human anatomy
- 05Working with brushes in digital art
Program
5 modules · 11 lessons · 3 hrEvery lesson opens with a plan — you watch them in your account
How it works
Watch the lesson
The walkthrough video and its working files open in your account.
Repeat it
Every lesson ends with practice — you draw right away, step by step.
Show your work
Post it to the shared feed, and Azat reviews the work on stream.
Who it’s for and what you’ll need
Who it suits
- Beginning artists
- Artists with a base in drawing who want to learn sketching
- 2D and 3D artists picking up figure sketching
- Anyone looking for a new hobby and a well-spent evening
What you need to have
- Paper and a pencil, or Procreate on an iPad
SubscriptionClub — $33 a month
The course opens along with the whole studio
286 video lessons
Azat’s archive on drawing and painting
9 mini-courses
all of them, not just this one
4 reference packs
references and working files, yours to download
Streams and work reviews
Azat reviews work on the Sunday stream