Figure and anatomy: tasks of the month
Proportions, the framework and the big movement, with bones and muscles underneath them. This is where drawing the figure with understanding begins, instead of neatly copying a silhouette.
Tasks
1–7 March
Figure sketches: ten at two minutes
Ten sketches of a standing figure, two minutes each. Not the details but the movement: where the axis of the body goes, which leg carries the weight, how the pelvis is turned against the shoulders. Two minutes is exactly enough to take the main thing and not start licking it over. A timer is a must. Any references, even freeze-frames from video.
8–14 March
The torso: rib cage and pelvis
Draw the torso as two solid boxes — the rib cage and the pelvis — joined by a flexible middle. Three views on one sheet. Watch the twist: in a living pose the rib cage and the pelvis are almost always turned relative to each other. When they are parallel, the figure turns into a plank. No arms and no head — you don’t need them right now.
15–21 March
Support and balance
A figure standing on one leg. Find the vertical running down from the pit between the collarbones: it has to land in the supporting foot, otherwise the person falls over. Watch the pelvis: on the side of the supporting leg it rises, and the shoulders go the other way. That is exactly what makes a pose alive. Any medium, and a larger sheet.
22–28 March
A difficult foreshortening
Pick a reference with strong foreshortening — the figure from above, from below, or lying with the feet toward you. Draw the whole of it. Work in volumes: keep every part of the body as a form in space, not as a silhouette on a flat plane. Check yourself by the way one form overlaps another. One drawing, but taken all the way.