Lesson 4 of the Love Life Drawing beginner life drawing course is to draw stick figures. I drew lots of stick figures. The set above, my last for this lesson, represents a pretty good success, but let’s come back to that one in a moment.
At first I was drawing stick figures on top of reference pictures, really just a slightly more anatomically-aware version of the motion lines lesson. For references I chose picture sets from Kenzo’s figure library. These next three are all from the model named Priss. Not that you could tell; I’m drawing stick figures.
It’s hard to go wrong with tracing stick figures. So after two nights of those, I moved onto the next challenge. Draw a freehand stick figure near the reference, then a traced version, and super-impose them to see how you did. In each of the following, the brown figure is my freehand attempt, while green is traced (and therefore true).
On some of these you can see my key failing — I keep trying to straighten out the torsos. Any reference with a distinct lean to the torso I am likely to fall short.
Getting back to that first picture, posted at the top, I really kept in mind that tendency. I strove to ensure my figures were just as bent as the model. And I think I did a pretty good job with them! There are two that are let-downs (top right, bottom left). Those references I have pulled aside to try again with a bit more detail.
All told, I think I’m ready for the next unit: rib cages!
