Fast and Loose: A Direct Approach to Figure Drawing

This workshop acts as a way for students new to the figure to learn about the complete process of figure drawing loosely and quickly, seeing the whole process play out organically over a short period of time. It also allows students who have more experience drawing figures to sharpen their skills under a time crunch and work more intuitively and organically, blending stages together that they already know. To aid in this fast and loose approach, we will work with any and all tools: blending stumps, our fingers, pencil erasers, graphite powder, and a range of pencils. 

Day one will start with a demo by John. Students will then begin by linearly laying in the major contour lines of the figure, then proceed to mass in values softly and flatly. Using comparative measurement, once the general proportions are correct, more values will be added, still keeping things soft. Over time, students will start to darken and sharpen areas, bringing up the drawing as a whole until each part has been fully realized. By the end of the workshop students can expect to have a fully rendered figure drawing, an understanding of comparative measurement, and a systematic way of breaking up a figure drawing into separate stages.  

Throughout the class, a heavy emphasis will be put on the structure of the figure from an anatomical standpoint and how this relates to form, giving students an understanding of what they are looking at. 

John’s method includes one on one critiques and demos.