The act of drawing the human figure from a live model, and the resulting drawing being produced.
In many cases, the model is performing nude in various poses. It helps the artist understand the way a human body works. To acquire good life drawing skills, the study of anatomy from text books may also prove valuable. The artist will slowly but surely understand the underlying structure of the human figure from its skeletal composition to muscle-, fat-, and skin tissue. In the past the less squeamish artists viewed autopsies to gain further anatomical insight.
Life drawing continues to be an essential component of an artist’s education. On balance, the most important subject matters in art have always included figurative representations of the human form. Life drawing itself trains the workings of the eyes, the brain, and the hand. Once drawing nudes is mastered, it is usually quite straight forward to draw clothes that drapes correctly on the human figure.
If you haven’t already, you can attend life drawing classes in almost any city for a small fee. You can use low-grade materials such as coarse inexpensive rolls of paper and charcoal. This makes perfect sense, because much of the work is done at great speed in shorter timed studies. In short studies, you train mostly contours, whereas in longer studies; you have time to focus on shading as well.
