Preparation: Study The Body

• Start by studying the musculature and form of the body. If possible, take a life drawing class with live models or join a life drawing group. If this is not possible, ask friends and family to sit for you. Make it clear to your subjects that you are learning to draw bodies and you are not trying to make a professional portrait.
  
  At the beginning of each session, many life drawing groups start with fast, gestural drawings of quick 10-second poses. During this time, do not try to capture details. Pay attention to the line of the arms and the axis of the body. Study the sweep of the legs, the posture of the shoulders and the tilt of the head.
  
  It is good to use charcoal for this kind of practice. Sweep the charcoal around with your fingers and palms. Make smudges for larger shadows. Generalize the features of the body. Use an eraser to create the negative space around the figure. Make each drawing quickly and then move to the next one, capturing only your first impressions of the body.
  
  Make a note of the various proportions of the body--the length of the legs relative to the arms, the position of the hands when they fall at their sides, the height of the figure relative to the room. Do not try to draw elegantly or beautifully. Try to draw what you see.
  
  

Drawing People

• Pick a subject. For your first serious studies of people, it is best to pick a basic pose, such as someone standing. Avoid poses that present foreshortened parts of the body. Although the life drawing class may be good practice, you may find working from a photograph easier than a live subject. Live subjects squirm, change position and are subject to changing lighting conditions. Photographs, on the other hand, are stationary and portable. They can be worked from during all times of day and night. If you are working from a photograph, select one that is large and high resolution.
  
  Taking what you have learned from your gestural drawings of figures, you should have a mental jumping off point to begin your drawing. If you have a preferred spot to begin, start from there. Most people prefer to begin either with the head or the feet. Start by mapping out the general features of the body, as a series of ovals. If you start with the feet, then the legs will stem from the ankles, the hips will build from the legs, the body will be an off-shoot of the hips and so on. Make these lines lightly so that they can be covered up or erased later on. Think of these lines as being like the body beneath the clothes--they will create structure but will be covered up.
  
  Once this is done, you will need to start drawing the figure as it appears in the photograph. Outline the body and clothing lightly at first. You will start making darker lines once the exterior has been established and you are certain the proportions are correct.
  
  Once the exterior has been formed, take a step back from your drawing and compare it to the photograph. Flick your eyes back and forth between the two images and compare them. Ideally, you will find no detectable differences between the shape in the photograph and the shape on your paper. If you feel like something is wrong, try turning the images upside down and study them that way. This will give you a fresh perspective and allow you to look at the drawing more objectively.
  
  When you are ready, start adding details like facial features, hair, pockets and zippers. Start darkening your lines and drawing with more confidence.
  
  Once the drawing has some details included, start to add shading to give the figure depth and the illusion of a three dimensional shape. Make your shadows lightly at first, increasing the darkness of the shadows as the image progresses.
  
  Make this drawing over time. After working on it for an hour or two, put it away and come back to it later when you are ready to look at it with fresh eyes. You should not try to complete a drawing like this in one day. Taking time away from the drawing will allow you to see your mistakes more clearly later on.
  
  

More Advanced Poses

• Once you have been practicing drawing people a while, you will probably wish to move into more advanced images. People in seated poses facing the artist are usually far more difficult to draw than people who are standing up. The foreshortening of their features--that is, the illusion that a feature is shorter than it really is because it is coming out at the viewer--is difficult for artists to capture realistically. A foreshortened feature must not appear simply shorter, it must appear to be protruding from its point of origin.
  
  Try drawing people in many different poses.