Attitude by Patricia Hannaway, 2006, pastel on toned paper, 21 x 12.

Human figure drawing, especially life drawing from a model, is one of the most rewarding ways of practicing art because it can enhance your abilities in ways that are both practical and inspirational. It's practical in that creating figure drawings develops skills that will serve you again and again as an artist—contour, shading, line, and the relationship of parts to a whole. It's inspirational in that the landscape of the human body contains almost every form, texture, shape, and curve that an artist could possibly want to recreate, and there is an endless array of ways to do so.

Figure drawing is not just about drawing anatomy, though that knowledge certainly helps us recognize why the body looks the way it does and the reasons for its movements. But drawing figures is often about finding an emphatic action or gesture that animates and energizes the rendering. For artist and animator Patricia Hannaway, that means finding and accentuating the action line of a figure. “My thought process as I’m drawing is, The model is sort of doing this and kind of doing that," she says. "I become engaged with what the model is doing and mentally take the pose myself, feeling the movement in my own body. This is transferred to the page via an energized line; the drawing proceeds outward from an inward feeling."

Using a model as the stepping off point, Hannaway creates drawings that emphasize pivotal moments of action where the figure is about to move or is in the act of doing so. In Artist Daily’s newest free eBook, Human Figure Drawing Tutorial: 13 Life Drawing Techniques, Hannaway shares even more details of her drawing process and gives insight on how her approach has enhanced her career as an animator and fine artist.

Perfecting your ability to render the human form means your skill in drawing almost any other subject matter will likely increase as well. Human Figure Drawing Tutorial: 13 Life Drawing Techniques is our newest free resource to help solidify your drawing skills by identifying with the movements and poise of your model, all the while learning a thoughtful, informative approach from a successful practicing artist. You'll see how rendering well and seeing dynamically are  two essentials every artist needs to have in order to capture the essence of his or her subject, so download your free eBook now. Enjoy!

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