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Attitude by Patricia Hannaway, 2006, pastel sketch drawing, 21 x 12. Human figure sketching, especially learning how to sketch 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...
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Okay, I'm going to share with you my dirty little secret: I can't parallel park a car. Well, I can parallel park a car as long as I've got three blank spaces, in a pinch two, and it helps that I drive a Honda Fit. But for the most part I'm willing to drive blocks out of the way and walk...
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I have a painter-friend who is gearing up to do a major work with figures, but she feels a bit rusty about painting a model in all his or her glory. To help prepare herself, she's set up a series of life-drawing sessions so that she can spend a bit of time drawing models before tackling her actual...
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I'll admit that in the past I have been guilty of thinking of colored pencil art as colorful and bright and not necessarily able to be coupled with serious subjects or moody narratives. But that was my own bias. As I've spent time looking at sketchbooks of draftsmen creating colored pencil art...
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Susan Lyon's figure drawings truly set her apart artistically and are the foundation and preparation for all she creates as an oil painter. If you ask her why, it is a drawing's immediacy, directness, and drama that are the ideal conduits for her creative sensibilities and in her opinion these...
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In figure drawing and painting, knowing the ins and outs of the human body is essential. There's no way around that fact, and honing our skills with anatomy drawing helps us understand and truly see the body more accurately than any other endeavor. Drawing by Stephen Schultz. I was flipping through...
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Often when I'm busy with teaching and working and tending to my family and professional commitments, when every second of my time is taken up and I just can't spare a moment to draw as so many of us are during the holidays, then an opportunity usually presents itself in the form of a bit of unexpectedly...
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That sounds gross, but in the hands of contemporary painter Alex Kanevsky, it's not. As a classically trained artist, Kanevsky's painting techniques and skills are strong. But the way he chooses to paint--in patches and broad swaths that lend a visual vibration to every inch of canvas--is not...
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Okay, I'll admit that skull reading and phrenology sound a little silly to me. Trying to get a sense of a person from the hollows and grooves on their skull? Not buying it. But I do know that "reading" the skull as an artist is key when it comes to learning how to draw a human head for...
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Click the picture above to view your free video lesson on charcoal drawing. I was inspired recently when I went to an art gallery show and saw some wonderful charcoal drawings. For so many of us, charcoal lessons were part of our first explorations of art making, but to see these highly finished charcoal...
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I recently took a life drawing class and showed my sketches to a friend, who's a super-skilled painter. I was reluctant to share them, but when she looked at my final sketch--in which the model had her hips contrapposto but twisted slightly away from me with one arm across her chest and the other...
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Fine art has evolved in many directions, but comic book art has retained a strain of DNA from classical times. The heroic Greek gods were the forbearers of our modern superheroes and the portrayal of those heroes has carried on in the tradition of how modern artists portray comic book heroes. All artists...
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I feel like every time I pick up a pencil to attempt portrait drawing, I am back in elementary school learning the basics of how to draw a face all over again. You know that art argument about whether you need natural talent to learn how to draw? Well, I'm here to tell you it isn't true because...
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Plenty--especially if you are trying to figure out how to draw a person in that chair. Drawing people standing up is waaaaaay more straightforward than puzzling out how to proportion and position a figure sitting down. But to draw people this way opens up a lot of compositional possibilities for an artist...
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It's that time again: the time for nations big and small to meet and lay claim to their dominance based on overinflated biceps--um, I mean, athletic prowess. I'm talking about the Olympics, of course. Whether you're an avid Games-watcher or you could care less, chances are you didn't...