I first learnt how to sketch a human figure in 9th grade and I was also told that a human figure is equal to seven and a half faces. I just quietly followed what I was instructed and never gave this concept a thought until today’s class when I realised that it is a complete lie because that concept was derived after looking at people from the royal academy who ar 6 feet tall, unlike most of us.
In this class, we were not only told how to make a human figure, a face (using a circle and a semicircle),and features, shoulders, hands and other parts of the body, along with their proportions, but we were also explained and shown the logic behind so that we understood well and it all finally made sense to me.
We started off with drawing gesture sketches. These are sketches where one needs to catch the quick movements and draw using the least amount of strokes. Initially, I was trying to make perfect lines to make it look neat and nice and then I gradually understood the whole concept of flow and looseness and how it is very important for every design student to start anything that they do, first with and gesture sketch and then move on to refined drawings.
We did this exercise where sir made people stand in different angles one by one and we had to sketch them in less that half a minute. I learnt how to catch the movement in the sketches and realised that i was actually learning how to let loose on a sheet and draw without worrying if it was perfect or looked beautiful or not.
After we made a few drawings I compared the first figure that I made when we started to the last one and I could see myself getting a hang of it. Drawing classes might be rigorous but if they are done with this sort of guidance, they can be extremely interesting and engaging.
These are the gesture sketches that I made for my home assignment:
Sirina’s blog 