Artists & Illustrators - UK (2020-04)

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lifedrawingwithalookathowthedistributionoffatcreatesindividualforms

3. Weight

and form

FIGURE DRAWING

T

he first lessons of life drawing are
lessons of looking: being able to
clearly see the edges of your subject,
the negative spaces that surround them, and
the values of tone on the surfaces of the
figure are all important skills to develop.
However, once you have established a basic
confidence when looking, you must learn
to perceive qualities in the figure that go
beyond the immediately observed; qualities
that relate to the life model’s presence in
space, their physical nature.
These aspects – gesture, form, surface –
relate to the body as something that we, as
viewers, share with our model. This month’s
article focuses on form in the figure.

Learning to draw well is an embodied

process – you learn by doing. Whatever

approach you take to translating your

observations and ideas into drawn marks,

your physical engagement must keep up

with the theory.

When you are working to improve your

figure drawing anatomical knowledge can

be a two-edged sword. Although an

understanding of the masses of the body will

help you structure your drawings, it must be

developed through the observation of real

bodies to avoid your studies becoming

formulaic. Many anatomy books for artists

focus on skeletal-muscular anatomy, rightly

encouraging you to look for both structure

and tension in the figure; the great omission

is often the integumentary system, which

includes fat and skin.

We’ll be looking at skin next month, but

we’re going to delve a little more into the

contribution that fat makes to the form of

the figure. The considerations of fat apply

to life models of all body shapes. In a slim

model fat will soften the edges of muscle

and bone, whereas in fuller-figured models

the flows in the body might take on their

own rhythmic forms.

In either case, it is the balance and

distribution of fat in a model’s body that

contributes to some of the most individual

and engaging formsinthebody.