I’ve
started to work through the Drawing Tutorials Online figure drawing
from memory instruction series. You can get it by signing up for his
newsletter here.

I
took figure drawing in college and then took a continuing education
credit at the School of the Museum years later. I haven't done figure
drawing in years. I’m trying to work with some friends to get another
friend to pose for us. Since I don’t want to be too rusty when I go into
the session I decided I’d brush up on my skills with the DTO lessons.

As
with my college classes the first DTO lesson is about gesture drawings
and working with a simple skeletal figure. I’m very familiar with this
lesson. It was what we spent the first week of our figure drawing
classes doing. Short 30 second poses. It is a great way to warm up.

I
decided to work with my yellow brush pen and a blue brush pen. In
college I used to do my figure drawing with yellow, orange, red, and
dark blue colored pencils working in layers. This method works well for
me. When I took the class after college the professor complained that I
chose difficult materials since I brought watercolors and a long liner
brush. 🙂

Anyway,
since I don’t have anyone to pose for me I went online and found a few
websites with free images to draw from. The best was this one. Caution
it is NSFW EVER. I mean never ever. Lots and lots of n@ked people. I did
20 quick gesture skeleton drawings. And by quick I mean quick, spending
no more than a minute or 2 each. I also worked in a dirt cheap
sketchbook.

It
was a good challenge and by the end of the 30 minutes I spent sketching
I really wanted to flesh out the images and create a finished drawing.
Alas that was not the goal for tonight, tonight was about looking and
recording quickly and with simple methods. It was about getting the
eye’s and hands attuned to the figure. It was learning to see.