Life Drawing from Home: Long Studies (Patreon)

Tackling a long figure drawing is excellent practise for a variety of drawing skills and with such a big library of pose here on the Draw Patreon nobody on here should be short of drawing material. 

In this walkthrough of a longer drawing, we will look at setting up your page for a longer drawing, and what to look for as we work through it. This demonstration is done in graphite but I will be focusing on general drawing principles that apply across different media.

Setting Up the Figure

A long drawing affords us more time to set up the placement and proportion of the figure. We want to take up a good portion of the page, with a little bit of space extra – this gives us wiggle room for corrections, and gives the figure some compositional 'breathing room'. (You may also want to crop the figure – say for a specific body part.)

Start by marking out the rough boundaries of the figure by finding the widest and tallest points. If the pose is wider than it is tall, you may want a landscape composition. From here, I map out the pose, starting with very light marks.

Finding the halfway point (red) and using vertical/horizontal comparisons (blue) helps with placing the figure.

There are lots of ways to check proportion and position of the body, but it is important to be prepared to check for and fix mistakes – this is why it is a good idea to start with light marks that can be drawn over later. At this stage, I lay in the position of the body by breaking it into simple sections for the torso, head and limbs, but not yet committing to any dark lines.

Building Structure and Contour

Working across the figure whilst going down (red). Overlaps (blue) are introduced as one form sits in front of another.

In this stage, we are tightening up the contour. It is important to work through the body as whole rather than focus in and over-work one single section. Typically I will try to work across the figure instead of around it. This helps preserve the original gesture, incorporate ideas about volume and control proportion. 

This is also when we need to start thinking of where the contour is overlapping itself. These are places where a form passes in front of another, such as the crease behind the knee created by the thigh overlapping the calf. Overlaps add a sense of volume to the figure, so look for excuses to include them.

 I am fixing a few mistakes here! Negative shape (blue) helps with recognising errors early on (red dotted line is the previous placement) – in this case I made the torso a little too short, and the position of the left arm is a little off.

When the limbs feel solid and I'm happy with the proportion, I tend to go through and fix up the contours of the figure to match my observations. Try to vary the line weight around the figure – this will help it look less 'flat'. Another useful tool at this stage is negative shape – focusing on voids between limbs, or spaces that you can close off easily can help refresh your vision and draw more accurately.

Tightened up line drawing.

Adding Tone

Even though this process looks at creating a tonal result, not all long drawings need to focus on tone and shading, as there are a lot of qualities that can be expressed in drawing.

These detail shots show how the shadow edge varies – this helps us avoid sausage-like limbs.

There are lots of different approaches to adding tone, but for longer efforts, some people prefer to draw out the shadow shapes before shading them in. When doing this, to avoid flattening shapes, ensure that your line is quite light, and that is fluctuating to match the form. 

This means the shadow edge undulates – avoid creating straight lines that run up the arms and legs! Another quality to think about is how the edge changes between a soft and firm transition from shadow to light – round forms tend to have a softer transition to their shadow edges. 

This is my very first layer of tone, and I have applied it evenly to create a base – more will be added on top, so it isn't too dark. It is good to think ahead with a longer drawing – ask yourself how you want to work, do you want to slowly layer up tone, do you prefer lay down lots and knock it back and keep working in? There are many approaches that can create interesting drawings!

I have also started to push the darker tones here. To avoid damaging the paper, the darks are added in layers, rather than just by pressing hard.

Final Touches

This stage can take quite some time, as we are working around the whole figure and building up detail. However, it is also a fun stage to work on as everything comes together – try to relax and take it slow.

Now we can look at smaller details and shadows. I am being mindful of the direction of my marks as I sculpt out forms. These marks will accumulate and create an illusion of tone as well as form. 

Long figure drawings are an excellent want to solidify lessons in anatomy, as we get the time to look for how anatomy affects the surface forms of the book in small ways. Don't worry about learning everything once, but keep an eye out for anything you have learnt and see if you can understand what is happening under the surface.

This face is blown up, but is actually about 3-4cm high.

It is about time to fix up the face! In the full figure, we don't have the space to create a highly detailed portrait unless our paper size is very large. This requires us to simplify the face, as there is a physical size limit to how small the pencil marks are. To start solving this problem, I've worked on creating more accurate shadow shapes, and have tried to soften up the features where I can. Fusing shadows together, especially around the eyes, helps imply the features.

To deal with the complexity of the curly hair, I fit my marks to the general direction and shape the hair is 'flowing' in – even a sharp pencil is too much for a small lock of hair.

This detail shot shows the difference between the previous stage and this one. 

Here, the final details are added. This involves going around the whole figure looking for things to improve. 

The outline of the figure has been refined – in shadowy or overlapped areas like the armpit, the edges are softened a bit. This also a good time to check where things look flat and add marks to push the volume, like in the arms. 

Try to resist the urge to add too much shading in the lit areas. A light and minimal touch is all that is needed. Most of my work in these areas involves adding very light lines to soften a shadow transition, such as around the breasts.

Over to You

A few longer drawings are a good addition to your usual practise, giving extra time to focus on ideas, and a more relaxed pace of working. Whilst we currently are limited to photo reference, I highly recommend attending a long pose session at a life drawing class in the future and just drawing. 

It is helpful to work bigger for a longer drawing, depending on your medium and inclinations. This gives you a larger scale in which to add detail and use your time. Be mindful of your paper as well; it may help to pick something of a heavier weight – especially if you like techniques that are rough on it, like subtractively erasing lights.

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This is stand alone blog post by  Lancelot  in our Life Drawing from Home series , commissioned using money raised here on the Draw Patreon. 

Please do share your drawings with us, as we would love to see what everyone is up! Just tag us with @Draw_Brighton on social media or use the #LifeDrawingFromHome and #DrawBrighton hashtags. You can follow Lancelot on instagram here: @lancelotrichardson 

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