In the studio lately And what's coming up, Oct 21 through Nov 20 Hello Reader, Classes are going well, so here's a look at what we've been up to, and what's next. This week's lesson: a portrait in grisaille on poster board. A burnt umber ground and some white to build a simple statement. The last landscape session of the season was a grey day. This actually made me happy because it simplifies color mixing and it turned into a lesson about types of grey color mixing. We had a successful photo...

Why Your Figures Look Like They're Falling Over It's almost never the anatomy Hello Reader, Here's a problem every figure drawer runs into: the proportions are fine, the shapes are right, but the figure still feels like it's about to tip over. Floating. Ungrounded. It's almost never an anatomy problem. It's a balance problem. The fix is two lines. An action line, a single clear statement of which direction the pose's energy is traveling. And a plumb line, dropped straight down from the pit of...

You're Not Drawing Yet Before anything looks like a figure Hello Reader, When I teach constructive figure drawing, week one isn't a finished figure. Not even close. Instead, everything starts as simple shapes: ovoids for the head, chest, and hips, basic joints, and a centerline running down the front of the body from the pit of the neck to the pelvis. It looks skeletal. Abstract. Almost like a stick figure. That's the point. This is the armature, the internal scaffolding everything else gets...