profile

Bucks County Classical Arts Center

Why your figures look like they're falling over

Published 3 days ago • 1 min read
​

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 the neck to the ground, that shows you exactly which leg is carrying the weight.

Red is the action line. Blue is the plumb line. A demo from class.

If that plumb line doesn't land over the weight-bearing foot, the figure will feel unstable, no matter how well it's rendered. It's one of the fastest fixes there is.

We mark both lines on every pose in Quick Sketch Figure Drawing, Fridays 10am–1pm starting Oct 23.

More soon.

John

99 Stockton Suites, Kingwood-Stockton Road, Suite 6C, Rosemont, NJ 08556
​Unsubscribe · Preferences​

Bucks County Classical Arts Center

Learn old master drawing and painting techniques!

We are here to make the techniques and skills of the old masters accessible to everyone! Our mission is to empower our students to draw and paint at the highest level possible. We believe that drawing is a skill that can be taught. With guidance and clear direction you can achieve great things. Subscribe and get the latest in classes, events and drawing tips sent to your inbox!

Read more from Bucks County Classical Arts Center

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...

2 days ago • 2 min read

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...

10 days ago • 1 min read

Why Some Drawings Just Look Right It's not talent, it's a method Hello Reader, Ever notice how some quick figure drawings just look correct, even loose ones, while others feel off no matter how much time went into them? It usually comes down to one thing: whether the drawing was built on structure, or just copied from what the eye saw first. Over the next couple of weeks I'm going to share a few of the ideas behind this, the same ones we use in our Quick Sketch Figure Drawing class, which...

13 days ago • 1 min read