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40 Days of Art: Life Drawing
As soon as you dip a toe into the world of animation, you will notice that everyone goes on and on about life drawing. You have to go to life drawing! they say. It's an essential part of training! This is, of course, entirely true. It does rather frame life drawing as an obligation, though, and I think it's this attitude towards it that causes people to drop it as soon as they leave school.
I'm not going to tell you that you have to go to life drawing. Lots of other people can do that. What I am going to do is tell you why you should go to life drawing.
The most obvious reason you should go to life drawing classes is to learn how to draw people. There are people in front of you, you draw them, you learn how to draw people. Duh. But there are people everywhere! you say. I have been surrounded by people my whole life! I am a people! Of course I know how to draw them!
Wrong. The thing that life drawing teaches you – specifically nude life drawing, but I will get onto that subject at a later date – is that no, really, you don't know how to draw people. You think you do, but until you see the human body posed out before you in such a way that you can really study what's going on, you are only making educated guesses. To see how everything connects, the proportions, the interrelations, the counter-weighting, the relative distances, the sheer genius of the engineering behind it all – you might have a vague outline of how it all works, and what to do with it to get the pose you want, but when you start your life drawing education you will realise that you have to learn most of it from scratch.
All right, so anatomy is important. Can't I learn that from Michelangelo, muscle mags, and Playboy?
No. You do not get the same understanding of the body from a photograph or painting as you do from studying a real live human being in three dimensions in front of you, who takes poses you won't find in a magazine, who uses all that anatomy to move from pose to pose before your very eyes, which lets you see how the bones and muscle shift around. If you really want to understand how people work, you must observe, and observe at all times, not just when you're drawing the pose. You will not get nearly so good an understanding of the solid volumetric shapes of the body, what's hard and what's soft, how things are affected by gravity, and how motion is captured in a still pose, unless you see it there, in action, before your very eyes.
Also, at life drawing classes you are likely to get models with less generic or idealised bodies – old men, large women, ex-gymnasts whose legs are unusually short, agèd actresses – so you'll get to know the whole range of the human species rather than just the press-worthy specimens. Your view of them will not be the one perfect angle that a photographer would have chosen, but whichever angle your desk or drawing horse gives you, which will be more challenging and will present you with more bizarre perspectives to learn your way around. You might curse the pose when the model is lying on her back in direct line with you and all you have is overlapping curves to work with, but when you're drawing that down shot a couple years from now it'll pay off. Everything pays off eventually!
Okay, you say, I went to life drawing, and wow! I can draw people like nobody's business now! This is great, thanks, now I have achieved life drawing nirvana and never need haul my pad and pencils to class again.
Nice try, buster! Life drawing is a lifetime pursuit: there is always more to learn. I have taken classes with (and from!) people who've been doing it for thirty years and still feel like they're only just 'cracking it.' Every time I think I've got it, I find out there's a whole other layer of understanding waiting for me to crack it. And if you don't keep it up, you lose it! It's a bit like swimming: You have to keep expending energy just to tread water. Put in a lot of energy and you can actually move forward. But do nothing and you sink to your doom! Doom, I say!
I'm not going to tell you that you have to go to life drawing. Lots of other people can do that. What I am going to do is tell you why you should go to life drawing.
The most obvious reason you should go to life drawing classes is to learn how to draw people. There are people in front of you, you draw them, you learn how to draw people. Duh. But there are people everywhere! you say. I have been surrounded by people my whole life! I am a people! Of course I know how to draw them!
Wrong. The thing that life drawing teaches you – specifically nude life drawing, but I will get onto that subject at a later date – is that no, really, you don't know how to draw people. You think you do, but until you see the human body posed out before you in such a way that you can really study what's going on, you are only making educated guesses. To see how everything connects, the proportions, the interrelations, the counter-weighting, the relative distances, the sheer genius of the engineering behind it all – you might have a vague outline of how it all works, and what to do with it to get the pose you want, but when you start your life drawing education you will realise that you have to learn most of it from scratch.
All right, so anatomy is important. Can't I learn that from Michelangelo, muscle mags, and Playboy?
No. You do not get the same understanding of the body from a photograph or painting as you do from studying a real live human being in three dimensions in front of you, who takes poses you won't find in a magazine, who uses all that anatomy to move from pose to pose before your very eyes, which lets you see how the bones and muscle shift around. If you really want to understand how people work, you must observe, and observe at all times, not just when you're drawing the pose. You will not get nearly so good an understanding of the solid volumetric shapes of the body, what's hard and what's soft, how things are affected by gravity, and how motion is captured in a still pose, unless you see it there, in action, before your very eyes.
Also, at life drawing classes you are likely to get models with less generic or idealised bodies – old men, large women, ex-gymnasts whose legs are unusually short, agèd actresses – so you'll get to know the whole range of the human species rather than just the press-worthy specimens. Your view of them will not be the one perfect angle that a photographer would have chosen, but whichever angle your desk or drawing horse gives you, which will be more challenging and will present you with more bizarre perspectives to learn your way around. You might curse the pose when the model is lying on her back in direct line with you and all you have is overlapping curves to work with, but when you're drawing that down shot a couple years from now it'll pay off. Everything pays off eventually!
Okay, you say, I went to life drawing, and wow! I can draw people like nobody's business now! This is great, thanks, now I have achieved life drawing nirvana and never need haul my pad and pencils to class again.
Nice try, buster! Life drawing is a lifetime pursuit: there is always more to learn. I have taken classes with (and from!) people who've been doing it for thirty years and still feel like they're only just 'cracking it.' Every time I think I've got it, I find out there's a whole other layer of understanding waiting for me to crack it. And if you don't keep it up, you lose it! It's a bit like swimming: You have to keep expending energy just to tread water. Put in a lot of energy and you can actually move forward. But do nothing and you sink to your doom! Doom, I say!