Common Problems Encountered While Drawing Figures

Life drawing takes a lot of observation and fineness to get it all perfect on the canvas. Beginning can be very tough.

Sometimes it can go so awry that it can end up looking like a painting done by a child. Especially when you have to draw a human or an animal form, you can end up giving it a comic touch. Jokes apart, with patience and practice, one gets better with time with life drawing. Getting the anatomical structures perfect takes a great deal of practice.

There are some common mistakes encountered while drawing figures in life drawing. The first and the most common mistake that many do is unbalanced proportions.

The anatomical proportions are of utmost important in life drawing. In the beginning, these anatomical proportions can go out of hand as it will be difficult to judge. The length of the legs could be disproportionate to the length of the hands. Head might not be in proportionate to the neck. The chest and abdomen can get out of hand and change the shape of the person totally.

Even if it is a complex structure, it is advised to attempt it using complete accuracy. Use the pencil as a measure to measure the size. Use vertical and horizontal plumb lines to learn the placement relationship between shapes. Judge the angles between the shapes. Most important of all is to identify the mistake and learning to correct it.

The teacher is the best person to identify the shortcomings in your figure drawing and teach you how to fix it. It is also very easy to identify the proportion mistakes all by yourself. If you happen to be drawing from a photo, you can draw it on a sheet of tracing paper and apply it on the photo to check for the mistakes.

It is important to identify the gestures and the structure of the form. Simply copying from the image will not help you achieve the 3D effect needed in the life drawing or figure drawing. It is always good to pay importance to the gestures in the beginning. The gestures involve things like the posture, the action being performed, the emotion the image shows.

Simplification is the formula to get the gestures and structures correct in a limited time frame. Do not go into great details of the muscular structure. Just use a few lines to draw the posture of the image. Once the skeletal image is ready, then you can elaborate on it. You will just need to use a few lines and curves to get your basic image.

Once you have identified the gesture as in the action, the emotion, the posture, you move ahead to structure, where you will be adding a little bit more detail, for example, drawing a box or an egg shape for the ribcage, drawing a box or cylinder for the pelvis, drawing cylinders for the legs and hands. This is how you start giving a 3D form or the structure of your image. Once you have done this, you can then move on to adding the details like the muscles, nails, nose, eyes, etc.

Finally, it is the shades. Most often we do mistake during shading, and it can ruin the work altogether. Shading is a very important part of life drawing as this is the finishing touch to the 3D effect. When shading skin, many tend to avoid dark values. The 3D effect is got from the light and the dark planes, the shadows are equally important. Hence, one has to pay importance to learning the techniques of shading as it is a very important aspect of life drawing.

These are some of the common problems that one can face while learning life drawing, as patience and practice will make you perfect in no time.

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About the Author
Learning to identify the mistakes in life drawing and learning to correct it as well as learning to observe and improve the life drawing skills is very important to perfection the art. Getting the assistance of your teacher is important, be it regular classes or evening classes. Melbourne has a lot of good art studios which conduct classes for life drawing

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