Student Post: Maia Bull on Figure Drawing

The first subject that Jane discussed in Figure Drawing was that drawing is communicating your thought process. Drawing is representation, not depiction. My experience in the class has been forgetting my verbal identification with the figure, and learning to see it as formal elements.

The first three processes we learned were mass, energy lines, and constellations. Mass gives the figure weight and proportion. Energy lines illustrate the envelope of space around the figure, movement, and placement on the page. Constellations help to translate the figure from 3D into 2D, by giving you the placement of the figure on the picture plane. When warming up, or in the beginning of a longer drawing, these three processes serve as my initial map for the figure, and usually take only a minute or two. From the beginning I had a tendency to be timid, tight, and small with my lines. This first map of the figure has given me the initial looseness, immediacy, and accuracy vital to making my drawing come alive.

The next process was putting the figure into three dimensional boxes, and finding landmarks on the figure, such as the C of the ear, neck, shoulder girdle, cut-away of the ribs, sacral triangle, and pubic triangle. The boxes illustrate the plane change in the body, making it easy to construct figures in imagined positions with a realistic sense of light and shadow. Once we began to study the skeleton, I found I could also give the figure a feeling of perspective simply by projecting the pelvis, ribcage and skull into boxes.

In the beginning of the course I was overwhelmed and unsure of what to put on my paper. What small bit of light is important to describing the figure? What shadow confuses rather than clarifies? Where should I put a line? As I studied the underlying structure of bones and muscles I began to see the figure as geometric shapes, and understand how best to describe them using light and shadow. The studies we have done in Basic Drawing of spheres, cones, cylinders, and cubes have proved extraordinarily helpful. I began to forget my verbal identification with the figure, and to draw exactly what I was seeing, and more importantly, how to make the figure read on the page.

Usually after the initial stage of the drawing, I move to negative shape. I take my eyes off the figure, and draw the shape between arms and torso, between the legs, between the fingers. In concentrating on these shapes I trick my mind into forgetting any verbal identification I have with the figure, and any preconceived ideas of what an arm, or a leg is supposed to look like. The result is that I get the exact position and peculiarities of the pose.

We have done various other exercises with line quality and expression, but these processes serve as the foundation for more complex ideas such as cross contour shading. It would also be impossible to draw light and shadow without first understanding bone structure, muscles etc. Figure drawing is not only complex technically, but mentally, and the more time I spend on the foundation the more imbedded into my unconscious it becomes, so I no longer have to think about everything at all times. When I look at my drawings I realize that I am not just looking at a half an hour, or an hour of work, but two semesters of learning to see the figure in different ways.

In the last couple weeks my drawings have become, almost unconsciously, about what it is I am communicating through the drawing. Am I seeing the loneliness, or the exuberance of the figure? The heaviness, or the sensuality? Often what I draw startles me in the accuracy of its expression of what I am thinking or feeling. I am constantly confronted with myself through drawing the figure. And for me the beauty of the class is in learning how to communicate my thought process.