Figure Drawing
Hello again! Hope you’re all doin well.
Since my last newsletter, I turned 37. My bones feel moldy and old, but my heart & spirit remain pure. And I’m here to deliver another newsletter for your enjoyment.
This week, I’m in the mood to talk shop about some art stuff. So I’m gonna talk a bit about my daily figure drawing practice, something I’ve been doing for years now but very rarely stop to think about. Seems like as good as time as any!
I started doing daily figure drawing back in 2018, and I don’t quite remember what spurred it on. I’ve been drawing fairly consistently since 2008, but I had a period of a few years where I found myself not drawing very much at all. So when I decided to fully commit to drawing over everything else, only path forward was to study and draw the human form as much as I possibly could. I googled some free pose references, bought some cheap sketchbooks and pens, and just started drawing a pose every single day. And I have not stopped in the past 6 years.
While my method of drawing poses has changed a bit over the years, I have some basic stuff I try to keep consistent. I’ve almost never focused much on facial details (as you’ll see with all the disembodied blank faces), or on trying to get the hands to look exactly right. I mostly just focus on getting the body pose right: the placement of the arms and legs, the tilting of the head and neck, making sure everything looks OK in relation to each other. I use a pen so I can’t erase anything, and I try to finish each pose under 5 minutes so I don’t get too fussy about the details.
I’ve also tried various sources for poses online, for the sake of having a healthy amount of body diversity in what I’m drawing every day. Lately I’ve mostly been sticking to the Pose Archives, who keep churning out tons of varied free poses that are fun to practice (they’re the reference for most of the poses you’ll see me post here). I don’t find myself with a lot of free time to search for the perfect pose to use, so having a source of consistently useful and dynamic poses is a lifesaver.
Daily figure drawing is very cathartic, and it guarantees that I draw something every single day, even on days when I’m feeling creatively drained and can’t seem to get anything else going. But don’t get me wrong - it can also be very, very frustrating. Since I’m using a pen, if I fuck up even the smallest detail in a pose, it can screw up the whole thing and I can’t fix it. Every time I sit down to draw a pose for the day, there’s a solid chance I am going to completely eat shit and draw total garbage. Trying to get a human body to look exactly right in under 5 minutes is a really good way to run up against your own limitations as an artist. At its worst, it can leave you feeling vulnerable and exposed.
Honestly, this has been a struggle of mine for a while. Looking through a lot of my old pose drawing, I see a bunch of self-critical comments I wrote on poses that I don’t think went well. A lot of “ugh!” “SHIT!” “Just awful.” “TERRIBLE OH GOD” etc etc. I’m my own worst critic!
If I can get even more honest, I feel uncomfortable even sharing these poses with you. Considering how harshly I judge myself for failure, I have a fear that posting any of these publicly will invite the same judgement from anyone reading this. But I consider my daily pose drawing to be an exercise in accepting failures and moving on from them, which is why I make sure to date each one. It’s as if to say, “Here’s my attempt on this date. It didn’t entirely work, but that’s fine. It was just today’s attempt. There’s always tomorrow.”
I’ve had occasional doubts about the effectiveness of what I’m doing. Am I actually getting any better at this? Is my art improving in any kind of noticeable way? But the good news is that I still have a bunch of my old sketchpads from back when I started, and I can see the results myself. I recently stumbled upon one of my 2018, leafed through some of my poses, and I could tell immediately that I’d gotten a lot better. It was nice to see!
And I feel this manifesting in my comic art too, even if the effects are a little more subtle. I feel more comfortable drawing human bodies in particular poses, without having to consult reference photos. And when I do, I find myself able to nail the poses a lot quicker. That’s an underrated part of improving your art skills - not just being able to draw better, but faster, and with more consistency. So even if I don’t always see the results of my practice, I can feel them, which might be even more valuable.
I’ve thought of varying things up a little bit here and there. Probably my biggest recent change was incorporating drawing feet in more detail, since that’s long been a weak point for me. For a bit I drew foot practice separately, but googling isolated images of human feet started to feel a little strange, so I realized it would be easier to draw the feet of the same models I draw for figure reference. So now my most recent figure drawings also have big drawings of feet all over them! Fun!
I’d also like to work on drawing faces, particularly side portraits which have always been a weak point of mine. And perhaps, one of these days, I’ll say “enough!!” to figure drawing entirely and switch to daily practice for backgrounds or buildings or anything else. I’ve felt a little bored drawing the human body lately, feeling like I’ve been drawing the same thing over and over again. But that’s kind of a good thing, isn’t it? I feel so familiar with the human body now, I can’t get thrown or intimidated by a complicated pose anymore. Some are more challenging than others, but no matter what I see, I know I can draw a decent version of it within 5 minutes. It’s a nice feeling.
For any of my artist followers, I’d love to hear about how you practice! What do you draw? What tools do you use? How frequently do you do it? I simply love talking about this stuff. Sadly I don’t have any kind of comment section for this newsletter, but feel free to shoot me an email at seandavidrose@gmail.com if you wanna gab about it. Or just hit me up on Bluesky or Instagram!
Thanks again friends, and I’ll see you next time!
