Importance of learning figure drawing
Learning to how to draw emotional, dynamic poses is important for creating an image that holds the viewer’s attention. A solid anatomical foundation can help you with this task. If you have been wondering: what are some good resources to learn human figure drawing? I got you homie! Here are a few of the best anatomy tutorials focused on movement and poses that I could find, along with a guide for starting out.
A small guide on effective practice for figure drawing
I recommend sketching out a lot of quick poses every day to practice. This way, when you can’t think of something to draw, you can use one of your ideas instead of a stiff and boring pose. Gesture drawings require you to strip details and go for energy. Start w/ a line or s curve for the spine and find something dynamic to draw. Try to go pretty quickly, letting the meticulous details go and just you and your pencil/pen on the paper.
Stuck? Learn anatomy
First of all, I first recommend learning anatomy and range of motion so you can generate your own organic poses on the fly, but having inspiration certainly helps!
My best resource for learning artistic human anatomy would be the ebook I wrote on the topic. I also have created an anatomy framework & set of tutorialsto help you learn proportions.
Essential pose drawing tutorials
Anyways, onto tutorials for poses! Here is a great tutorial I recommend reading right now:
Warren Louw from ImagineFX
Also read:
- Quick Tip: Create Dynamic Poses Using Gesture Drawing
- How to Draw Balanced Poses | Proko – Proko is amazing. His mastery of anatomy and motion is really quite amazing.
And if you have more time:
- A great tutorial for seeing real improvement: Focused Practice: An Exercise for Real Improvement in 33 days
- How to draw movement: 16 top tips
Other Awesome resources & websites for pose inspiration and reference
These tools are great because they offer you excellent references, which is great for doing studies or are in need of inspiration.
- Posemaniacs - superb resource that allows you to rotate the poses in 3D w/ anatomy details. They also have timers and an app. It’s a good alternative to a full, human anatomy atlas.
- Biodigital’s Human Visualization Platform - A really nice human anatomy atlas that is free. Another paid option that I love and use is Complete Anatomy by 3D4Medical.It goes on sale and is geared towards medical students, so it’s very indepth, accurate, and beautiful to look at.
- Quickposes: pose library for figure & gesture drawing practice
- SketchDaily Gesture/Figure Drawing from the Subreddit SketchDaily
- #posereference | Explore posereference on DeviantArt
- Pinterest Pins - pinterest is great for content discovery
- Senshistock’s Website & DeviantArt Gallery Wonderful stock photos for reference.
- Anatomy 360 | Real 3D reference for artists - paid
- Randomly generated visual reference board on humans
- Physical, 3D drawing figures. Awesome way to
Videos
- Sycra has several, high quality videos on this! I’ve watched them and found them enormously useful.
- Xia Taptara also has an amazing channel full of detailed digital paintings with useful tutorials
- How to Master Drawing Poses from your mind
Hopefully this helps you!
Got a pose sketch/drawing you’re especially proud of? Share it with me! (See social links at the bottom! Took off Disqus because it’s a little creepy privacy wise.)
Thanks for looking!