A Sketchy Week

Learning to draw people can be an absolute struggle. It is challenging, it can be frustrating, and sometimes it may even feel like it is just out of your zone of proximal development (for those reading who are not in my education cohort, ie. Grandma, you can follow https://www.barefootteflteacher.com/blog/scaffolding-zone-of-proximal-development to learn more about it and why it is so important for teachers if you are interested ☺). 

I was reading How to Draw People by Adobe Illustrator and remembered my first university level art class where my professor told me my drawings were pretty but dead. Maybe my drawings didn’t feel lively because I haven’t practiced how to draw the three basics outlined in the Adobe article, proportion, gesture, and human anatomy.

I did some sketching and here is what I learned:

• In the drawing community a head is a basic unit (h) and 7h or 8h make up
  the average height of a person. Shorter individuals will be fewer h tall, and tallerindividuals, more. Try to vary the bodies you draw and play with proportions. I just realized I made art into math on purpose for fun! 
  • 1h is the head the head 
  • 2h down from the top is mid-chest 
  • 3h down from the top lies the belly button and elbow. 
  • 4h down from the top lie the hip joints, wrist, and groin. 
  • 5h from the top lie the the fingertips and mid-thigh 
  • 6h down from the top  fall the bottom of the knee caps
  • 8h down are the toes

Images above by Ashley Moore licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. 

Feature photo by Birmingham Museums Trust on Unsplash

Giphy from @diababelife