Why You Should Draw the Figure in 1 Minute (3 reasons) 

Oh damn, I WAS confused and was gonna ask you isn’t this more like a gesture drawing, haha. I have just started to follow the Natural Way to Draw and I do these 1 minute gesture drawings. Yours are wonderful.

Ah yes! You can't really do these 1 minute poses without using gesture drawing, but there are many conflicting ideas about "what is gesture drawing" so I just talk about the 1 minute pose in this video. I've got more videos on how to do gesture drawing if you are interested. Let me know if you have any questions. Remember: There is no path to gesture drawing. Gesture drawing is the path lol 😂 @@GreenlifeFin

Thanks! That means a lot :) Yes, absolutelyI am trying to post more, will be back this week hopefully ❤

Hi Mark! Ah, that's the challenge, especially in life drawing. One loses the initial loose quality of the drawing the more you work on it. I think my advice is simply to start your drawing light and keep it light for as long as you can. You will learn over time to find the emphasis in a pose and know what you want to focus on and that will help and support you to retain some of that expressive, dynamic quality of a shorter pose. hope this helps! Let me know if you have any question.

Hi Michelle! Great to hear this. This is something that's never explained in any life drawing session! If anything, they are explained as just "warm up" drawings, which is not helpful at all in terms of knowing "how" to do such quick drawings. As a result so many people just simply feel frustrated with these short poses, and gesture drawing in general, or they just dismiss the practice as not important. I'm glad this video resonates with you! If you can, I recommend checking out "The natural Way to Draw" by Kimon Nicolaides, it's a great primer on life drawing, and a wonderful book to draw inspiration from.

@@Drawing-Life Hi Siobhan, thank you I will check out that book. I've started using compressed charcoal and that seems to help me a lot when trying to convey the gesture instead of using a charcoal pencil. I got that tip from you! I think I also just need to draw more. By the way, I saw a wonderful drawing of a huge tree on your website....that's another thing I would like to do better - draw trees and make them look convincing without looking like an illustration in a botanical book (although I really like botanical drawings too). This week we're doing portraiture drawing - 20 minute poses. :-) Do you ever offer workshops in person in Europe or the U.S.?

Wow. This is amazing!! ... I feel very honored to share my perspective with you, thank you so much for this comment. ❤

Thank you for watching 😊

Thank you for watching!! ❤

Thanks Nancy! ❤

When you draw from the live model there is a range of experience that is simply absent when looking at a photo. There is a real dynamic and energy that affects how you approach the subject. Another important thing to know is that when you draw from life you learn to use so much more than just your 2d visual sense to understand your subject. This is what artists refer to as a wide observation, being able to see beyond just the 2D, to incorporate all your senses, and to interpret that and represent your experience of your subject in your work - THAT is literally what makes you an artist, not simply being able to copy. You risk bypassing all of that if you only ever draw from a photo because with a photo you are focused only on the 2d flat image, and so the other stuff becomes not important- and, as you've pointed out - you can't verify it so you write it off. I didn't say one technique doesn't apply to a photo but magically does for a live subject - I said the technique makes more sense when you draw the live subject. If you've never been to life drawing, and you can't verify, why make the argument that it's like saying vinyl sounds better than digital? I would encourage you to try at least to draw people from life in a cafe or something like that.

@@Drawing-LifeI thought that you had said these techniques won't really click unless you do life drawing. If I mischaracterized your point, then I apologize. I wouldn't say that I've written off life drawing either. It's just that no one has ever explained it in a way that is at all tangible or compelling. I don't know what a dynamic, an energy, or a range of experience are, or how to start to draw such things. I do know that I've tried various corollaries: Drawing a real apple has been similar to drawing a picture of one. Drawing my hand has been similar to drawing a picture of a hand. Drawing a live dog is way, way worse than drawing a picture of a dog(despite all of its energy). I'm also unsure of how to incorporate any senses beyond the visual ones into a drawing. Smell? Sound? Taste? Touch? None of those seem like things that are appropriate to collect in a public setting. Imagine I told you that drawing underwater actually improves your work. It's a whole different experience. It has a different energy to it. Different sensation. You need a different range of skills to pull it off. (see, these words describe almost anything). I think you could reasonably convince yourself that you don't need to take a trip to find out for yourself.

@@justalocalhero Couldn't agree more, and I do know where you are coming from. I suppose I would say "drawing under water versus drawing from a photo" is not a fair comparison because that is just chalk and cheese haha.... whereas life versus photo is practically the same with just a few distinctions, and these are the distinctions I'm trying to bring awareness to. For context, I draw from photos and from life, but my entire approach is based on an experience of drawing the figure from life, and what I learnt through that process is that you engage with your subject matter on a completely different level than if you only drew from a photo. Mostly (for me anyway) because it's utterly daunting to have the person in front of you as you try to capture what you see. You can't zoom in, you can't pause the image, you can't come back to it when you like - it's visceral and present in a way a photo isn't. Nevremind the technical fact that in a photo an image is pre-composed, whereas in life drawing, you can't rely on square edges around the model to frame and compose your drawing. .... But also it's different because you have a direct awareness that you are drawing "a subject" that you yourself are! .... this is easily missed when drawing a photo .... as woolly as it sounds, think about it - you can relate to the subject of the human figure very differently than you can to an object like an apple or a vase. Sure you can transpose human experience onto a drawing of a landscape or a still life and express something poetic through that drawing; but no other subject is as relatable than the human figure. So, my point is that fully understanding all of that comes through drawing from life, being in the same room and connecting with the dynamic and energy that can only be present in that context. And, I believe that understanding that or even experiencing it makes you better at drawing the figure. If you are at all interested in reading further about this, I highly recommend "The Natural Way to Draw" by Kimon Nicolaide. He explains how you use all of your senses to draw, especially the sense of touch, a sense that we don't often think about when drawing because we are so removed from the subject, but it is a big part of how to make a drawing feel real. I hope this has given you some more clarity on things, it's important to take your drawing seriously, and to learn and improve always. I'm happy to offer advice on your drawing if you pot on instagram. Let me know!