6 Ways an Expert Artist Can Enhance Their Figure Drawing

Freelance artist Lanny Markasky is a unique CGMA student because he is also a current CGMA instructor! Lanny teaches Storyboarding for Live Action & Commercials and introductory course Analytical Figure Drawing. Despite his already impressive knowledge and experience, Lanny (like any driven artist) is constantly looking to push his work to the next level. So he enrolled in another CGMA course called Figure Drawing: Anatomy of Style taught by his colleague Patrick Jones. Lanny not only improved specific technical skills, but learned a new conceptual approach that enhanced his workflow. Read on to see Lanny's incredible figure drawings and learn how even an expert artist can improve the following:

1. A New Approach: A.U.D.
2. The Spirit of the Pose
3. Drawing The Muscles
4. The Hip Structure
5. Hands And Feet
6. Enhanced Workflow

My name is Lanny Markasky and I’m an artist in New York City. I grew up in Santa Cruz CA in a very creative environment, with my mother being an artist and my father being a guitar builder. I’ve been working since 2015 as a freelance storyboard and concept artist in the advertising and film industry, working on everything from commercials and music videos to tv and movies. Figurative drawing and painting are crucial for my line of work and have always been very important to me.

1. A New Approach: A.U.D.

It was interesting to work traditionally for an online figure drawing course. To my surprise, it wasn’t much different from taking a class in person. At first, it was strange to practice figure drawing without a live model. While there is no substitute for drawing from life, Patrick does bring the next best thing by supplying great photos, under good lighting conditions, that he’s taken personally.

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The class itself is also focused more on understanding concepts of figure drawing and anatomy, so Patrick’s handouts and references were really more than enough. The drawing below is an example I did from a photograph, but you can see how I’m applying what I’m learning, using a photo as reference, but not simply copying the photo. That's where the essential acronym AUD came in.

Patrick was always drilling into our heads the idea of AUD: analyze, understand, draw. I found this to be incredibly important in my work. It got me to slow down a little and really understand what I was looking at before I made the mark. Not only did it make my drawings better and more descriptive, but it actually sped up my process because I was getting the mark right the first time instead of having to go back and fix it.

2. The Spirit of the Pose

I loved how Patrick talked about capturing the spirit of the pose because it can’t be captured by copying a photograph. You have to really make an effort to understand and communicate what’s happening. It’s a great way to create a more interesting drawing that tells a story.

Curious to see how posing can impact your character design? Read "7 Steps to Create a Dark Elf: Power in Posing" to see how this stage can enhance a character.

I consider one of the most important things in capturing the spirit of the pose, capturing the relationship between the three large masses in the body, the head, ribcage, and pelvis. When I look at a model I’m trying to understand the pose. Is there a weight-bearing leg or is the weight more evenly distributed over both legs? Are there areas of the body that are stretching and other areas that are pinching? How are the masses oriented in space and in perspective? Is there anything twisting? Which muscles are activated and which are relaxed? Where is the skeleton underneath the muscles? And so on. Answering all these questions in my drawing gives me not just a copy of what I’m seeing, but it allows me to clearly communicate what’s happening in a more convincing way.

Watch Patrick Jones demonstrate how to draw the 'gesture of the head' above! If you want to see Patrick add more details and insight to this drawing, watch "Figure Drawing | Anatomy of Style: Female Head."

3. Drawing The Muscles

I found the way Patrick introduced the muscle structures extremely helpful. His instruction is a result of his years of experience studying anatomy. He’s not just regurgitating the words of an anatomy book and explaining where muscles attach. He makes it clear what’s most important, depending on the given area.

For one area, it might help most to understand the origin and insertion of a muscle. But in another area, it could be better to understand the grouping of multiple muscles. Somewhere else, you might want to focus on the larger overall form and think less about some of the specific anatomies. This way of learning sped up my progress and made it easier to develop my own workflow.

4. The Hip Structure

I really enjoyed the in-depth study of the hip structure. Patrick had very clear diagrams to help identify the forms, and did a great job explaining the differences between men and women. A little thing that made a big difference for me was learning about the fatty pads woman can carry under their great trochanters on their thighs. A bump I’ve seen plenty of times working from life, but never understood what it was or how to properly describe it. He also had great mnemonic devices for remembering them, like the butterfly to describe the gluteus medius and maximus.

Learn how to apply these techniques to your 3D work with CGMA course Anatomy for Production.

5. Hands And Feet

Hands and feet are always tricky, and I believe they’re two areas should be carefully designed. It was great having Patrick explain his approach, and learning how he chooses to simplify. Like most of his teaching, he focused a lot on gesture and exaggeration, which helped me think more about getting the energy and the action of the hands and feet. It was also helpful getting the hands and feet down in general shapes first before getting too descriptive of the structure.

6. Enhanced Workflow

I approached drawing the female figure the same way as I would a male. I started by trying to capture the gesture, really emphasizing the movement between the head, ribcage, and pelvis. I tied to enhance the drawing more by looking for rhythms throughout the body, finding areas where I could draw lines through the body to find where they might relate to.

For example, continuing the line of the neck may take me to the hip. Learning about the differences between men and women, I was able to exaggerate my drawings of the female model to enhance the effect. For example, the smaller ribcage, the wider hips, even the additional fatty pads in certain areas.

Final Thoughts

• I’ve always done so much figure drawing from life, I didn’t see much reason to take a figure drawing class on the computer. Still, I signed up for CGMA course Figure Drawing: Anatomy of Style taught by Patrick Jones anyway, and I’m very glad I did! Patrick really got me thinking about making art, and making confident decisions in my work, rather than using drawing purely to study a subject.
• Before this class I focused a lot more on understanding the figure in line, which I still think is a great exercise, but as an illustrator who is very interested in design, I wanted a new approach. It was great working with Patrick because he helped me get to a place where I was still concerned with three-dimensional form, gesture, and rhythm, but I was able to work more with shapes of value.
• Furthermore, he helped me embrace line as part of a finished drawing, where I would normally use the line only to construct the figure and then render in the value. It’s so easy to get caught up in trying to create the illusion of realism, we can forget that we’re still just putting charcoal on paper and that we need to embrace the strengths of the medium.
• Patrick was an amazing teacher and provided really helpful feedback. He actually gave most of his feedback during the live Q and A’s, where he would go over our homework right in front of us. It was great because not only could we ask questions, but we also received input from our fellow classmates.
• I would highly recommend this class to any artist interested in figure drawing, especially if they’re in the illustration field. Patrick really knows his stuff and he’s very passionate about it. He also really cares about his students learning and progressing.

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RELATED PAGES

Read "7 Steps to Create a Dark Elf: Power in Posing" to see how creating a pose can enhance your characters.

If you want to see Patrick add more details and insight to his drawing, watch "Figure Drawing | Anatomy of Style: Female Head."

Learn how to apply these drawing techniques to your 3D work with CGMA course Anatomy for Production.