Drawing the figure

Commonly, a figure drawing is expected to demonstrate technical proficiency and an understanding of the form, volume and surface of the figure as revealed by light, bone, musculature and position. But this is the figure seen in its physical form.

Seeing the figure in its social, psychological, emotional or spiritual form is another story. Seeking this, the drawing language often changes as it does in the work of Kathe Kollwitz, William Kentridge,       Pablo Picasso, Mauricio Lasinsky, George Grosz, Ralph Steadman, Alberto Giacometti and more.

For such artists the task is to bring their inner life into synch with the inner lives of the figures. From recognition to empathy to expression the figure emerges in its fullness.

Drawing the figure

In teaching students to draw the figure, I often think that they forget they actually have a body, too. They accept proportions and shapes in their drawings that make no visual sense. So it becomes important to me to remind them of this wonderful thing they have. I encourage them to be conscious of their bodies, how they move, when they reach their limits, how they encase and exhibit feelings. Pay attention to their bodies when then walk and when they shower.

I will also ask the model to take a physically demanding pose, hold it for a minute or two, then ask the students to take the same pose. This gives them some empathy for the model and some awareness of the feelings that result form the pose.

I will also ask the model to take a physically demanding pose and ask the students to draw, not the figure, but the tensions, stresses and internal dynamics of the pose. All is an attempt to go beyond seeing the figure to also feeling the figure, from looking at the outside to thinking from the inside.

No need to draw?

Though everyone draws as a child, many remain content to resolve the beautiful and complex human form (their own form) in a few struggling lines and shapes. So the question is: If we all begin naturally to draw, and there are many powerful reasons to draw, then why don’t we continue to draw? Why do we build an educational system that essentially emphasizes the word to the exclusion of the mark? A system that lets drawing’s natural introduction to visual language stop at the stick figure? That allows this language, universal and common to all, to simply wither for all but a very few?