Figure Drawing from Life
featuring Randy Sexton
Life drawing, and drawing from a model, was one of the first higher requirements Randy Sexton had to get through in college. This would basically be working with shading, cast shadows, form shadows, and so on. This was his first experience drawing from life and he feels it carried into every type of art that he did after that.
“I can’t say enough about how benefical it is to draw [and paint] from life. For one, it’s fun. And, it’s always inspiring.””
Randy’s training of eye-hand movement, and training himself to see, is what he felt was the big takeaway from the classes he took. Seeing proportion, and nuance, to really look instead of drawing just what you think. For example, a symbol of an eye shape would look like an almond shape with a ball or circle in it, rather than letting himself think of it as solely an eye. The activity of figure drawing from live sessions quickly became a passion of Randy’s. He can’t say enough about how beneficial it is to draw from life, even if you are not a figure drawer. It is always inspiring and testing.
A TIP FROM RANDY: Randy tries to keep himself fresh by working with different materials. He works with charcoal and in black and white, then will shift to dry pastel. After, he may use a limited palette, then he shifts over to a wet medium like gouache. This keeps him from getting too stale and automatic. This way, he is not just responding to the forms of the figure in a traditional or academic way. He gets to play with the medium as well.
As a painter and teacher, Randy tried to help people paint a figure by using big shapes and big masses. An exercise Randy had his figure classes do is mass in the figure with a big silhouette shape of the whole pose. No dark and light at first, just a flat silhouette shape. Then, they use their rag to adjust and wipe away to carve into the masses they created and get closer to what they see in real life and real time. It is really about getting that shape down as quickly as they can. Then, they can build into working and building a form with color and value.
It comes down to developing the skill of seeing and developing your ability to observe nuance and proportion and angles. This really all plays into drawing and how an artist is using eye-hand coordination. Randy always used to wonder how working with a dry medium (chalk, pastel, pencil, charcoal) would translate into helping him work with paint and a brush. It took Randy a long time to realize how much those dry mediums help. Basically, it funnels down to painting and drawing from life. It doesn’t matter if you set up a still life or have a model, you just need to train your eye. It is strengthening your ability to see shapes and deal with scale and proportion and nuance. Try Randy’s exercise from above using masses and see how much drawing and painting from life improves your skill.
Randy Sexton has an array of knowledge in figure drawing and many other areas. Click below to join Randy today:
To hear more on figure drawing and drawing from life, listen to Gabor and Randy on the Paint & Clay podcast here.