Artist insight
Improve on your figure-drawing skills with expert advice from Charlie Pickard, as he shares his tips for perfecting anatomy
When we first begin to draw, it’s common to represent what we see using lines. However, lines don’t exist in nature. Everything that we see is, in reality, just varying shapes of colour. Once we realise this simple truth we run into a problem. Shapes on their own appear 2D, but when we look at the world we perceive 3D forms. So how can we express these?
Many students will try to express form by adding more and more value shapes, which often results in broken-up and over-modelled art. However, we now know that the simpler our values, the stronger our artwork will be.
To express form without breaking up our simple value structure, the key is to pay attention not to the shapes themselves, but rather their boundaries. We can also call these their edges, and think of them on a spectrum from perfectly distinct sharp edges to perfectly indistinct soft edges, often called gradients.
While there’s an infinite level of variety between these two extremes, we can think of a midpoint between the two as a firm edge. We can use these as our three main categories of edge, similar to how we use the three different value groups; the lights, midtones, and darks.
Look at the drawing below for an example of this. While the shading may seem quite complex from a first glance, much of the volume and form that’s expressed here is coming primarily from the way I’ve explored these three groups of edge. How many of them can you spot within this figure drawing?
FUNDAMENTAL TO FORM
Think of these three types of edge as the levels of distinctness of a shape. The more perfectly clear it is, the sharper it is, and the less clear, the more soft. It seems like stating the obvious, but this simple relationship of shapes is often misunderstood, and its relation to reality can’t be overstated. Students often consider the softening and play of edges as merely blending colours, performed towards the end of a work as a finishing touch. However, it’s much deeper and should be considered carefully at all stages of a painting or drawing.
Below shows how fundamentally the play of different edge varieties creates form. All that’s been done between the steps is surrounding the soft and firm edges with a hard edge, which immediately creates a palpable sense of form and finish. The simplest way to think of form is as soft edges surrounded by sharp ones. Our exploration will become more complex, but in its simplest state, this is how to create the sensation. With this fundamental concept, we can achieve a clear form quick
