2025-03-11 11:42
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Tags: Cosmos Figure Drawing
Section 03. How To Study Anatomy And Info Theory
Section 2. Theory For Expressing Human Body
04. Basic Drawing Using Shapes (Guide Drawing)
TLDR
This video goes over the mindset used in drawing the human body using shapes. Mannequinization/Guide Drawing: Transforms the human body into shapes.
Benefits of Shapes for Figure Drawing
Easy to modify
Shapes inform of surfaces and are easier to modify or diagnose issues with.
- Hard to be objective on a drawing you spent 4 hours detailing Shapes as a guide allows more confident rendering by ensuring accuracy and proportion.
- Ensure the accuracy of the shape first before considering the rendered piece.
Try drawing using shapes initially. Eventually your mind can project them without an actual drawing and draw based on impressions.
Warning about rigidity (Main Takeaway)
Guidelines are guides. The human body is not a “wood” mannequin, and it doesn’t have to perfectly fit inside the boxes.
- Use guides to identify position, size, and proportion.
Solution
Cosmos suggests conditioning yourself to view the cube as NOT rigid. (Perhaps by curving the cuboid). Exceptions are non-organic material like steel.
- Cosmos draws cylinders for the lower arms and legs with a taper.
Example
On the right, the arm is considered with the cylinders flexible and overlapping
It is hard to imagine the leg segments overlapping if we consider their guides as rigid.
Omission
Only if the object is thoroughly known to the point of projection without guide drawing. Perspective typically needs guide drawing since we don’t continually experience it.
5. Shapes P2
- Don’t be afraid to modify existing shapes to create a more favorable one (e.g. the bean for the torso)
- Shapes can be mix-and-matched. (Sphere for the head, Cuboids for the body, lines for the arms and legs)
- Pick the guided drawing method that works and get used to it, considering time efficiency.
- Establish a universal proportion that can then be modified for different body types.
6. Perspective Drawing and Human body
Basic perspective theory
- Perspective arrangement can be used to intentionally omit parts. Overview of 1-4 point perspective How to convert 2D into perspective
Vanishing points
1 point introduces depth 2 point introduces distance