Table Of ContentFIGURE
DRAWING
MASTER CLASS
LESSONS IN LIFE DRAWING
DAN GHENO
CINCINNATI, OHIO
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Contents
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INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1
How to See Form
To capture the beauty and grace of the human body, view the figure as a collection of
planes and shapes, and pay close attention to light, shadows, line quality and the third
line.
CHAPTER 2
Training Your Hand
Drawing skill is a result of hard work, practice and acquirable eye-hand coordination—
not talent.
CHAPTER 3
Action and Gesture
Find the model’s gesture and learn how to use it as a guide in your drawing process.
CHAPTER 4
Making Better Lines
Master how to portray linework evocatively and combine it with tonal mass to create
powerful drawings.
CHAPTER 5
A Portrait of the Hand
Train your eye to draw hands in a way that allows them to serve as portrait—almost as
important as the face itself.
CHAPTER 6
Dynamic Heads
Putting life into a head drawing requires assimilating it with the rest of the body,
capturing an attitude and using historically dependable techniques to capture a facial
likeness.
CHAPTER 7
Putting Together the Human Form
How to analyze and correctly draw different areas of the body, and then bring them all
together in one unified form.
CHAPTER 8
Drapery on the Human Form
Drapery has an anatomy all its own, and the knowledge of it helps you to analyze and
draw folds on the human form.
CHAPTER 9
Composing Your Drawings
Learn how to achieve balance, rhythm and contrast in a drawing.
CHAPTER 10
How to Use Narrative in Your Art
Discover ways to make your narrative drawings and paintings speak eloquently to the
viewer.
CONCLUSION
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
WHAT YOU NEED
Assorted drawing boards: Masonite board, canvas board
Assorted charcoal pencils: 2H and HB, charcoal white
Assorted compressed charcoal sticks
Assorted graphite pencils: 2H, H, HB; and graphite 5.6mm stick: HB, B
Assorted mechanical pencils: 0.5 and 0.3 often with H leads
Assorted papers (no newsprint): bond, toned, tracing
Assorted sanguine pencils and sticks: Both oil and chalk base
Assorted thin lead colored pencils
Ballpoint pen
Bulldog clips
Compressed charcoal dust
Eraser
Hand-held mirror
Pencil holder
Vine charcoal (medium)
Seated Male Figure
Dan Gheno,1996, colored pencil, 20” × 15” (51cm × 38cm) collection of K Ko
Introduction
For a while in the 1960s and 1970s, the study of the figure was declared dead by the art
press. Indeed, many art critics and artists of the day proclaimed that all representational
and even emotive, nonobjective arts such as Abstract Expressionism were passé, to be
replaced in the future by a higher, more intellectual and minimalist form of nonmaterial,
conceptual art.
Well, the future is here. Some things have indeed changed since then, or should I say
changed back, such as the rebirth of the figurative movement. Actually, the figurative
movement never died in the first place. The human form has always fascinated artists, and
although artists of the figure went undetected by the media during that dry period, we
never left the scene. It’s the “official” fine-art world that’s changed, becoming more
inclusive of all aesthetic sensibilities, no longer treating the visual arts like some sort of
horse race or a win/lose proposition.
When I began writing for Drawing magazine in 2003, I saw my articles as an organized
series or chapters for a potential book that told a unified story on how to better draw the
human figure. I wanted to prove how important it is to train your senses—your mind, eye
and hand—to work in unison. I wanted to demonstrate that drawing the figure is not a
mindless act but that it takes a fusion of all these skills and time and a conscious,
deliberative effort and practice to pull it off.
When I finally reorganized these articles into book form, I designed this book so it
could be used by readers of all levels in a sequential manner as if it were a class on the
essentials of figure drawing. In fact, if you are a teacher, I hope you’ll find my book
useful, perhaps thinking of it as a suggestion for a week-by-week class outline and
possibly treating it as a textbook.
For beginning artists who don’t have access to a figure drawing class or for advanced
artists who simply want to expand their understanding, try to use this book as a step-by-
step study guide. Read through it at least once and try to absorb the broader meaning of
the information presented. I suggest you then reread the book, setting aside one or two
weeks per chapter, making drawings from the reproductions, trying to put the information
in the text to use visually. It’s only after you make this fusion of eye, hand and brain that
the information truly becomes integrated and a part of your psyche.
I hope you’ll also find that each time you reread this book you’ll learn something new,
something you missed before. This is true of most books on art technique. As your grasp
of the material increases and your depth of understanding grows, you become more open
to information you may have missed the first or second time. Perhaps it didn’t seem
important on the first read, or maybe it simply didn’t register because you didn’t have a
proper frame of reference for it at the time. It’s a psychological fact that we often don’t see
something right in front of our eyes until we’re ready to accept it. For instance, it is said
that many of the early American indigenous people could not initially see the Spanish
galleons anchored off the coast, because they didn’t have the concept of such large boats
yet. But while it may seem drudgery, with each rereading, every time you learn or relearn
an old concept, the excitement of discovery you experience will become its own reward.
It’s a long journey for all of us. You’re on your way when you make the decision to
become an artist and then make the commitment to spend as much time as you can on
your studies. Most important, you must get over your fear of the subject. Although the act
of figure drawing is full of limitless complexities, it’s far from an impossible task that
requires the use of crutches, such as a camera lucida. The only real hurdle is your
apprehension when you first pick up a pencil and stare at that blank page. Stalling only
makes it worse, making the job look bigger and fiercer than it really is. Like a swimmer
facing a cold ocean, you simply have to dive in and start drawing.
Dan Gheno
Male Torso
Dan Gheno, 1995, Sanguine, 24” × 18” (61cm × 46cm), collection of Sharon Hunter and Hank Putsch
