Figure Drawing With Line and Value

I didn’t give much thought to what I should be working on tonight, I just felt like drawing a figure so I pulled out my iPad and picked a reference photo to work from. It was a nice study on proportion line and value. And I figured out by the end that I really like line over value especially in this setting with these materials.

Like every drawing session I start with my warmup page.

Figure Drawing With Line and Value: warmup page — Warmup page

Here is the setup. The easel I have makes it very easy to clamp on my iPad and I support my super light and tough foam-coar board on the easel also.

Figure Drawing With Line and Value: setup image — Setup image

I worked hard on getting the proportions on this drawing correct. You can see a lot of corrections in the not so erased lines on the page. The key to getting it right was having focus and working slowly.

Figure Drawing With Line and Value: focus on line — Focus on line

Then, what usually is the fun part in painting, I began to add value to the drawing. It may be because of the tooth of the page plus the size of the drawing but I really don’t like the value added to the figure. After finishing the value I was happy that I worked on it but I preferred the drawing just with line at the end.

Figure Drawing With Line and Value: the addition of value — The addition of value

Session Details

Session: 1015
Work: 852
Width: 18
Height: 24
Medium: Charcoal
Art Time: 1.5 hrs

Charcoal, Figure, From Photograph

Chris Beaven

I'm an artist on a mission to do at least 30 minutes of art every single day for the rest of my life and track that progress on my website for all to see. I'm past the 10 year mark and I'm still going strong. Now it's time to give back and help other artists create a life long habit of creating.