Jake Spicer - Figure Drawing: A Complete Guide to Drawing the Human Body

I myself could see more clearly and knew more about myself, for inside me also the universe existed not just in two dimensions but in three.

Jacques Lusseyran

Anyone who has spent any time working in the life room as a student or teacher will know too well how hard it is to see. Some struggle to make judgements about the relative relationships of form in space; others fail to project onto the world a fantasy of their own making. Some learn through diligence how to measure and structure, but fail to find an empathy with hand and touch. And finally, there are some who manage all of the above, but remain as machines failing to give life to the figure through an imaginative understanding of sign and metaphor.

The Life Room is just that: a room with life in it; a life that must be directed and re-joined with the wisdom of experience, the knowledge of learning and the maturity of a generous eye. It asks that we look honestly and objectively without losing the dignity of our subjectivity.

Drawing from the human form is the practice of these relationships. It is not a single skill, but a complex and holistic set of skills. When you draw from a screen or flat image you are transcribing code; when you draw from a present human being you contend with everything: their sense of form, weight, breath, temperature, even their temperament. They may be still (or not), but you sense their stillness not as you do a still image but as an act of patience and presence.

The joy of life drawing is its directness: just you and the model. Contained in that dynamic is every problem we may face with looking. It is never mastered, as both we and they change; the way I see the world today is not the same as I saw it yesterday. Life drawing is central to the visual imagination. It asks everything of anyone who has ever stood in front of another human being and attempted to find an equivalent to that experience through sensation, perception and imagination. Any and every artist who has attempted this at any time in the human story has faced the same set of problems uniquely, set within a specific context. The brain is not fixed; it can learn to see or not. And learning to see one another is always central to our understanding of self, community and environment.

Drawing from the figure can be misunderstood as a mere exercise, an exercise that no longer has relevance to those who do not make images from the human form. This is a mistake. Not because it isnt an exercise, but because the imaginative flexibility and empathic depth it gives is always relevant to all visual forms. We must always be flexible, agile and empathetic to see one another and the space that we occupy.

Matthew Burrows MBE

Any figure drawing made today is inherently contemporary; it is concerned with what it means to be alive in a body and to bear witness to another person through drawn marks. The process of looking and responding both grounds you in the present and connects you to a tradition of visual mark-making that predates written language. Through engagement and application, everybody can learn to draw more confidently and competently this book introduces the universal foundations of seeing, feeling and knowing, on which you can build a stronger figure-drawing practice.