My favorite tool

Posted byJill Millward ArtworkPosted inArt, Landscape, PaintingTags:, , ,

IMG_3927

I thought I’d share with you my favorite tool for figure drawing.  It’s that little measuring thing.  I don’t know what it’s called.  I find a part of the figure, like her head, and measure it and then scale everything to it.  I fought with this gals left arm because I didn’t measure it quite right and then after it was painted her arm was about a half inch too short and then I fixed it.  I don’t worry to much about if the face looks like the person when I first draw it.  Here she is finished.

FullSizeRender-30

Here’s another.  This one was fun because I took images from several different pictures and moved them around in space.  There’s one girl in there twice.  She’s standing next to herself (the figure in the front with her back to us and the smaller one showing her profile)FullSizeRender-32

FullSizeRender-35

I used a grid to do this one.  It’s big and it was before I used the tool.  Grids work great too.

Ballet I_lores

This is a terrible picture of another beach figure painting, I’m not sure why I don’t have a better image.  This one I also did with a grid.  It’s big too but the figures are smallish.

IMG_2505

IMG_2786

11 thoughts on “My favorite tool”

  3. That looks like a compass, a geometry / math tool used for drawing circles. I teach my students to use a drawing utensil and line the top of the pencil (chalk, pastel, what have you) with the part they are measuring and using that as the measuring tool. This technique is called sighting in. Thanks for the sharing – lovely work.

    Liked by 1 person

  5. The tool is a divider. And you are using as intended. I used to use it a lot when I designed furniture. I’ll have to try it in some of my sketches as well.

    Liked by 1 person

  6. Groovy paintings, you use a compass, that’s what it’s called. For me using grids, or any kind of tool/system for scaling doesn’t work for me. Most of my sketches I use for any painting is done loosely like a gesture drawing. I work in the shapes with underpainting. I like the way the portrait came out, pretty good likeness. Also like the several poses piece, and the beach one too.

    Like

Comments are closed.