Not quite life drawing - pose portfolios

It has long been believed that working from Life is the best teacher, when it comes to learning to draw the human form. Most post secondary institutions will offer course in life drawing and anatomy for the artist. In the high school setting we are certainly limited by access and expense, so finding additional ways to supplement your usual drawings of the same forms (often your friends and family) sitting on the same furniture or having to pose for you in ways and outfits that suit your needs can be almost as challenging as getting them to help you in these ways in the first place.

While I don't have the perfect answer by any means I would like to suggest a couple of websites than can give your drawing a little boost and can assist you in figuring our proportions and forms or push you to develop strong skills for quick pose sketches (Super recommended if you are going to be doing this type of thing post secondary....)

Senshistock http://senshistock.com/index.php - is a great one to start with. The figures are non nude but wearing form fitting clothing so that figures and musculature are still relatively clear.  They have some programs and collections of poses for sale but also have a number of free practice forms in their "sketch section". When you click on this it sets up a timed posed image for you to draw. When the timer runs out it moves to the next image - just like a live session. You may adjust the length of the timer, skip images and pause it in its entirety. The pictures use a variety of lighting, expressions and - in contrast to many sites - a lot of props. My only real critique is that there are far more images of female figures than male. Overall a great site with some really useful images and an easy interface.

Pixelovely - http://artists.pixelovely.com/ - another great one with a slightly more complex but still really user friendly interface.  This one gives you a choice of figure drawing, animal drawing, hands and feet or portraits an expression. The interface lets you choose between specific genders (or all/random), clothed or nude and two styles of session - standard or class. A class set will give you short timed poses first working into longer poses with breaks actually built into the time! Pretty awesome. A great variety of figures and forms coupled with a lot of choice in parameters make this an excellent resource.

Those should really help get you started with gesture and form!



Look for future updates/reviews for: Quickposes.com & posemanicas