I’ve been taking a figure drawing class taught by Karl Gnass at the American Animation Institute, with the aim of developing a familiarity with the human form that will help me draw better lunging avocados. These are some samples from the last few months, and compared to the results from a brief encounter with figure drawing some years ago, I can see improvement. It is a slow process, but it is encouraging to see some movement.

Most of the poses in the three hour sessions are less than five minutes. There have been a couple nights where Karl talks about rendering with tone and poses stretch upwards of 20 minutes, but for where I’m at, I prefer the shorter poses. I’m not there to make pretty life drawings. I’m trying to develop familiarity through repetition. Each short pose is a chance to take a new visual impression and strengthen my mind’s recognition of its distinctive aspects. As I do this over and over, I find there are times when I notice some detail I had previously overlooked and in that way my awareness of what I am seeing grows. Three minutes definitely feels longer now than it did when I started the class.