Painting the human figure

A painted figure is built, not traced. Every workable method solves the same problem, turning a three-dimensional body into marks on a flat surface, and the solutions fall into three families: construction (build the forms from planes and masses), measurement (verify points against the model), and observation (paint what the light actually does, slowly). Most serious figure painters combine two of the three.

Start with the working guide below, then study the masters by the family closest to how you think. If you are unsure which that is, the free diagnostic reads how you work and points you to the nearest painter.