Basic drawing technique

[PencilPunx]

I'm just curious as to what method people here tend to use for constructing (human) figures when they are not using reference. Most of the books I have suggest drawing a stick figure with balls for the joints/hands/feet/head, or using cubes and cylinders to define the torso and limbs. After looking at a lot of sketches by several great artists on this site, I've noticed that I don't see those techniques being used often (or at least not obviously so). More often it seems like there are scribbles everywhere with the "important" lines being refined until they form the image. So does anyone at a more advanced level still use the stick/ball, or cube/sphere method or do most people abandon it as they improve? What are the pros/cons of building forms first and just scribbling? Sorry if this was a long winded way of asking a very amateurish question.

[mtw]

I'm still a beginner figure drawer, but I do like to draw figures as masses at first. I try to make them look like gesture drawings. There's a couple reasons for this. One is that I like to draw in a way so that at any stage up to the finish I have something that looks good; sticks and balls are ugly to me. The reason is that the stick-ball method seems technical and I want something that's more expressive.

[nikia]

I do quick scribbles or lines to get the form and postion in. As I do more detail I'll usually use cubes or a more blocky form of drawing. If I'm doing a straight on shot of the head I'll often use an oval first then scribble in the postion of eyes, nose, mouth. I usually block in hands, feet, arms and legs after I scribble the postion in.

[Lev_0]

Hey, when you're drawing from from your head or life drawing the gesture line will help a lot. This helps a lot with getting the right proportions/angles and widths to the object, if those aren't correct then whatever you do is gona look wrong. Once you've got that then you can draw in cylinders/boxes for volume and help clarify what's going on.

This was from kchen's sketches, helped a lot with life drawing even though it's so obvious.

http://www.imagewiz.net/images/kchen/117805_GestureNotes.jpg

[tinyhands]

A lot of artists I know, myself included, will start with the big shapes of the pose, find the big underlying rythems, and perhaps use abstractions to lock things together and get a better adhesion with anatomy. If you haven't been taught any abstractions, or haven't learned how to solve problems "abstractly" none of this will make any sense. So, i guess as an alternative, always work big shape to small shape.

[DavidCousens]

I found the biggest problem with the stick/ball method was that it's not immediately obvious when you make a mistake and I used to find errors when I was a way into rendering the drawing properly.

These days I start with the head as an oval, and build the lines from there. Because I like my artwork clean I sketch the lines very faintly and then build on the lines that I like.

Hope that helps buddy! :)

Dave