One of the greatest challenges to confront an artist is drawing the human figure. Our bodies are infinitely complex yet intimately familiar, giving rise to a subject that is difficult to depict accurately yet judged incessantly. The human figure is almost overwhelmingly complex for the artist to draw. The human figure is an organic structure that defies geometric simplification. It is composed of bones, muscles, and organs, all of which are covered by a flexible layer of skin. The body has many moving parts that make it almost impossible to define as a shape. Within its skeleton are more. | m 30 The Human Figure One of the greatest challenges to confront an artist is drawing the human figure. Our bodies are infinitely complex yet intimately familiar giving rise to a subject that is difficult to depict accurately yet judged incessantly. The human figure is almost overwhelmingly complex for the artist to draw. The human figure is an organic structure that defies geometric simplification. It is composed of bones muscles and organs all of which are covered by a flexible layer of skin. The body has many moving parts that make it almost impossible to define as a shape. Within its skeleton are more than 200 individual bones. Attached to the skeleton and throughout the body are more than 650 muscles. Figure drawings are held to the highest standards. Because the body is very familiar to us we each have one of our own we generally know a lot about it. We admire its beauty and we recognize its flaws. Physical perfection is sought by many giving rise to such industries as cosmetics plastic surgery and a plethora of diet programs. This basic familiarity can often become the bane of the figure artist because his artwork is judged by a higher standard than almost any other art form. Any artist desiring to learn how to draw the figure needs all the help he can get. Fortunately in addition to books and other forms of instruction a new way to help artists with their figurative work is becoming available through technology. This new technology gives the artist access to virtual figure models to use as references for figure drawing. Figure Artist a new software program now brings the power of virtual models to everyone with access to a computer. Figure shows a screen shot of Figure Artist. 1 Figure Drawing with Virtual Models Although virtual models should not take the place of human models they do add a valuable resource for the artist when real models are unavailable or the pose is unattainable. Often artists are faced with needing to draw a figure with no time .
