A Michelangelo Figure Study, Explained: Gesture to Light, with Commentary

[00:00:00]Welcome to another studio sessions. I'll be specifically trying to address something I think is really important for me, which is seeing the whole overview of a process. All right, so often times when I'm lecturing, I'm talking about that one thing that I'm working on in depth, and it's sometimes hard to see it from its larger connection to the rest of a workflow or the way it impacts a finished stage. And students collectively, and and I include myself in that, are always looking at, you know, or or with the question, "Well, how does this get me toward that rendering? How does that get me toward that finish? What impact does this have on the final look?"

[00:00:39]And so in in something like this, what I'm hoping to do is with a sped-up drawing, help to make those commentary a little bit quicker so that you can see and assess the value of one specific stage as they add up towards that finish.

[00:00:53]So what you can take away from this is a big overview of how any number of my smaller lectures contribute to that finished look. In other words, what is the cumulative effect of all of these things on the total of the drawing?

[00:01:09]So what I'm starting with here is the gesture. And a lot of my videos look at gesture, different ways to do it, what the importance of it is, how we accomplish a gesture technically. And so here what I'm I'm looking at is pulling out the rhythm by looking at the spine, the simple movements of the body.

[00:01:27]>> [clears throat] >> And basically coming to some kind of a simplified expressive language for what the understructure would be, or skeletal structure. I'm primarily using asymmetrical lines, and then wrapping lines to help hint at a 3D space.

[00:01:45]Once that's done, you know, I always like to either use a different color pencil value in pencil, or if I'm working digitally, put that on a separate layer, and then ghost it down, and then put a little darker, cleaner line on top for the construction.

[00:02:02]So, with the construction, on top of that gesture, I'm now laying shapes, forms, which are representative of the major masses of the skeleton, and then starting to sync those with connective areas.

[00:02:17]So, the neck, the the waist, and then, on top of those forms, establish the landmarks. So, the landmarks would be the kind of the the the bony areas that protrude of the skeleton from the skeleton.

[00:02:33]And by placing those, I can start to get a sense for another element, which would be the turning. Right? So, every stage, in other words, customizes the pose for something specific.

[00:02:44]The gesture gave you that kind of more lyrical, free and easy way to establish and think through what you want the figure to be doing. While the construction stage starts to firm that up, give it more solidity, and grounds it. And by taking the pieces, the shapes versus the landmarks, um I'm able to work on specific qualities of that grounding. The shapes establish proportion, turn in space would be something that the landmarks do, cuz I'm pointing the symmetry line in one direction or the other.

[00:03:15]And then now I'm working through getting basic cylinders for the legs, so that we can begin to see the the mass and the direction of those masses.

[00:03:23]But you can see as I do this stage, that the gesture just kind of fades away, or ghosts back. And that's great, cuz it served its role, right? The role of that was to get me to a secondary stage, or to solve the issues of step one, >> [snorts] >> and then lead me into something that could be more resolved and refined. And what many people do that are, you know, really popular today, that create that immediate and finished drawing as they go from one line to the next, they're essentially they have synthesized all of this into one move or [snorts] in their head perhaps all of these stages work simultaneously in a in an efficient way to just put that mark down. But it but that mark is always one that summarizes all of these elements.

[00:04:09]And so I always like a drawing style that is diagrammatic. I like the way that drawing comes to embody and represent our thinking.

[00:04:17]Uh and it's fun and interesting for me to show that almost more than you know I enjoy doing like something that would be more finished. So I like to work from the top down. So here [clears throat] I've kind of got my head down to the foot and then what you see as I go through is I always re-evaluate the proportion. Right? So as I go through another stage I'll come back and I'll chop the head down or I'll I'll bring the rib cage in or I'll check on a leg.

[00:04:42]So really at every stage I'm doing almost like a at the end of a stage or periodically through that stage I'm doing little proportion checkings.

[00:04:50]Right? I'm starting to look at the the overall relate things as I go and gradually kind of allow the the proportion as a total to start to to correct itself.

[00:05:01]And so I've done the same thing again here. I'm looking at toning back the architecture, the perspective, the mass.

[00:05:09]And then on top I want to put some anatomy.

[00:05:12]So clearly we don't see that or most of that in this Michelangelo painting. Um so I'm going to make most of it up.

[00:05:19]Right? Or for the most part I'm just going to be kind of going on autopilot for understanding the different shapes that I see.

[00:05:25]And by see there I mean barely see. Right? I know they're part of the contour and silhouette and I know that the drapery is influenced by those.

[00:05:33]So for my little muscles I'm going for half you know what I know and then half trying to check in with how the contour of the whole pose works.

[00:05:42]And I want to get these here because I want to be able to later in a coming stage interpret the light and shadow and then also be able to understand the the nuance of the drapery.

[00:05:55]What's it pulling from? What's it resting on top of? How is it being pushed and influenced from underneath?

[00:06:02]But to the importance of the construction stage on the anatomy, notice that all I'm doing with these little muscle shapes is I'm just wrapping them on top of across wedging them into little architectural cues that are left over as planes or as surfaces or as landmarks on my construction.

[00:06:25]So, I really don't need to see them because it's so ingrained as to where a shape lives, how it moves, and then all I need to determine is the the surface it lives on. So, my workflow for anatomy is part, what is the what is the shape of the muscle, or you could say you could just call it shape. What is the position? You know, position meaning how is it moving in response to a pose? Where is it located?

[00:06:52]And then the last step would be perspective. So, how do I get that part in position or that shape and its orientation to also read and help push or reinforce the perspectives that are under while at the same time also adding its own perspective.

[00:07:09]So, in any of these you could see that uh let's say for example the deltoid connects to the perspective of the shoulder and to the outside of the arm in the right arm that's slightly raised, it has more of a C curve in that top contour. That's the action, it's having to work to pull that up, and then the bottom of that shape is stretching. So, that's the part in the position. Well, the part would be that the deltoid's a little shield shape or triangle.

[00:07:36]And I think the dumber you make the the part of the shape the easier it is to remember.

[00:07:41]And then the perspective is that it's uh kind of ball-like or sphere-like and then it tethers those two planes together.

[00:07:50]So it's always for me interesting and easier if I can make up a little workflow.

[00:07:55]And then what this gives me, why I like this stage, is I don't have to think about the perspective as I'm doing it because I'm just, you know, using everything that I've done in the prior stage.

[00:08:06]And then the muscles just come to rest on top, kind of like a puzzle, the a 3D puzzle that would develop over and soften that robotic under structure a little bit.

[00:08:18]And then the muscles as a whole or the whole pattern then gives me a really clear understanding of what the contour is.

[00:08:29]So when I first started drawing the contour it was just this really scary and intense thing that I worked really hard to outline to the best of my ability.

[00:08:41]But maybe I never fully understood.

[00:08:43]So I think the value of learning anatomy in this sense, which is probably the most reductive and simplified sense, is that it it gives you a lot of control, right? Or or the power over how you think that the figure, how you want to design it, where you put it.

[00:09:01]Right? So you kind of less beholden to that what I felt to be an anxiety-inducing relationship to the contour early on.

[00:09:10]So it's very freeing.

[00:09:12]>> [snorts] >> And then you can see as I'm working into different parts like the forearm or the hand that I'm still doing the same process even though it's a little bit more kind of localized for detail. Like the forearm is an egg with a 2 by 4 and the hand is a deck of cards and the thumb is a wedge.

[00:09:31]So regardless of the little area that I'm working on, each area will have its own perspective language built on the gesture and then if I were to you know have enough time and do enough detail work I would put muscle shapes on those planes and each of the same areas.

[00:09:50]And there's the legs. So the legs are tumbling patterns that kind of allow me to uh remember and see their view in in multiple terms. And then on top of the anatomy I'm going to put the drapery.

[00:10:01]Um so the drapery is with the same technical logic as the muscles. It has to move across the form and of course cuz it's covering the body as a whole and then the drapery itself is with shape.

[00:10:18]It has a position and then it also takes on different gestures depending on what the body is doing underneath.

[00:10:24]So it's identical in uh at least for me in terms of a technical approach. So I just take what I do with muscles and then I bring it over one stage in my my overview.

[00:10:36]But there's a little bit more complication in the sense that drapery can be of multiple textures and types and that might affect the contour.

[00:10:45]As I'm working through I try to keep my drapery or my thinking of drapery to six folds that are active that show the way that the body moves underneath.

[00:10:54]And so those would be a pipe fold a diaper fold a pinch spiral Z and a flag.

[00:11:04]And so each one of those for me is tied to a different quality of movement in the body.

[00:11:10]For example like a diaper fold is always created by two areas that can move closer or further. Pinch fold like what I'm drawing around the elbow now are two areas that can compress that are pinch and stretch kind of more dramatically than a diaper fold.

[00:11:27]And so each one of those gets a little diagram or language of movement, language of behavior, and look.

[00:11:36]So, uh and then I usually try to design them simply to start, right? In the same type of thinking.

[00:11:43]Right? Same type of thinking meaning I want to simplify way of overall kind of setting everything up, establishing what's going on.

[00:11:50]And I do that by keeping myself to three. That's a really hard thing cuz it forces me to edit and choose, you know, really specifically what I introduce to start. And then if I'm done, I work my way through so I don't like obsess on one area, then I'll come back and add detail where I think it's necessary.

[00:12:10]But necessary detail for me is usually like a focal point or where I really want somebody to spend their time looking.

[00:12:16]I don't want to develop a lot of information in areas where I ideally wouldn't want someone to be looking later.

[00:12:24]And so that's what's happening here. The arm would be getting close to be done, but you could see how the gesture, which is the first stage, the construction, which was the perspective, the second stage, and the anatomy, which was the the part the last stage, all are influencing the decisions made by or with the drapery. The gesture told me the arm was out and bent and in. The perspective solved that with the three-dimensional space of coming toward me and then going across the body. The anatomy explained how that happens, how the body's mechanics pull the arm out and flex it. So, the the drapery just comes to exist on top of that.

[00:13:05]But every decision before, and with the point of this kind of voiceover here, is just to make that whole relationship clear.

[00:13:14]Uh one thing I always tell my students though in in in courses is, you know, this isn't for you to do as if it's some kind of religious doctrine um that must be done every time. The sequence of stages is really more for teaching. So, it's it's me being as transparent as I possibly can be with the what and the why of what, it is that I'm doing when I'm making my own drawings.

[00:13:41]But, I always encourage my, you know, my students and people I get to work with to do and tune this and customize it with whatever concerns you have. So, you can totally make this framework um yours, right? In the In the hopefully the truest sense. And I think that's where you would eventually find style with it, right? That maybe you don't like the gesture for a specific reasons, or you do a different one, or you omit it, or you collapse stages.

[00:14:09]And so, what you see here is a little bit kind of jump forward in terms of getting the whole thing down.

[00:14:15]That is all the drapery, right? So, that's my first pass. That's that notational pass that I talked about. And what I'm doing on this last pass here is adding some light and shadow.

[00:14:26]Now, for me, light and shadow is always lighting one of three or four objects.

[00:14:33]Sphere, box, cylinder. Everything that I've done in my process before has been derivative or a combination, a sculptural integration of those three parts.

[00:14:45]And so, when I go to light, it's easier for me to start out because I can light a box, cylinder, or sphere. It's harder to light a hand. It's harder to light a drapery that's bunching and pulling and stretching.

[00:15:00]So, I imagine those three to four forms as they're placed on the body, and then I'm introducing the turns through a core shadow. Okay, so that core shadow being that place where it's most noticeable that the light would break um on an object, right? That's the turning point between light and shadow.

[00:15:20]And then I feather it with the half tone, so the way that the that dark core shadow gradates into the light and into the shadow, and that creates timing.

[00:15:30]And timing in value is the the edge, the gradation. It's the degree of turn, the slow or fast turn of a form.

[00:15:40]And so that's really all I'm doing. It's just It's called shadow mapping, right?

[00:15:44]Or or value mapping.

[00:15:46]And so I break that, right? I'm breaking in the So the ideal there would be that when I break the light from the shadow with that core, then you're you're seeing two things now. You're seeing a graphic [clears throat] read of light versus shadow, and that gives you the kind of the the pull, right? The big design of those shadow shapes, which I'll then break into masses, right? So that the areas can have a difference in value, and that will set up the the value read or the key of the the image or the drawing. The sharper edges, so those would be the cast shadow edges, and you can see that especially maybe like across the the breast or the chest area, those cast shadow edges I contrast with a really sharp line to make sure that they stand apart or they impact and show the difference of of edge, right? From something soft to hard and create that contrast.

[00:16:36]That would always be the end of a form or the you know, the absence of light being shown because something's blocking it.

[00:16:43]That'd be the cast shadow. And so in some areas where the the the clothing is pulled away from the body, some of those shapes look a little more disconnected.

[00:16:52]And then in some areas like the the arm, you could see that I'm just lighting the muscles underneath, right? That the top of the arm is it's a soft edge that wraps with the form of the deltoid, which was that big ball, which sat on top of the the cylinder underneath, right? So it's You start to get this cake, right? This layer cake idea of influence in how you explain one move with the the three before. And so in most cases, you know, especially if we're drawing the you know, a nude body, you're really just lighting the shape of each muscle. Areas like that elbow where the forms get a little bit tighter, it's harder to pick out or see those cylindrical or cast shadow edges.

[00:17:35]Still achievable all right all the same, but it just get a little more challenging.

[00:17:40]And then I think in my rendition, right, or my study of this Michelangelo, I've normalized the proportion a little bit. I've made some parts more academic in terms of their overall And that would be the last um thing to address here in some senses.

[00:17:56]Why make a study? Right? So, Michelangelo is important for me specifically in this instance because I was recently, you know, doing a history of illustration lecture and it's what Norman Rockwell was largely influenced by when doing Rosie the Riveter. So, that's interesting. I want to know you know, I want to know about this pose. I want to study it. I want to use my workflow to understand the mechanics of the body, what the pose is about, why he chose this pose might be something that I would aim to to try to understand.

[00:18:28]Or I want to know the dynamics of this pose, so maybe I could rearrange it or recreate it.

[00:18:36]So, thanks very much for watching. I hope that was useful for you all and I'll see you in the next video.

[00:18:44]I'd like to close by also saying very happy birthdays to Leah and Corvo. Uh you have been nothing but amazing in terms of helping, supporting, and making the continuation of videos, books, and all things um you know, Steve Michael Hampton possible. I hope you have a great great month uh and again happy birthday to you both.