Want ten free figure drawing resources?
Looking to improve and learn figure drawing?
Drawing the figure can be challenging for many artists. However, level up your figure and drawing skills by learning from free figure drawing resources.
All of them completely free!
These free figure drawing resources below will improve your figure drawing, help you gain confidence, and force you step outside your comfort zone.
They are perfect for you to practice when you don’t have a real life model to draw from.
What’s Covered In This Blog Post
- Why figure drawing is important.
- How to understand your figure drawing goals before learning.
- Discover ten free figure drawing resources to improve your figure drawing.
- Improve your drawing skills from life drawing websites, art blogs, to figure drawing courses.
- Conclusion
Why Is Figure Drawing Important?
The human figure probably shows up in your art. Even if you don’t think it does, by learning how to draw the human figure can exponentially improve your drawing skill.
This is because it forces you to accurately represent the figure onto a page. Observational drawing is the best way to get better at drawing, which is why I love life drawing so much!
I would also argue that most professional artists would recommend drawing from a life model (online or in real life) to improve a drawing skill. Even if the human figure doesn’t appear in your art much, you could transform your art by incorporating figures!
Your art can become better with a little hard work, the correct art tools and teachers around you, which these figure drawing resources are here to help you with.
Understand Your Figure Drawing Goals
Define your figure drawing goals to focus your learning effectively. Whether studying anatomy, practicing gesture drawing, or drawing from different pose references, have a clear objective to make your learning worthwhile.
For instance, gesture drawing emphasises movement and rhythm, while looking at different human poses, and how the body moves yields different results.
Ultimately, you need to figure out what you want to learn, achieve and improve by learning from these figure drawing resources.
Consider these figure drawing goals:
- Improving your figure drawing skill
- Enhancing your sense of movement within your figure drawings
- Learning human anatomy inside and out
- Improving your portrait drawings
- Improving your proportions
- Learning how to draw correctly
And then consider these sessions based on your goals:
- Gesture drawing
- Blind contour drawing
- Body part studies
- Muscle and anatomy studies
- Life drawing classes (online or offline)
- 1 minute, 2 minute to 5 minute figure drawings
The list is endless! Elevate your figure drawing with free figure drawing resources tailored to these goals and sessions. Let’s explore the first one to kickstart your art!
Gesture Drawing Resources
Explore Proko’s gesture drawing videos, an invaluable resource for understanding the importance of gesture drawing and enhancing your drawing skills.
Proko guides you through the definition and benefits of gesture drawing, providing a step-by-step process for success.
Learn the ‘CSI’ technique, emphasizing ‘C’, ‘S’, and ‘I’ strokes to sharpen your focus on capturing gesture rather than contours. Elevate your figure drawing proficiency with this insightful resource.
Another great resource is that of Live Life Drawing – a great YouTube Channel on all things figure drawing. These expert video can help you with gesture drawing, with it’s own dedicated article.
Gesture drawing is a great drawing exercise. Instead of drawing every detail and focusing on every contour of the figure, gesture drawing makes you focus on movement.
From 30 seconds to 3 minutes poses, gesture drawing makes you concentrate on the gesture of the pose. These aren’t rushed drawings without accuracy, but are quick, attentive observations. You can get a real sense of movement within these sketches, sometimes even more so than longer poses.
Some More Free Gesture Drawing Resources
Concept Art Empire – Tips for Gesture Drawing.
Line of Action – A great website to draw gesture figures with different timed poses.
Pose Maniacs – 3D figure drawing poses set to a time of your choice.
Draw Paint Academy – A great guide to help you learn gesture drawing.
Portrait Drawing Resources
If you want to learn how to draw the head from any angle, take a look at my videos which I upload to my Portrait Guru Youtube channel.
Within these videos, I discuss drawing heads looking up, looking down and looking straight at the camera. You’ll learn all about the fundamentals of starting any head drawing, how I build the drawing in stages and the final artwork.
Another top-quality video is Steve Huston’s ‘How to Draw the Head / Face / Portrait’ master class on New Masters Academy. Steve Huston is a wonderful drawer, painter and human figure tutor, and this free drawing resource is over 3 hours long!
If you want to draw the head from any angle, I highly recommend you check this video out.
It’s a great watch and you will learn from the very best – all for free! (You can thank me later!).
To improve your head drawings there’s one author and artist to help you, and that’s Andrew Loomis.
This free figure drawing resource of ‘Drawing the Head and Hands‘, published in 1956 is a brilliant resource. It’s helped me construct the head properly, it’s a tried and tested structure that works every time.
‘Figure Drawing For All It’s Worth‘, published in 1943, by Andrew Loomis, is another resource that I highly recommended to help your figure drawings. It’s still as evident now as it was back when it was published. Loomis explains how to construct the figure, with illustrations, anatomy explanations and helpful proportion graphics.
Some More Free Portrait Drawing Resources
Free Face reference photographs – Unsplash and Pexels.
The Portrait Guru – How to draw a portrait looking up
Pinterest Ideas – Planes of the face
Figure Proportions Resources
‘The Drawing Database’, hosted by Marc Leone has great quality content, with some videos lasting over an hour in tuition. Marc is a great teacher with remarkable drawing skills. It’s a very popular channel that I highly recommend.
The channel covers everything from anatomy, studying past master’s work, to introducing you to the figure.
All of his videos are excellent, and I particularly like his figure videos:
- THE FIGURE: Know Your Landmarks & Proportions-A Guide
- THE FIGURE: Drawing the Torso
- THE BASICS: The Ellipse-its everywhere’.
After I hit publish on this article, I’m going to head straight off and watch one of Marc’s videos! Feast your eyes on the videos, learn, and thank me later.
Other Notable Figure Proportions Resources:
- Figure Proportions Worksheets: A great resource on Deviant Art & also this great image.
- Human Proportions Calculator: An interactive way to study human proportions.
- Improve Your Drawings: Drawing the figure in 3/4 view.
- Pinterest: Lots of great images to feast your eyes and learn a thing or two!
Drawing People With Construction
A fantastic Youtube channel ‘Love Life Drawing’ can help you improve your figure drawing, and in particular construction of people is this video.
Hosted by Kenzo and his mum Mayko, this channel helps take your figure drawing to the next level.
From videos, blogs to podcasts, learn how to draw a figure with these resources:
- How to draw a figure with basic forms.
- Planes of the head and neck using – a full 2 hour video to get your teeth into!
- Loads of images on the construction and planes of the head – Pinterest.
Figure Drawing Poses
I highly recommend New Master’s Academy’s videos for great reference figure videos. Especially useful when you don’t have a real-life model to draw from.
All of their free videos are on Youtube, and most of their life drawing poses are 30 minutes in duration. These start with 5-10 one-minute poses, followed by 5-10 two-minute poses, and then usually a couple of 10-minute poses to end. I usually use the 10-minute poses to complete a few gesture drawings, studying the head, hands and feet if I have time.
From a mixture of nude, non-nude, female, and male poses, I highly recommend these life drawing poses.
Other notable figure drawing poses resources:
Line of Action – Fantastic figure reference poses to draw from different timed poses.
Quick Poses – Choose different pose durations, see their challenges to pose dynamics.
Pinterest – Always a great reference for different poses.
The Pose Archives – Look no further than these great figure drawing poses.
Drawing The Hands
Learning how to draw hands is every artists worst nightmare. Beginners usually draw hands too wide like sausages, too thin like branches on a tree, or just avoid them altogether!
I feel your pain completely, so here’s some valuable free resources above that can help you power through. One resource I love to use is Sketchdaily, and choosing a body part to reference from.
Other resources to help your hand drawing
- School Of Realist Art – Simply fill your details and receive a free PDF hand drawing worksheet.
- Rapid Fire Art – Another great PDF to get your teeth into!
- Jey Ram – An in-depth free article to help your hand drawing skills.
- Pinterest – One great way to learn how to draw hands is by drawing from reference.
Free Figure Drawing Pose References
SketchDaily References is a very handy website that I recommend bookmarking. This is a free figure reference website, with lots of different settings to suit you. From nude to non-nude, pose duration, to animal reference – it’s a great resource!
Most of the reference photos from are high-quality, however there are some not so good ones that I tend to skip (usually the dated black and white photographs).
As a side note – this website is not secure (no https certificate). This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t visit and use the website, just don’t enter any login details into the website, as it’s venerable to attack.
Drawing From Artistic Masters
‘Study Drawing’ by Ben Rathbone explains how to study a master artwork. Fortunately he’s studying a figure drawing by Charles Bargue (very handy for this blog post!).
If you want to learn how to draw the figure, I recommend stealing and copying from the great masters. Master studies allows you to see how past (and present) artists created their figurative art. You can learn so much from these exercises! Imagine getting into the mind of Van Gogh, Rubens to Rembrandt? Master studies allows you to do just that.
Improve your own figure drawing with master copies; it will take your figure drawing and technique to the next level!
Other resources to help your hand drawing
- JakesArtClub – Follow along and see the master studies that Jake produces in this video.
Listening to words of wisdom (mostly)
Well I big myself up by the heading of this section! You’ll just have to be the judge of that though! Modesty aside, if you prefer listening then check out my The Creative Edge Podcast. Here I discuss everything creative, illustration, to freelancing. I delve into tactics and tips to help you improve your artistic game. Great for putting on whilst on a run, doing those dishes or wanting to learning something new!
How have these figure drawing resources help you?
I hope these figure drawing resources have been helpful to you! It was a pleasure collating all of them; from Proko, New Masters Academy, to Andrew Loomis, these resources are here to help enhance your drawings and in particular your figure drawing.
The human figure is one of the hardest things to draw, so it’s always worth getting as much help from the experts. I’m constantly trying to improve this side of my art, so I know how it feels if you’re particularly frustrated. If you want to improve your figure drawing, my simple tip is to keep at it. Focus on improving, studying, and practice, and with these resources above, you’ll go from strength to strength. Remember, every professional was once an amateur.
If you’re unfamiliar with this blog, I share illustration, art and freelancing tips to help you succeed. From helping you how to use colour, seeing how the great masters created dynamic compositions, to sharing my own illustration work, be sure to check out my previous blog posts!
If you feel like you’re struggling for time to draw, be sure to check out my blog post, offering you tactics to draw more when you’re limited for time.
I’ll love to hear what you think of these resources! How you have improved your figure drawing? Are there any resources that you love that I haven’t mentioned? Or do you have any tips for our community? Please send me your comments below, it would be interesting hearing from you guys.
Be sure to have a look through my previous blog posts, on the social media links below, or on my illustration portfolio!
Thanks guy, and happy figure drawing!
Many thanks for listening and visiting my news page today. You can follow what I’m up to on my Twitter, Facebook or Instagram pages, I’ll really appreciate it if you do, and don’t be afraid to say hi to me! Many thanks again, and have a great day!
9th January 2021
