In this first lesson, we will get right into the nuts and bolts of drawing. Namely, we will look at a rendering technique that I enjoy and use liberally: crosshatching. I will explain how I use crosshatching to control my drawing tool and thus turn it into a true physical extension of my artistic intentions, and show you how you can do the same.

Now that we have spent some time talking about crosshatching, let's carry on to the logical next thing, which is shapes. In this lesson, through a demo using a life-drawing model, we will look at how to quickly define shapes by choosing stroke directions.

In this lesson, I will share with you my techniques for expressing value while drawing various life-drawing models. Values are something that all artists at every skill level are constantly learning and re-learning. I hope the tips I present here will strengthen and embolden your understanding of values before we tackle the very complex work of drawing people.

Now we will take the principles and techniques taught previously on controlling and expressing values and apply them to drawing topless models, both male and female. We will pay special attention to common light and shadow patterns on a human body, which can form a baseline for your future work drawing people

Now let's look at the basics of the body. Here, we will talk about creating different yet believable characters while experimenting with a variety of body proportions and explain the principles that make such exploration possible. In doing so, I will share a technique that will ensure that you never draw a body with a broken structure ever again! This method will help keep your drawings solid even without extensive knowledge of anatomy.

In this lesson, we will cover perspective and foreshortening the human body through a series of exercises drawing different models. I will show you a useful method of determining the middle of a line in perspective that will help you when drawing foreshortened bodies.

This is not a hardcore anatomy lesson; we WILL, however, examine the most critical parts of the body, which, incidentally, artists tend to have the most trouble drawing. I will share the tips and techniques that I employ to help me tackle these body parts and produce solid drawings. We will apply and demonstrate these principles in drawings using various models. This is a big task and will therefore occupy two lessons.

Carrying on from lesson 7, we will continue to examine tricky anatomy and how to tackle them effectively by drawing various live models for practice.

There are some people who naturally "never forget a face". If you are not one of these people, have no fear! Observation and recollection are skills that can be learned and practiced, and in this lesson, we will examine strategies to do just that. By the time we are done, you should experience a marked increase in your ability to remember and recreate faces that you have glimpsed for just a few seconds, a skill anyone can benefit from, especially a character designer!