Pencil Kings is an online art education platform and community centered around teaching beginning and intermediate artists the fundamental skills needed to thrive in contemporary art markets. If you’re an aspiring illustrator, comic book artist, concept artist, or even hobbyist, Pencil Kings offers a wide variety of courses and an active community that will help you improve your skills.
While I’ve already written a full review about Pencil Kings, there’s something I’d like to look at a little more in depth: the figure, shading, and perspective challenges.
The Challenges
The Pencil Kings main library currently contains over 100 video courses, taught by over 40 different people, and ranging in subject matter from drawing, painting, comics, animation, concept art, and a host of others. With a few exceptions, each of these courses is about an hour long. This sort of workshop format is great when you have a strong drawing foundation that you want to improve. However, If you’re starting from scratch it can be overwhelming.
To address this problem, Pencil Kings offers three courses that give a thorough introduction to the fundamentals of drawing (technically four, but the Ultimate Guide to Photoshop is included with the monthly membership). Unlike the content in the course library, the challenges contain several lessons that are meant to be taken over the course of four weeks.
The three courses cover topics that are essential to anyone learning how to draw, especially if their goal is to become a commercial artist. These are: 1) figure drawing 2) shading and 3) perspective.
It’s possible to take these courses at any time, but during certain parts of the year the Pencil Kings community holds “live” sessions of each. While the course is live, you can post your own progress in the community forums and see the work of other participants. This is a good way to keep yourself motivated to finish the full month’s worth of lessons.
Instead of a recurring subscription, each course is available for $97 and come with lifetime access.
The Instructors
There are two instructors involved with the drawing challenges: Diane Kraus and Sycra Yasin. (check out Mitch’s interviews with both on PK podcasts 001 and 002)
Diane Kraus is the former community manager for Pencil Kings. With the exception of the Figure Drawing Challenge, she hosts all of the video lessons and coaching calls.
Sycra Yasin is an artist and instructor based in Bucharest, Romania who specializes in character design, though he has a diverse skillset. He also has a popular Youtube channel where he covers a variety of different art related subjects as well as posts interviews with other artists. He teaches the core lessons in the Figure Drawing Challenge. (check out the resource page on his website for some useful figure drawing tools)
Figure Drawing
Figure drawing, whether from life or imagination, is one of the most difficult subjects an artist can undertake. If a face, arm or foot isn’t drawn properly, viewers notice. We are so innately aware of what people should look like that even those who haven’t studied anatomy can spot when something is off.
It’s such a vast subject, with countless books, tutorials, and video courses out there. It can be difficult to know where to start.
The Figure Drawing Challenge is designed to give you the minimum essential information necessary to progress at a steady rate without becoming overwhelmed. It will help you get past the frustrating newbie stage we all experience when learning a new skill.
Here’s the weekly breakdown:
- Week 1 – During the first week students are introduced to the ‘Stickman Method’ of constructing the figure. Emphasis is placed on getting correct proportions, judging angles, and finding the gesture of the pose.
- Week 2– With the armature of the stickman in place, now it’s time to start adding mass to the figure. Using simplified shapes for the head, torso, and limbs, your figures should have a more volumetric look by the end of the week.
- Week 3 – Simple anatomy is introduced and the ‘Lightning Bolt Technique’ is used as a way of interlocking the muscles. The ‘Coil Technique’ is also used to help with foreshortening.
- Week 4 – Now that you can construct basic figures, learn how to place them in perspective, exaggerate the pose, and draw from imagination.
The stickman method is similar to how most artists draw the basic gesture of the figure. The torso is, as Ron Lemen calls it, a ‘pillow shape’. It’s a useful starting point because it contains the two most important masses for communicating the overall gesture: the pelvis and rib cage. The head is used as the basic unit of measure to establish proportions, with the figure standing eight heads high. The limbs are represented with simple lines, and geometric shapes for the hands and feet.
The stickman acts as the armature on which the rest of the figure is layered, so it’s important to thoroughly understand how to use it.
Once you’ve got a handle on the stickman it’s time to start layering some structure on top of it, starting with simplified versions of the limbs, torso and head. Some basic anatomy is introduced, but not so much as to get bogged down in the details.
By the end of the course you should have a firm understanding of how to construct a basic human figure.
The knowledge and experience you gain from this course will act as the foundation on which can build a more refined ability to draw the figure from life and imagination.
CHECK OUT THE FIGURE DRAWING CHALLENGE
Shading and Perspective Drawing
The shading and perspective drawing challenges follow the same course structure as the figure drawing challenge with each week introducing one or two new concepts.
While these two courses can be taken on their own, they work well as additions to the figure drawing challenge. Both courses have sections dedicated to integrating new concepts with drawing the figure. Unless you already have a good foundation drawing people, these sections won’t be as valuable to you.
Shading
- Week 1 – The basics of light and shadow are introduced. The first lesson covers the 7 value scale, blocking in shadows (otherwise known as a notan) and rendering simple geometric shapes.
- Week 2 – The previous weeks lessons are now applied to head drawing, starting with a simplified geometric model then advancing to a full rendering of the face.
- Week 3 – Taking the same approach as week 2, the principles of light and shadow are applied to the full human figure
- Week 4 – During the last week of the challenge you will learn how to use light and shadow creatively. The lessons cover how to set a mood with value, shading without reference, and the relationship between value and color.
As you can see, the first week is spent covering basic, general principles, while the remaining weeks focus on applying these principles to different subject matter.
Adding value to you figures will give them a three dimensional look, and manipulating light and shadow can be a powerful form of visual communication. Check out this course if you like the teaching style of the figure drawing challenge and want to further expand your drawing ability.
CHECK OUT THE SHADING DRAWING CHALLENGE
Perspective
- Week 1 – The first week serves as the introduction to the course, starting with an overview of linear perspective and then jumping in to one-point perspective.
- Week 2 – The entire week is dedicated to learning two-point perspective. This is the most commonly encountered perspective when drawing, so it’s important to thoroughly understand this section.
- Week 3 – Learn to place the figure in perspective as well as more extreme views and three-point perspective.
- Week 4 – Finally, you’ll learn how to accurately map light, shadow, and reflections.
Without a good understanding of perspective it is impossible to convincingly place objects or characters in space.
In the image below from his book Figure Drawing for All It’s Worth, Andrew Loomis demonstrates what can happen when proper perspective is not established in a scene.
In the perspective drawing challenge, Diane Kraus guides you through the basic principles needed to get started with drawing one, two, and three-point perspective, as well as more unconventional viewpoints and curvilinear perspective.
CHECK OUT THE PERSPECTIVE DRAWING CHALLENGE
Conclusion
If you were to take just one of the challenges, I recommend figure drawing. It’s a great introduction to a complicated subject that gives you only the information you need to get started.
I see the shading and perspective challenges as follow-ups to the figure challenge. Completing them will allow you to accurately draw the figure in an environment with light and shadow, rather than isolated and floating in space. Purchase these if after you’ve tried the figure challenge
The added benefit of having the live, community driven challenges during certain parts of the year is a big plus. Seeing the work of other people taking the same course is great motivation to improve. For an example of this, check out Kristy Kate’s series of blog posts about the figure and shading drawing challenges.
Keep in mind that these courses will not make you an expert in any of these subjects. Each one is just a starting point to get you past the initial hurdles that beginners face.
I highly recommend the Pencil Kings drawing challenges to anyone who is just starting out or would like to brush up on their fundamental drawing skills.
Next Steps
Once you’ve finished the course and have some basic drawing chops, it’s time expand your skills even further.
Below I’ve listed some resources I think will help you guide you in your studies.
Figure
If you’re a member of the Pencil Kings community, take a look at Francis Vallejo’s courses in the course library. He covers gesture drawing, anatomy, parts of the head and face, and drawing the figure with exaggeration (he’s got a great figure drawing inspiration blog). Also check out Laurie B.’s tutorials on the figure if you’re interested in a more cartoony style, as well as Sycra’s series on drawing facial features.
There are tons of online courses available to the student who wants to learn figure drawing inside and out. One of my favorites is Proko, which offers a clear and concise sequence of video lessons covering the basics of head and figure drawing, in-depth human anatomy, and caricature.
Michael Mattesi’s Drawing Force is another excellent online course that teaches figure drawing, anatomy, character design, and animal drawing. He has a very specific way of teaching drawing, which is particularly beneficial to those working in the animation and entertainment industries. The Force series of books is also worth checking out.
Shading
When it comes to rendering form my favorite teaching tool is Anthony Waichulis’s Language of Drawing curriculum. Keep in mind that this is not like most drawing courses out there. It requires a lot of time and dedication and the exercises are very repetitive. Apprentices at the Ani Art Academies typically spend two years on the drawing program before moving on to painting. However, if you put in the work, you’ll be amazed at your progress.
Drawing Realistic Textures in Pencil is a good introduction to the subject, though it’s focus is on drawing from life or photo reference. Scott Robertson’s How to Render covers light, shadow, and reflectivity and how to accurately draw these from imagination.
Perspective
Scott Robertson’s book How to Draw is the most comprehensive guide to perspective I’ve seen. If you read it and do all the exercises there’s no need to buy another book on subject.
Draw a Box is a great site that teaches students dynamic sketching and constructive drawing. Irshad Karim (aka Uncomfortable) based his lessons on the time he spent studying at the Concept Design Academy under Peter Han, Kevin Chen, James Paick and John Park (all of whom are Art Center alumni. Art Center’s Entertainment Design program was designed by Scott Robertson). The strength of the site is that it presents the lessons in small, easily understandable chunks, which are sequenced so that each one builds on what came before. It’s also free (unless you want a critque), so there’s no reason not to check it out.
Latest posts by Andrew Covington (see all)
- Review: Pencil Kings Drawing Challenges - March 8, 2018
- New Masters Academy is now releasing recorded Art Mentors workshops - August 27, 2017
- Chris Legaspi’s Draw with Chris, Shading Techniques in Photoshop, and the Laws of Color - August 9, 2017
This is awesome Andrew. Will definitely be checking out the Pencil Kings figure drawing challenge. Is that the best challenge to start with?
It’s my favorite of the three. The challenges can be taken in any order, but it seems like the Figure Drawing Challenge was meant to be taken first.