Drawing the Female Figure – A Time-Lapse Study with Anatomy Insights

One of the most important—and challenging—skills in representational art is figure drawing. In this post, I’m sharing a recent drawing I made of a standing female model, drawn from the front view with Wolff carbon pencils. The video is a short, slightly sped-up time-lapse, but I’ve also put to one side some skeletal and muscle diagrams to show how I think about form beneath the surface.

What I Focused On in This Study

In this particular drawing, I kept my focus on a few core ideas:

• Contour and wrapping lines: Sometimes I find only using line a good way to exercise communicating the forms of the body with wrapping lines around the figure and limbs.

• Proportions: Even in a quicker drawing, proportion is everything. The head-to-body ratio, hip width, shoulder tilt—all of it contributes to the overall feel of the pose.

• Anatomical Landmarks: I mentally referenced the ribcage, pelvis, and key muscle groups (like the obliques and abs), which help give weight and believability to the form.

Tools & Materials

• Medium: Wolff carbon pencil

• Surface: A3 paper

• Time: 1 hour

• Extras: I added a few anatomy diagrams digitally during editing to help illustrate the structure beneath the surface

  
  

Want to Learn More?

I’m currently working on a full drawing course that teaches how to draw from a 2D reference using charcoal—starting from basic shapes and moving toward full figure studies like this one. If you're interested in building your drawing skills step by step, make sure you're on my mailing list so you don’t miss the launch:

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Thanks for reading this post! I hope the video gives you some useful insights and inspires your own studies. Feel free to leave a comment on the YouTube video if you have questions or want to share your own figure drawings—I’d love to see them.