To balance a pose you need to think of what's known as the center of gravity. When you take

the mass of the figure and drop a line down to the ground, the support (commonly the feet)

need to be on that point or evenly spread around that point If the weight is evenly

distributed among the feet. If most of the weight is on the left leg and some on the

right, the center of gravity will be closer to the left foot. As the weight shifts over

to the other foot, the torso will follow that line.

A lot of sources say to drop a line from pit of neck, nose, eyes, ears.. I think it's better

to imagine the large mass (hips and rib cage) and drop a line from the center of that mass.

Usually you'll see it somewhere in the midsection depending on the pose.

Dropping a vertical line down from the midsection shows that this drawing is unbalanced. We

can rotate it until the vertical line falls between the two feet. Adjust the angles of

the feet to match the perspective of the ground. And that looks much better.

In a balanced pose, the weight of the body needs to be balanced and supported by either

one leg or distributed evenly or unevenly between both legs. Or distributed among any

combination of body parts like a foot and a knee. Or both knees and both hands. Even

lying down with the weight on hips and elbow. Leaning against a wall or sitting down on

a chair or couch. Don't forget about props like a cane or umbrella, which is very much

like another leg.

Not all poses you draw will be balanced though. Only static poses will be balanced. An active

pose, a pose in motion, is not balanced. Walking for example is just a series of controlled

falls. With each step we catch ourselves and push forward for the next fall.

Someone pretending to run by holding a running position is different from a real running

position. In a real run the center of gravity is not supported by the bottom leg. The center

of gravity is in front of the legs. This momentum is pushing the body forward. In a fake running

pose the person needs to be balanced and so the center of gravity is directly above the

supporting foot.

When drawing from a live model, all the poses will be balanced because they have to hold

the pose. This might be one advantage of adding drawing from a photo to your list of exercises.

Photos can capture a figure in motion. Practicing these types of poses along with balanced poses

from a model will help you to develop a sense for motion and momentum. Breaking balance

can be used to tell a different story. Storyboarders, comic artists, illustrators, all need to know

how to draw interesting, dynamic poses which are very difficult for a model to hold for

a long time.

Another great exercise would be to take a balanced pose and use it as inspiration to

create an action pose - a pose that is in the middle of an action. This one for example.

I'll rotate the body a little more as if she's diving and change the limbs a little to show

she's diving for the ball.

In the end though it really comes down to making it feel balanced. If you did all the

measuring and thought about 20 percent here, 80 percent here and you planned as much as

you could, but it doesn't look balanced. Well then it needs to be fixed. If it looks wrong,

it's wrong! It's so hard to confidently say that you measured everything and took all

the parts into consideration because it's all an illusion and there are way too many

things to consider. You can't think of everything. There might be another element in the drawing

that makes the illusion seem a little more like this or like that. So, planning and measuring

will get you only so far. Then you have to trust your best judgment. Train your mind

to be able to see those kinds of mistakes and be able to catch mistakes using your intuition.

You look at a drawing and instantly know what should be changed. It's a feeling. It's not

math. But, you develop that intuition by studying the math.

You can call this "designing". You're changing things for the purpose of making it look better,

more pleasing to the eye. Whether you're changing things about a photo, live model, or a sketch

you did from your imagination, you're designing.

A great example of making something feel balanced by making it less accurate is the font Helvetica.

Look at the letter T. It's designed to feel as though the horizontal and vertical lines

are the same thickness. But when you compare the two, you'll see that the horizontal is

actually thinner. If they were both the same, the top would feel too thick and heavy. I

suppose the "Designers" of the Helvetica font decided to go against precision to make it

feel better.

Alternating Angles of Masses

In a static "soldier alert" pose the body is symmetrical. Unless you're drawing a soldier,

the body won't be in a symmetrical state like that though. Usually you'll see alternating

angles of the masses stacked one on top of the other, following a rhythm. In a relaxed

standing pose, the weight isn't evenly distributed between the feet and the leg that supports

most of the weight pushes that side of the pelvis up and the other side drops. To counterbalance

this, the rib cage rotates the other way creating the opposite angle in the shoulders. Think

of these as stacked blocks that balance each other out. If you're good at Jenga, you might

be good at drawing a balanced pose.

This week instead of having a premium version of this lesson, I have an additional premium

lesson showing how to exaggerate a pose. I introduce a step by step method that makes

it easier to take a rigid pose and develop into something more dynamic. Or you could

use the same approach to create your own poses based on poses from photos.

I've also included a collection of a few photos with 2 versions of the same pose. One rigid

and another more dynamic one. You can try exaggerating the rigid ones and check your

drawing against the dynamic version.

So if you want to see that lesson and extended versions of all the other lessons from the

Figure Drawing Fundamentals series, go to proko.com/figure.

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