How to draw simon

Top 5 figure drawing progression tips with Simon Luty

There is a video version of this article which you can see on YouTube here.

How did Simon Luty learn to combine gesture, structure, volume, and an expressive and creative style? He has 5 tips for you if you are also learning to draw figures.

In my meanderings around Instagram I came across a really good artist. He has managed to build up a variety of skills to a high level and combine them in an effortless and stylish way. I don’t understand why he doesn’t have more followers – if there is any justice on the internet, he will have thousands by the end of the year! I think he’s a serious talent. Guys go and give Simon Luty, Instagram name @mandela.ri, a follow.

I got in touch with Simon because I wanted to know how he had come so far with his skills. He answered a load of questions for me and recorded one of his gesture practice sessions. So I’m going to show that session, show some of his drawings, and explain the tips. Here’s the first tip. 

Build with bricks

Simon’s learning came in phases. He didn’t focus on every skill at once. He spent time on fundamentals about volumes and light. Then he started seeing the basic structure and proportions of the figure. From there he started a gesture phase.

Here’s an analogy I thought could be useful. There’s a big pile of clay and our fox friend is trying to make a wall. These scruffy illustrations are by me by the way, I’m sure Simon would have drawn something more polished. At first he tries to just pile up all that clay into a wall shape. He ends up with a big mess and a lot of stress. 

It’s only when he starts to chop up and cook the clay into bricks and builds the wall in layers brick by brick that he starts to make real progress. Each layer supports the next layer.

I like the brick analogy because of the layers. I imagine each layer has each skill you need for drawing. You get through the fundamentals of each one, then you can start to build those same skills further in another layer.  

Each skill isn’t just supported by what you did for that skill before, but all the other skills you’ve built. So Simon’s ability with gesture wasn’t just built on gesture practice, but also on other study, like structure and light.

How to lay each brick

Simon goes through a process with each brick, with each skill he’s focused on. First comes a study period. He needs to understand the concepts he is working on. So whether it’s gestures or light or anatomy, he’ll do some study from books or online. He’s pretty much self-taught in that way. Next, he’ll study the works of artists he admires for that particular skillset. He doesn’t just blindly copy their artwork, but draws them thoughtfully, trying to understand how they’re achieving what they are achieve. 

And next comes the quantity practice. This is where you go from understanding the skill intellectually to your eye seeing it and your arm creating it on paper. This is where muscle memory is built, where intuition is formed. In the initial stages, this isn’t about quality results but about putting in a lot of time with the skill. When Simon started doing this for his gesture skills, he practised 1 – 3 hours per day. 

Once the skill was established, it wasn’t his priority focus any more but he still wanted to maintain it and develop it, so he now does 20 to 30 minutes a day on gestures, using them to warm up.

Get everything to at least medium

He said ‘We need to push all our skills to at least medium level and then focus on our strengths.’ I think that’s a great tip. It gives you permission to not be perfect in every way, but it does push you to work on the skills you don’t like to work on too.

There’s a few reasons I think that’s valuable.

I’m really milking this brick wall now but imagine some of the bricks in the lower layers are cracked and weak. The subsequent layers will fall apart too.

The thing that stands out to me in Simon’s drawings here are that they combine a variety of skills seamlessly. The structure and volume support the gesture and vice versa. Let’s say you work tons on anatomy and proportions, but not on gesture because you don’t like it. Well, gesture isn’t separate to anatomy and proportions. Without gesture, you are likely to misjudge where things really go and straighten them out. So your work on proportions and anatomy won’t develop as well because you have no gesture skill. 

Lets say you love gesture but give no thought to structure, form or proportions because they are too boring. Your gestures will be lifeless and unnatural. Good gesture drawings have some sense of structure and form in them. This drawing is loose and expressive. But there is a sense of ribcage, there is a sense of balance – look at how the ear, middle of collarbones, crotch and ankle line up.

But I like how he says you just go to medium for all these skills, then focus on your strengths. Medium is good enough to support the wall. I always say this for people working on proportions. You don’t want the proportions to be so off that the viewer doesn’t notice the nice gesture or line quality or tones because their eyes are caught on how unnatural the figure looks. But they don’t need to be anything more than just good enough. You don’t need perfect accuracy and everything exact, you just need them to be not distracting. If you have your various skills all at good enough, you can start to bring your strength areas, which I think are the things you really care about in the drawing, up to a higher level.

Find a good peer group

Simon is mostly self-taught but he explained that it was really valuable to be surrounded by a group of passionate people who are also working on the same skills. I absolutely agree with that. We did Figuary, and the best thing about it was the community that formed around it sharing their drawings and supporting each other. We are also running our Life of Drawing programme with a group of students. They’re doing our lessons every week there, but one of the most valuable things is the support they give to each other.  

I have been trying to plan a way to help bring together a supportive community of life drawing enthusiasts. I thought about a facebook group, but now I’m thinking it would be best to create our own forum at lovelifedrawing.com. I’ll keep you guys posted on that.

Take care of yourself

Simon’s exact words were ‘don’t forget about life’. Your progress isn’t going to be sustainable if you’re miserable while doing it. There are a few reasons I think this is a really valuable point.

First of all, learning to draw is tough and it’s easy to beat yourself up. Simon says you should compare yourself to your past self, not other people. Aim to improve over how you were drawing before. That is really hard to do. Every time I see another artist I compare myself to them, so I know how hard it is to stop doing that, it’s almost involuntary. Something I think can help is to actively compare yourself to how you were before. That way you drown out the comparisons with other artists with more productive comparisons to your past self.

The second reason I think this is important is that there seems to be some link between people doing creative things and mental health struggles. The research here is quite murky, but either way, taking care of the mental side of life is always a good idea. Also, it’s been shown that a positive mood helps with creative activities. This is all stuff I want to find out more about and do a proper video on, but for now let’s just say while learning to draw, remember to take care of yourself.  

I hope you guys found these 5 tips about learning to draw figures useful. If I can summarise the main message in one sentence it is to set yourself up to succeed. Rather than trying to learn tons at once, give yourself a doable and structured sequence of learning steps. To learn more about drawing gesture I have put a useful playlist on the screen, and there’s also another video suggestion too.

Avoid the big mistake that led to all my other mistakes

Get it now

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Author Natalia Ivanova October 15, 2015

Surely each of you watched a wonderful and kind animated series called "Simon's Cat". This is a simple animated film shot in the style of cinematic minimalism. The main character, as you understand, is just a cute and mischievous cat. How to draw Simon's cat in stages, we will tell further.

How to start drawing a cat?

It is worth starting any business with careful preparation. To do this, prepare the following tools:

• white sheet of paper;
• simple pencil;
• eraser;
• black marker.

Place a sheet of paper on a hard board or table and begin to draw the first sketches of the cat.

Drawn cartoon "Simon's Cat": eyes and nose

Since the animators did not bother much when drawing an animated cat, it will not be difficult to portray this character even for those who do not have a special artistic gift. So, let's start drawing a cat. To do this, first carefully look at your sheet of paper and mentally determine in which plane it is worth depicting a cartoon character. For example, you chose the center of the sheet and decided to make a medium-sized drawing.

Next, before drawing Simon's cat, conditionally draw lines on the sheet, separating the top from the bottom and adding a border in the middle. Move the pencil just above the delayed middle and draw two elongated circles of the same size.

Then put two dots in them (these will be the pupils). Draw a small line between the eyes from below and finish it with a small stroke. The eyes, nose and mouth of the cat are ready.

Draw ears and body

In the second step we continue to tell you how to draw Simon's cat. To do this, we begin to draw the ears and rounded shapes of the animal's body. Starting from the eyes, draw two almost identical triangles. These will be the future ears. Then we continue to draw lines from the end of the ears and circle the curvy body of the character. As you can see, we have a head with ears and a cat's body.

Draw paws for Simon's cat

The next step is to draw the paws of the cat. To do this, take a pencil again, draw a line in the form of a small arch and move three fingers of the animal from it. Next, go to the other side and add two more paws to the cat, each of which will have three fingers without claws.

Then, before drawing Simon's cat, go back to the opposite side of the drawing and repeat the same steps (drawing the arch and three fingers) as in the previous half of the image.

Draw the cat's belly and tail

At the final stage, all you have to do is draw a line under the paws from below. This will be the cat's belly. And draw an elongated figure on one side, resembling a long sausage. This will be the tail. Now the pencil sketch is complete. Take an eraser and erase all extra lines.

Outlining a pencil sketch

Since an ordinary pencil sketch will not look spectacular, it is worth tracing the resulting picture. It's time to pick up a black felt-tip pen or marker. Next, circle the image along the contours, draw a small and rare series of stripes from below (this will be the shadow of a cat). The drawing is ready.

Now you know exactly how to draw Simon's cat step by step, and you can do a similar drawing yourself.

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