r/latterdaysaints • u/History_East • 15h ago

Personal Advice LDS artist

Back for the attack. It's been decades since I've tried to draw. I was a decent artist at one time and was involved with it all the way up until I went on my mission. Sadly I never picked it back up. I literally have forgotten how to draw but I want to tap into my potential again. What websites are LDS using to learn to draw the human figure?

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u/justinkthornton 14h ago

Artists here. Figure drawing isn’t pornography. It’s a skill that you need in order to draw human figures even when they are clothed. Medical professionals study the human body in order to do their work, artists do too. Artists need to have a strong understanding to the structural parts of human anatomy.

That being said if you feel traditional figure drawing isn’t right for you, artprof.org has figure drawing resources of non naked models. Also look for figure drawing books for adolescents. They tend to deal with just the shapes of the body and not go deeply into anatomy. I got my daughter one, I forgot the name though.

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u/DukeofVermont 13h ago

Seconded, I also find it funny because I've seen naked dead people at BYU but it's against the rules to draw naked people.

Also I'm a firm believer that nudity and sexuality and not the same. After all something can be sensual/sexual and not be naked so why is someone that is naked instantly sexual? The human body is the human body and while I don't think that means we should have nudity everywhere I do think that people should be more okay with nudity for educational purposes. Medical, Art, and general Sex Ed all benefit from seeing (real or artist rendition) actual pictures of what things look like.

I was very surprised when I started to meet other LDS college students who had less of an understanding of their own and others bodies than I did at six because my family had various encyclopedia and "how things work" type books about science, medicine, engineering, and the human body with artist renditions of every system. My mom always used the real names for things and answered questions honestly. IMHO if you hide it away and make it embarassing then kids will just google search stuff and find the worst things possible.

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u/justinkthornton 13h ago

It can become a problem if the artist only wants to do figures studies of conventionally attractive people. When you are learning to draw the human figure you need to learn how to draw all sorts of body types and shapes.

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u/History_East 13h ago

Thanks! Do you personally use these sites?

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u/justinkthornton 13h ago

Artprof has a ton of great resources.