The Human Form A: Structural Figure Drawing with Samantha Stover
Class | Registration opens 11/19/2025 12:00 AM EST
Emphasizing the continued refinement of perceptual drawing skills, this course concentrates on the structure, movement, and expressive qualities of the figure. Students work towards a personal sensibility through a variety of drawing materials.
A combination of short gestural poses and longer studies will be included. Some time will be spent with the portrait, hands, and feet, as well as possible multiple-figure compositions.
Concepts that will be addressed include:
• Contour
• Mass
• Gesture
• Proportion
• Anatomical landmarks
• Value control
• Foreshortening
• Gravity
• Placement on the page
Who is this class for? While students new to drawing the human figure are welcome, this class is for students with some prior drawing experience and does not serve as an introduction to drawing. This class fulfills the Anatomy requirement for the Certificate Program.
Your instructor has provided a list of materials required to participate fully in this class.
If you have any questions about specifics or what is needed week-to-week, please reach out to your instructor via the email in your confirmation letter.
Supply list: https://www.dickblick.com/myaccount/blicku/J2CU6BLS3I384/
•Large Newsprint Pad 18x24, 50 or 100 sheets (Canson, Strathmore, or equivalent).
• Optional for Color: Prismacolor Nupastel Sticks (Recommended: 48-box or 36-box.)
• General’s Compressed Charcoal & White Charcoal Pencils
• Kneaded Eraser and a White Plastic Eraser
• Sandpaper & razor-blade for sharpening chalks and pencils
• Any other drawing materials with which you are comfortable for sketching (such as Graphite Pencils, Vine Charcoal, White Drawing Paper, etc)
Optional: colored paper (Canson Mi- teintes, tan kraft paper, Strathmore 500 ‘Charcoal’, etc. for use after the first weeks)
Samantha Stover
Samantha Stover grew up in Bethesda, Maryland. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Literature and Art History from McGill University and a Masters in Fine Art, cum laude, from the New York Academy of Art. Throughout her academic studies in art, she focused her concentration on Drawing Techniques: historical methods and materials as well as figure-drawing exclusively from life. She learned painting, predominantly, as a copyist in New York and Washington, DC and she has traveled widely through Europe studying master drawings and paintings. Her current work involves figuration and the power of creative expression. Drawing also on her previous experience as a theatrical costume designer, she is influenced by the performative and communicative capacity of the human form and spirit. She employs the practices of her traditional training and her experience with the figure in motion to capture fleeting observations, emotions and memories.
To view more of Samantha's work online, visit www.samanthastover.com