The Frank J Reilly Method of figure drawing

Frank J Reilly was an American painter and teacher who developed a method of Life drawing at the 'Art Students League of New York' in the 28 years he spent teaching there. Reilly's technique involves constructing a framework for figures from six basic structural lines. For this blog post I will be demonstrating the technique step-by step...

To start off with draw a centre line which will be roughly 8 heads high, marking the top and the bottom of the figure.

Draw a line in the exact centre of these two lines to mark the end of the figure's torso.

As the figure is intended to be 8 heads high, next divide the line into quarters, marking the halfway points between the upper and lower half of the line. Then divide the quarters into 1/8ths, representative of the eight heads.

Once you have determined the size of the head, draw a circle at the top of the line just below your mark to represent the head.

Halfway between the head and the quarter mark, draw a horizontal line to represent the shoulder-line of the figure.

Once you have drawn the shoulder line, ensuring it is symmetrical, draw a diagonal line towards the next line marked on your centre line, around the centre point of the torso, giving a sort of triangle shape.

Next, draw two lines, roughly the width of the head from the bottom of the head to the shoulder line, then draw a sort of bottle shape from the shoulder line to the bottom of the figure to represent the figure's hips and legs.

For the ribcage of the figure draw a circle reaching from the top of the triangle to roughly the centre, and an oval representative of the hips just below it with the bottom side aligned with the tip of the downward facing triangle.

Next draw two diagonal lines for the shoulder muscles, echoing the curvature of the circle within the triangle.

The 3/4 mark on the centre line is then where you mark the base of the knees with two circles.

From the edges of the triangle, draw two circles representative of the shoulders, with lines coming off then reaching roughly 5/8ths of the way down the body.

Next we divide the base of the upper arm roughly a quarter of the way down the centre line
The lower arm is then drawn shaped like an elongated diamond.

The wrists are a triangular shape drawn on an arc with the base of the torso and extend downwards roughly 1/8th.

The thighs consist of oval shapes that overlap with the hips.

After squaring off the knees, draw the calves in a similarly elongated diamond shape, the negative space between the two calves is also supposed to be diamond shaped too.

Finally draw the ankles, which similar to the calves are a diamond shape and the feet, which are drawn as triangles.