Delineating ship lines-plan and drawing human figures

All naval architects have lives other than designing ships or calculating resistance, propulsion and stability of marine vehicles. For me, my pastime activities include drawing human figures, jogging and photography. After reading complicated hydrostatic properties of ships in some naval architecture textbooks during the day, at night I prefer to make sketches of beautiful girl, birds, scenery, and color it using Derwent watercolour pencils that I bought several years ago in Gramedia bookstore of Surabaya city.

Drawing lines plan of a ship is different from drawing the body of a beautiful girl.  Drawing human figure does not need a lot of technical calculation only more practices that are needed. Ship's lines plan can only be delineated after principal dimensions have been determined from preliminary design calculation. In the past, naval architects had to draw and fair ship lines manually. The body-plan of ships or boats has to be streamlined to minimize the resistance while moving on the water. Now, computer software such as Delftship and Maxsurf is specially made to help ship designer for doing such kind of job with better accuracy.

As I have previously said in the first paragraph of this post, I am very fond of drawing human bodies especially girls. Naturally girls' figure is streamline but to draw them we don't need any complicated calculations. It is the skill level of the artist's hand that determines the quality of the drawing. Usually, before painting or coloring, I make the sketch of the girl using Staedler 2B pencil. I will draw the macro drawing first, i.e. drawing the major parts of the body such as head, arms, body, and legs. After correcting the proportions of the body, I will continue the drawing by adding details to eyes, nose, lips, fingers, and clothing ornaments. The sketch of the drawing has to be perfect before the coloring is done.

Because I use Derwent watercolour pencils to colour the girl, I have to do it little by little. After applying first layer of colour, I have to let it dry for one day and continue the coloring again. So, the finished painting takes one week to accomplish. I can do that in one day but I will get drawing results that looks rough. by Charles Roring Read: Boat building and Living tradition of the Mentawai Tribe ; Sailing Across the North Pole with Boat to the New World and How to estimate ship's length for a new design