Molly Crabapple’s Guide to Drawing a Babe

Words: Rob Corsini | Guide: Molly Crabapple

To say Molly Crabapple’s career has been diverse would be an understatement. She is the author of three books, most recently a revolutionary Anti-Zionist Jewish History titled Here Where We Live In Our Country. She’s sketched at protests, detention centres, and war zones as one of the pioneers of illustrated journalism. Her animations have won her two Emmys, she has worked in the permanent collection of MoMA, and she’s won the Bernhart Labor Journalism Award for impactful reporting on labour conditions. 

But although her career is so diverse, Crabapple can trace its genesis back to one thing: drawing. Whether it be drawing the babes she fancied as a teenager, taxi drivers who’ve set up protest encampments, or people on the frontlines of war - drawing provided a way that she was able to see the world anew and help others too as well. And that’s because for Crapabble, drawing is foregrounded on the act of very closely, very analytically, very deeply looking. “It's this incredible, intimacy and acceptance that's antithetical to stereotype,” she states.

Drawing too was an act of reclamation for her. As a girl growing up in New York, she’d trained herself not to look around her - knowing that if she caught the eyes of men, it would invite sexual harassment. And so, to not be bothered, she looked straight ahead. But through her drawing practice she’s reclaimed her permission to look - and not just steal a fleeting glance, but to take the full power of her gaze. Taking lessons from a lifetime of looking and sketching, here’s Molly Crabapple’s Guide for To Drawing a Babe.

Get A Babe in Your Life

A lot of my first drawings were because I thought these girls were all cute in school and I was shy and socially awkward. So, I think the first thing that’s important when you’re considering how to draw a babe is that you need to get a babe in your life. And babe is however you define babe - it’s not limited, by gender or anything else. Get yourself a partner. Find someone who's your conspirator in this endeavour.

And Make Them Comfortable

Modelling is actually pretty hard work, I used to do it for a living! When you have your babe, you want to prepare them somewhere that’s comfy for them to lay out. You want them to wear clothing that makes them feel hot. You want them - basically - to be their most glam and true self. And then you want them to take a pose that they can hold for at least 20 minutes. That means the babe in question is probably not going to be holding their hands above their heads! Think the Titanic scene. Think draw me like one of your French girls.

Choose Your Materials Carefully

And I think that there's no point in working against the things that you naturally love. When I was in school, they made us all draw with vine charcoal - it's a messy-ass medium, dust go everywhere. I hated it, it made my hands feel nasty. If you don't want to draw with fucking vine charcoal, you don't have to draw with vine charcoal! You can draw with marker, you can draw with your eyeliner, you can draw with lip liner. Find something that feels good in your hand, whatever that is. 

I also recommend that you choose a piece of paper that's bigger than you think that you need, because if you choose, a little bit of paper, it's gonna make you feel all cramped. If you choose a big piece of paper, you don't have to use it all, but you’re not putting yourself in a cage from the start, right?

A Confident Line is Better Than a Nervous One

What I like to do first is I like to make a big ol' line that goes through the curve of how the body is posed. Just draw a line that's like; whoosh! That sort of gets the entire curve of her body, from her head to her feet. Your enemy is the blank page - and I would say that event a wrong line done with swagger and confidence is better than a right line done with tentative little marks. So just fucking take that line, man! Then, after you make your first line, then you're gonna lay the counter lines that indicate, where the head is, a diagonal line for where the shoulders are or where the hips are. And then you want to keep, moving from big shapes to small shapes.

Don’t Devolve Into Stereotype

A lot of times people will have a temptation to devolve into stereotype.  Say you're, drawing a girl that’s curvy - it might devolve into the hourglass thing, thinking that her rib cage and her hips are the same and the waist is in. But then maybe you look at her and you’ll realise - oh, she really works out - her shoulders are bigger and defined and actually her hips are smaller in comparison. You just have to really look at people.

Drawing Is A Marathon Not A Sprint

Now, by the time you've made these decisions, your model is going to be like: my arm hurts. That’s why I always put on a timer for 20 minutes and after that you take a little break, have some wine, listen to some music, you go back. To make sure your muse is in the right position when she comes back, you could take a little bit of masking tape, and sort of tape off where her arms are and where her body lays.

During that break, while your muse is stretching out, you' should put your sketch pad on the other side of the room and you're look at it from far away. It gives you a totally different perspective.

It’s Never Finished

A drawing is never finished, but I have a philosophical thing which is as such: I personally think things look better unfinished than overworked. There are a few ways that something becomes overworked. You can just keep going over a part of the paper so much, that the paper texture wears off, and it's not gonna hold your work anymore. Nothing will grow there. The earth has been salted. But I also just think that there's a huge amount of life and swagger and spontaneity to stuff that isn't finished. 

Let’s say you really render a perfect face or hands - especially hands! Hands are the hardest thing in the world, to draw because they're so complicated. So, let's say you render the perfect face and hands, but then you draw something else as a fucking swoosh. That's not unfinished, it's not lazy, it shows your virtuosity? It shows that you could have fucking rendered everything, you just don't need to.