Figure Drawing,
Spoken Plainly
Each episode goes deep on one thing - proportion, gesture, construction, light - and the text version stays here for anyone who reads faster than they listen.
Past Episodes
These are text versions of conversations that started as audio. Some run long because the topic needed it. Each one covers a single problem in figure drawing with enough specificity to be actually useful.
Gesture Without the Guesswork
Most gesture advice tells you to "feel the movement" - which is not useful when you are staring at a 30-second pose. This episode breaks gesture into three observable decisions: line of action, weight distribution, and the angle of the shoulders versus hips.
Read full transcriptWhy the Ribcage Keeps Going Wrong
The ribcage is not a box and it is not an egg - it tilts, it foreshortens, and it connects to the pelvis in ways that most drawing guides skip over. Renata Ohlsson, a longtime anatomy instructor, joined to walk through the specific angles that cause the most confusion.
Read full transcriptLight on Form - What Actually Creates Volume
Shading is often taught as a technique problem, but it is really a seeing problem. This episode looks at how the terminator line - the boundary between light and shadow - does more to create the illusion of volume than any rendering technique.
Read full transcriptThe Head as a Block, Not a Balloon
Portrait drawing problems almost always trace back to the same source: treating the head as a flat oval rather than a three-dimensional object with a clear front plane, side plane, and top plane. The Loomis construction method is practical here, but only once you understand what it is actually solving.
Read full transcriptWhere Most Drawing Time Goes
Across all episodes, certain topics come up repeatedly - not because they are fashionable but because they are where drawings actually break down. These figures reflect the share of episode time devoted to each area.
"The figure is not something you memorise. It is something you keep learning to see."
- from Episode 11, with Renata OhlssonAbout This Series
Chancemania started in 2019 as a place to think out loud about figure drawing - the parts that take years to understand, the mistakes that repeat themselves, and the ideas that actually shift how you draw. The podcast grew from that same impulse.
Each episode picks one problem and stays with it long enough to say something useful. There are no guests brought on for variety - only when someone has a specific, concrete perspective that the episode genuinely needs.
New episodes
Episodes come out when there is something worth saying - not on a fixed schedule. The text versions go up at the same time as the audio.
Questions and topics
If there is a specific figure drawing problem you keep running into, send it through. Some episodes start from a single question that kept coming up in reader mail.
help@chancemania.netAbout the author
The perspective behind every episode comes from years of sustained practice and teaching - not from a credential, but from the specific kind of attention that drawing demands.
Read the full background