Life drawing session...
A bit of instructor draw-over adjustments...
(The model had changed her head position at this point, so brand new face. But such a *beautiful* face!)
Working on compositions with this particular pose. Very good feedback (lots of reading of Andrew Loomis' "Creative Illustration"). Some new things to try! Yay for that!
Long pose life-drawing day....
Costume day at life drawing -
Lovely gal. Fun to draw.
Back to life drawing after 2 weeks (felt like 2 months!)
Gestures....
Trying to think more structurally.
5 minutes...
15-20 minutes...
Forgot to post this yesterday.... Couldn't draw full-body proportions worth beans in life drawing, so gave up and just did a head shot....
Drapery demo today -
Slight draw-over (argh. I do tend to make my heads too big...)
Ah well... Too big head...
In the afternoons, we're now starting to really delve into perspective.
Speaking of heads - perspective generally makes mine explode. We'll have to see if I can survive with my brain intact...
Life drawing morning (which I spent almost entirely on the body. Got like 6 minutes on his poor head).
Block in practice after lunch.
Got a really helpful draw-over. Tweaks - but really good direction for nuance and graphic simplification.
Learning stuff....!
We had another Dr Sketchy evening last Tuesday, up at the Greystones pub in Sheffield. I went with some of my SketchCrawl buddies.
The models dress up to match a theme and pose on the stage, while the audience all try to capture them in sketchbooks. There is a series of short poses, one after the after, starting with 5 minutes, then 10 minutes, then 20 minutes.
I always enjoy myself enormously, but it's totally exhausting, as you can't afford to waste a moment. The concentration in the room is so intense you can feel it vibrating in the air. I was trying out some new intense pigmented watercolours I bought on Monday. Because I wasn't used to them, it helped me to be more experimental in the way I tackled things.
The theme this time round was the circus. We had 3 models: a
sword balancer, a tattooed lady, and a burlesque ring master. The red of the ring master's jacket was great.
The sketch below was a 5 minute pose where I was warming up with my usual watercolour pencils. I played about, using my fingers dipped in water to smudge them:
Drawing in a pub is fun and I love drawing to music. The music for the evening is always selected so it reflects the theme of what we are drawing. When we drew zombies, we had horror-movie soundtracks blaring out, for the Victoriana evening, it was Music Hall, the rollergirls night was punk. This time round our frantic scribbling was accompanied by a mix of all sorts, including mechanical arcade music and French accordion.
The sword balancer did a little performance half way through the evening, to give our sketching arms a rest for 5 minutes. Then it was back to it.
One of the problems I had with my new paints is that, especially in the dim light of the pub, many colours looked indistinguishable on the palette. Something that looked black could turn out to be brilliant turquoise, purple or green. That's why there are all the little marks above the drawings - I'm doing an experimental dab, to find out the colour before I use it.
Thanks to all the models - it was good fun drawing you.
By the way,
Dr Sketchy is a franchise, so if you like the sound of it but don't live near Sheffield, check to see if there is one in your area.
Lovely, lovely 7 1/2 months' pregnant model today. Fun to draw different shapes of bodies.
Morning life drawing block in...
Got a mini-demo on starting faces/portraits.
Then after lunch we did some more blocking exercises from photos and examples (SUPER helpful!)
Draw-overs/corrections....
Starting into a larger, more complex one... Lots of homework this week.
Costume model day....
Our model today is actually a costumer, and revels in historical couture.
It was a fun drawing day!
And she was a lovely gal.
Last life drawing day of the year -
And since the world didn't end today, here's a gorgeous video to celebrate the earth (and Bear McCreary music) - click
here.
Short pose life drawing day.
25 minutes.
3ish minutes.
10 minutes.
20 minutes.
All, charcoal on newsprint.
I am still going to clay life-modelling sessions most Thursday evenings at KIAC. I've created two full-figure sculptures now, both quite fiddly, so I fancied having a go at something a bit more chunky.
For the last 4 sessions, I've been working on a bust instead. It was slightly complicated, because the pose had her chin resting on her hand, but it made it more interesting, both because I got to do a big hand as well as a head, but also because of the slight distortions to her face.
I'm also trying out a different kind of clay - it's red and very gritty, so you can achieve a quite different texture:
It took 2 whole bags of clay to create her, as she's life-size. It was liberating working larger - no more tiny tools to get into eyes and fingers: mostly I was just working with my fingers. I really like the fact that, at this scale, you can keep a lot of the finger-marks in there, in the same way that I like to keep bold mark-making in my drawing.
By the time I was done, she was so heavy I couldn't see any way to get her home, and so big, I wouldn't have known what to do with her, even if I managed it. For me, the fun is more in the activity itself than in keeping the things I create, especially while I'm still learning. So, last Thursday night, I smashed her up to reclaim the clay. It was actually good fun, tearing great handfuls out of her face - very 'zombie horror film'!
Before I did it I took photos from all angles, as a record:
The space we work in at KIAC has changed a lot since I first started going life-drawing there last winter. The area we used then is now full of artists' studios. Both life-drawing and clay modelling happen in the new gallery space next door, which was derelict this time last year. Unfortunately, it's still like a fridge, as the only heating is from the 2 calor gas fires which keep the model from freezing. But plans are afoot to move to yet another room, where an electrician is beavering away to create heating as we speak...
Fun, costumed model today -
I think I'd rather draw long flowy dresses than just about anything else -
Fun day. :-)
Anyone remember that I started having a bash a clay modelling? Although I've not posted about it since that first sesson, I've been going every Thursday evening - it's great fun. John comes with me too.
This was my first attempt: Gerald, just one session in:
We are supposed to have the same model and pose for 5 weeks in a row, so you get about 8 or 9 hours on each piece. Unfortunately, after that first session with Gerald, he had a stroke and went into hospital. Rather selfish of him, I thought (only joking).
Everyone tucked up their Gerald sculptures into bin-bags, to keep them moist, and began on something new with another model. This is the one John did next (looking very nymph-like in our garden):
We kept asking after Gerald, who fortunately was fine. Eventually, he was well enough to come back and we got to carry on.
I brought my Gerald home to hollow out (which makes him much lighter, plus potentially fireable), then let him out of his bin-bag prison to dry. You have to wrap any slender sections with cling-film, to stop them drying more quickly then the rest, otherwise you get cracks.
I wasn't really bothered about firing him in a kiln: it's the doing of it that's important to me. After so much effort though, I couldn't face just throwing him out, so I thought I would experiment with shoe-polishing him, to make him look a bit like darkened bronze, then just pop him on a shelf.
But unfortunately, because unfired clay is so very brittle, while I was buffing him up with the shoe-brush, I managed to knock off his nose - oh no!!
I only touched him with the wood of the brush back, but that was enough. Ah well. The shoe polish wasn't the best idea anyway, as the dustier nooks and crannies in between fingers, toes and in his ears etc proved impossible to colour:
I'll try something else next time.
Long pose - charcoal pencils on toned paper...
Life drawing just started up again after our summer hiatus -
I'm always amazed at how much I cannot draw after taking a break.
It took the entire 3 hours before I started to get a semblence of something that wasn't absolutely horrific.
(pastel pencils on toned paper).
sketches of about 5 min and less
(marker)
(soft pastel)
(marker)
(marker)
(marker - wash)
(marker)
(marker)
i wish we had different body shapes to draw at college, as it is we have only female models :/ would love to have different body shapes and people from different cultures to draw.
this is a really nice drawing :)
Yeah, only drawing young, thin women is a bit limiting. I try to get a man and/or an older or 'differently shaped' model at least once a month. Plus, one week is costume, so we really do get a nice variety. :-)