Lifedrawing 27.8.08

Some drawings from a recent class. The coloured drawings are Crayola large size twistables that glide over the paper, don't mix, don't smudge and are bright. The model was moving slowly from one pose to another. The other drawings are done on a lighter weight buff paper. The reclining coloured pose is a bit odd.

Life Drawing 20.8.08

I bought some Crayola crayons - these wind up and down. They're called twistables. The small twistables didn't have a great deal of pigment in them (purple drawing) but the large twistables (green and blue) were fabulous to draw with. They glide over the paper, don't catch at all, have a greasy feel and yet they don't smudge. Nice and bright but only a few in a package. I'll buy them again. The other drawings are compressed charcoal and conte. All done on white cartridge paper.

Life Drawing 30 July 2008

With increasing numbers joining the life drawing group, we're back at the local collage again so we have lots of space to move around which we all enjoyed. I did enjoy drawing in the smaller venues, being closer to the model I think I was becoming more accurate, though more often than not I was drawing on smaller paper, on my lap and those drawings can get a bit of a lean on them...it was good to be standing up, drawing at an easel again (thanks, John).

These drawings were done on either white or buff cartridge paper. Media was mostly Faber & Castell polychromos pastels, but I also used willow charcoal for one drawing and conte, pencil and stick. I played around with stylising as you can see from the closeup. The drawing session was for two hours but we seemed to fit in a lot of drawings, even with some longer ones. And everyone did fantastic drawings. Quite a variety, some work with willow, others with coloured soft pastels, mostly large drawings, some very large, it's very inspiring to draw alongside the others.

The tutor, John Mulvay, organised quick poses first - those are the three drawings on one page. then we had longer poses between 5 and 20 minutes. For one of the reclining poses, I did several quick drawings of the reclining poses, one of which is in the next post because of blogger's limit on numbers of photos per post.

Life Drawing 9.7.08

The top drawing is done with Neocolour on black sugar paper. The other three are drawn on buff paper, in the French conte pencil and white Neocolour highlights.

Life Drawing 2.7.08

These drawings are on buff paper, French grey conte pencil and/or black conte with white Neocolour highlights. Just could not get that hand over the head!

Life drawing - 16 April 2008

These are the longer drawings from last night's class.

The first is done with a red chalk pencil on white cartridge paper - the pencil is more waxy than chalky. I wasn't too happy with this one. I don't know what happened with the shoulder on the left (as viewing the screen). Either the model moved, or I didn't get my initial drawing in right because when I came back to that part of the drawing I had no idea what went where! Then while the hips more or less indicate where the weight is I haven't really captured that with the legs, and her legs and feet are a bit small, especially compared to the head! The model herself liked the drawing, though, and I'll give it to her later.

The red, black and white is again on white cartridge paper - black compressed charcoal and red soft pastel.

And the last drawing is done on white cartridge paper with a thick graphite lead in a holder. I decided to do a cropped composition this time. I always try to get everything in and I thought it would be good to select just part of the model to draw.

I'd have liked to draw the hair in, all the lights and darks, but there wasn't time. Maybe I'll work on it later, or take it to paint.

Life Drawing Wednesday 16 April 2008

These are the first drawings from last night's life drawing group. The class is for two hours in the evening. We're lucky enough to have the tutor provide easels, back boards, clips, and even paper and conte and charcoal to buy at cheap rates if we don't have our own.

There were a few short poses of a couple of minutes - those are the coloured pastel drawings on black building paper - then longer poses of between 10 and 15 minutes I think. I was quite rough with the soft pastel, blocking in shapes using the side of the pastel, then roughly drawing in some line on top.

There is one drawing on brown paper, in compressed black, sienna and white media. That was a difficult pose to capture. Actually there was no negative space between the left arm (as viewed on the screen) and her body, but I kind of wanted the pose more balanced. The foreshortened body was difficult. The collar bones were fantastic - I didn't get those finished.

More life drawings

Life Drawing Class April 9 2008 - Male model

Here are most of the drawings I did last night. There were a few 1 minute drawings done with a black marker pen on white cartridge - only one posted here. It's a great pen to use to force one to decide what the line is going to be and draw it - no going back! I'll do more of these in the future.

The coloured pastel drawing was just a crazy drawing I decided to do after I'd walked around the model and couldn't decide from which position to draw. After teaching all day I'm not terribly energetic, and most of the time I just place the easel and stay there, moving it only a little sideways. Also, I seem to have forgotten whether I like to draw looking to the left of my paper, or the right!? (I'm right handed ... anyone got advice? Had no trouble deciding last year.) The class tutor reminds us to walking around before deciding where to place yourself to draw.

Most of the drawings are done with conte and compressed charcoal sticks. The sienna colour is rather harsh - one of those drawings where I started fiddling around, scribbling, rubbing in, cross hatching, layering over white ... and ending up in a mess. I do quite like drawings, though, that are closer to finished in one area and less so in others.

Again, due to the limitations of the blog, I'll have to post the remaining photographs in a separate post.

Life Drawing class 2.4.08

These are a few of tonight's drawings from our life drawing class. All done in compressed charcoal on brown paper. The portrait is a quick drawing - the second pose of the night, 2 minutes I think. The first was drawing is on the same sheet of paper but I blocked it out before posting it because I wasn't at all happy with it. The drawings have been photographed at night with a flash so not the best. I'll post another tomorrow which was drawing on black paper and can't be photographed at night.

For most of my drawings tonight I used the charcoal on it's side, blocking in the forms, looking at negative spaces and geometric shapes in the form of the body, then started working up the dark areas. I most often draw in lines at that point, and sometimes add white charcoal or a third colour. I like red but have run out so am using a sienna colour conte.

I should spend more time being more systematic about proportions, and I get lost sometimes focusing on something like a foot or the face, or a shadow, and then lose my proportion ending up with an elongated chest or a head out of proportion! I've been taught a few ways to do this - the body is x number of heads long...the midpoint is....put in dots at points like the side of the head, neck, shoulders etc...use one's pencil (I don't use a pencil) and hold out your arm to measure...I have no patience for those...maybe I should learn some!

Life drawing class 26 April 2008

I wasn't very happy with what I drew on this evening - but I'll post some anyway. I ran out of large white cartridge paper, and used a cheap Chinese watercolour paper that was quite textured. It would be interesting to take a charcoal drawing further with this paper and put watercolour washes on it. I was happiest with the conte on black building paper. This was a pose I'd requested because it was similar to the one I used for the painting Extracts from Trapped Self. In that painting the figure is twisted slightly to the left and forearm rests on the thigh. I wanted to draw it again, this time from another viewpoint.

I changed the photograph of the seated pose into a negative and like the way it turned out. Hopefully my drawings will be useful as a resource in my paintings and playing around with them in a photo programme can help me look at them in a different way.