Exercise 1 - Quick Studies
As mentioned in an earlier blog finding a model to do this kind of exercise was going to be tricky. Luckily while looking around on social media I stumbled across a life drawing group that has taken their activities online since the first lockdown. 2B or not 2b life drawing hold 3 classes a week and most importantly for me offer the classes as streamable videos if you can’t be there live. Looking at the usual structure of the classes, it seemed to marry in perfectly with this exercise. The two-hour session was broken in half, with the first half dedicated to short 1-10 min poses. With the second half being 15min poses. I was a little concerned that only having my laptop screen to work from would be too small. So, I managed to rig up an old TV screen which would give me a much larger screen to work from. I signed up and fired up Zoom for my first ever life class.
These drawings are from 2 min poses, I tried to stay loose and capture the gesture of the model. Where were the lines of action? How was the models weight distributed? As this was my first ever experience of this kind of class, I had no idea how to judge the time. I felt at first, I was rushing, desperate to try and finish in time. But after a few poses I had a word with myself and calmed down, ‘finishing’ was irrelevant and not the point of the exercise.
Now we moved on to 5 min poses, I was determined to stay relaxed and use bolder gestural mark. The first of these suffer somewhat from an unnaturally large head, but I think the second one has something about it. With the increased time a started experimenting with the sight-size method using my pencil to make quick measurements. This helped no end in capturing more believable proportions.
The time then increased to 10 mins. I continued to measure as I went, checking at stages throughout trying to get the proportions as accurate as possible within the time. These drawing are significantly more believable than at the start of the class. However, I did find the seated poses much harder to figure out. The ways the body crumples up when seated makes it much harder for me to be accurate, that’ll need some practise.
These final drawing rounded out the session each pose lasting 15 mins. I tried to implement everything I’d thought about in the earlier poses. Taking time to look at the pose, take measurements and not get to wrapped up in detail. Out of the three I think the final image is the most successful, I feel it capture some of the weight of the model as well as the distorted nature of the pose.
Exercise 2 - A Longer Study
Following the instruction set out in the course materials, I produced this drawing of my partner Dawn over the course of about an hour. I chose to work on toned paper to aid in the rendering for the forms, using Nitram charcoal and white chalk.
Although the likeness isn’t 100% accurate, I think I’ve done a reasonably good job of capturing the characteristics of the pose, all be it with a couple of caveats. The neck and head are a bit jarring; they feel too stiff and a bit unnatural. Also the leg has a bit of weird look to it, I think the overall shape and size are correct but the shading make it look like a foam pool noodle. On the positive side of things, I think the weight is captured well, the sofa cushion is definitely being sat on. The proportions look about as good as I’ve done so far, nothing leaps out as unrealistically large or small.
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