Life Drawing 6

Sketches from the previous two life drawing sessions.

Pencil sketch of life model. I was focusing on the folds in the cloth for this piece which was difficult due to the  fabric being transparent.

An attempt at full body sketch with pencil, I decided to do a focus of the face which is a surprising close resemblance of the model. However I should have focused more time on drawing the entire body.

Moving onto charcoal I was now aiming to paint in the entire body, the focus being the pose.

Three minute pose warmup sketches

A 35 minute sketch done in pencil, I spent a lot of time trying to get the pose and the weights right in this sketch. I am still trying to speed up my workflow so I can start to pencil in shadows.

I attempted something different here. Using charcoal I used only angles and deep lines to give some levels to the picture. I believe this worked but of course it is not a good resemblance of the model and I did not finish it entirely.

2 minute sketches in charcoal. Again I was trying for angled edges which i felt worked well for clothing folds.

An interesting exercise to draw with my left hand, I found it very difficult but for some sketches it worked very well. The looser the clothing on the model the better I could draw seeing as my left hand is not very steady.

2 minute warmup sketches.

A few different attempts using cylinders to build the pose of the mode, It worked to a certain point but they are very uninteresting.

My first attempt at using compressed charcoal. I found it very difficult to move around unlike normal charcoal. I could not work very quickly with it also.

Moving back to charcoal I tried to rush the general shape and get into detailing. Again i need to speed up my workflow so that I can add more depth to the sketch.

Life Drawing 5

Life drawing sketches charcoal/ink.

These sketches were 5 minutes each and are of other students that were moddeling for us, we started by sketching a pose without the model and then getting the model into the same pose and sketching them to see how close we could get the first sketch to the second.

Five minute warmup sketches of a nude life model.

15 minute ink with brush, I found this very difficult to use since ink does not have any midtones and I found painting with a brush it was very difficult to get the lines I wanted. Instead I should try to paint with just values but again with ink this is difficult as it does not have much range.

Second 15 minute attempt with ink, i managed this slightly better than the first but I am still not pleased with it since I could not refine any of it since once ink is on paper you cannot remove it.

30 minute charcoal sketch. The pose was not very interesting from where I was standing but I feel that I managed to get the perspective right on this sketch. I am still trying to speed up my workflow so that I have more time to do some shading, you can see that I began but did not have time to finish.

Another 30 minute sketch, I rushed this piece to try and get on to shading as quickly as possible however this led to the perspective being off in the drawing which ultimately made the sketch look a lot worse than I could have been.

I am pleased with the torso since I spent most of my time on this area however it is too wide to what the model was but did not stop to correct due to my rushing.

Life Drawing 4

Observational drawings from the previous two life drawing classes.

5 minute sketches of my own hand in charcoal.

Pencil sketches of my own hand, each sketch timed at 5 minutes and each drawing shows motion step by step.

40 minute self portrait. I felt quite rushed to do this piece and did not take time to stop and realise that I was drawing each facial feature far larger than it meant to be.

2 minute pose sketches of a life model. I need to work on my speed and try to draw legs first since I always seem to run out of time to finish them.

15 minute sketch. I aimed to capture the movement that the life models pose was given by focusing on how weight was being distributed.

Another 15 minute sketch with the same focus as the previous.

Process of my 40 minute sketch.

I start by using ovals to get a base pose to work from.

I then fill in detail around the ovals to make the sketch look like the model.

I began to work on shading but could not add as much as I would have liked in the time frame. My focus for next time is to try and speed up each stage and take more risks by drawing much heavier.

Life Drawing 3

We had another model pose for us in this life drawing session. 

These first sketches were two minute sketches to warm up with first.

I decided to switch to pencil for this sketch, I found it much easier to make the form but spent a lot of time with my outline leaving me with no time to completely finish.

Changing to pen I decided to experiment a little and believe it paid off. Using the pen to very quickly sketch the outline I went back over to create the right shapes and by tilting the pen I scratched some shading to bring the drawing out.

Forty minute sketch.

Life Drawing 2

A couple of sketches from the previous few life drawing sessions.

Most are charcoal sketches which I am slowly getting used to doing but I really enjoyed the ink drawings of the skeletons.

Life Drawing 1

First life drawing session.

What I learned, skeletons are hard to draw.