Life Drawing 19.6.16

Pen, continuous line

I was beginning to get a little concerned about this session as the first model I had booked had to cancel due to a double booking and then the model I booked to replace them came down with tonsillitis. Luckily, model number three stepped up at short notice and turned up on time and in excellent form and gave us some great poses. I'm very lucky to have a great pool of models who as well as being talented models are very nice people.

Pen, continuous line

Pen, continuous line

Pen, continuous line

Pen, continuous line

Pen, continuous line

I was definitely in a hand drawing mind set for this session. Recently I've been focusing on faces to try and improve that area of my drawing as it is my weakest area but for this session I just really wanted to draw hands, so I did. I also didn't draw with anything other than my trusty pen. It's good to try new things and challenge yourself but sometimes if it ain't broke don't fix it!

'Blind' drawing

'Blind' drawing

'Blind' drawing

As usual I did some blind drawings to help me properly look at each pose and I'm pleased with some of the results of this process, my observation and eye hand communication is improving with each session. I did some more drawing with my non-dominant hand again this session, another thing I've been experimenting with. I was really pleased because it's becoming more and more natural to draw like this, I no longer have to fight the urge to swap hands and again I was very pleased with some of the drawings I produced this way.

Left handed drawing

Left handed drawing

One of the things I like about life drawing and about letting the models set their own poses is that sometimes they come up with something that sparks unexpected thoughts or responses. Our model for this session is very solidly built, I like trying to capture this strength and solidity in my drawings. However, for one of the poses he used a stick as a prop and modelled it as if he were using a walking stick. This created such an interesting contrast, this solid strong person with a walking stick, suggestive of frailty and the need for support. This made me draw in a different way, with much more scribbly and sketchy lines rather than than the strong confident lines I usually use.

Left handed drawing

Pen, continuous line

Drawing on multiple sheets

A couple of days before the session one of the artists emailed to ask if he could ask myself and some of the other artists some questions about life drawing as research for a writing project. The questions he posed prompted some interesting responses and got us all thinking about why we do it. As I write about my experiences each month I do tend to spend quite a bit of time thinking about life drawing and why I do it but having specific questions to answer led me to consider other aspects that I may not have thought about otherwise. I'm looking forward to seeing how he uses our responses...