Life Drawing 20.6.17

Continuous line drawing

I think this session is the first time ever I've had to ask my model if they were cool enough, taking place as it did during our heatwave. The heat was certainly taking it's toll on me, I felt very lethargic and tired and not much like drawing at all. However, I also knew that as the session progressed I would relax and start to enjoy my drawing and I did end up with a few drawings I was quite happy with.

Blind drawing

Slowed down continuous line

Blind drawing

I've written a couple of times about how life drawing (both as an experience and the resulting drawings) is influenced by the mood of both the model and the artist. The poses a model chooses can be an expression of how they're feeling, sometimes this is quite obvious but usually it is quite subtle, equally the mood of the artist can affect their interpretation of a pose. I think this is one of the reasons life drawing is so interesting and so different to other types of drawing. It is very much about the relationship of one person to another.

Blind drawing

Blind drawing

Blind drawing

As I mentioned before the heat and a busy week made me quite lethargic and not especially motivated so I found it difficult to really get into my drawing. However, another of the things I like about life drawing is that it can be a good opportunity to let my mind wander but in quite a controlled way; I have to make sure I keep the timing for the poses and there's always a part of my brain concentrating on the drawing but other parts of my brain are free to go off at a tangent. This session I was thinking a lot about line and how various artist have used it which gave me some interesting ideas to explore at a later date.

Slowing down to look at lines

Continuous line

Face studies

Our model gave us a great range of poses, including some very challenging foreshortening. I used a lot of 'blind' drawing to understand the poses so I could then go on to make more controlled drawings. I also tried to really slow my drawing down, rather than whizzing across the page I tried going more slowly. I still worked with simple lines but by slowing everything down I tried to change the feel of the drawings and to really study what was in front of me. I'm not sure it really shows in the drawings but it was an interesting experiment.

Blind drawing

Blind drawings, over the top of each other

Foreshortening in red pen

Sadly at the moment I can't book any further sessions but I'm hoping to restart in September and I think a break over the summer will give me a chance to miss it a bit and come back with renewed enthusiasm.