Life Drawing 9.12.14

Pen, continuous line

My last Life Drawing session of the year and the end of the first set of sessions in a new venue. Moving to the Prism Arts Studios has been a very positive step, it's a great space and is more accessible as it is in the centre of town. It is interesting how the venue affects the session as almost everyone has commented on how much more inspiring the space is and how much they like it, which is great and really helps foster a good environment and atmosphere for the sessions. The models also prefer the space and it is certainly much nicer for them to have a more private space to be able to change in.

Pen, continuous line

Red pen, continuous line

Despite the weather being horrible (strong winds and rain) there was still a good group of us and our model, Jude, gave us some excellent poses. I found it a bit of a frustrating session as I struggled to find my drawing mojo, it was especially frustrating as I really loved the poses but couldn't produce the results I wanted! The combination of a bad week (I know it was only Tuesday but believe me it had been a very bad week until that point) and not having been keeping up with my daily drawing meant that I was quite tense and found it hard to just let my lines flow. I did loosen up as the session progressed and I did do some drawings I'm quite pleased with. It has also got me back into my daily drawing so silver linings and all that!

Red pen, continuous line

Permanent marker, continuous line

Reclining, permanent marker

As usual I worked in pen and mostly continuous line, switching from my favoured uni-ball eye pens to a permanent marker when I got too frustrated with my out of practice/stressed drawings! I did quite a lot of feet this session, some more successfully than others, as I couldn't seem to get hands right at all.

Pen, continuous line

One thing I really like about going back through my drawings to photograph them after a session is the 'accidental' drawings. As I frequently do more than one sketch on a piece of paper I sometimes find these funny compositions, like the picture above where there appears to be a hand resting on the models back. It is actually two separate drawings but they've merged together to make a new one.

Life Drawing 11.11.14

Pen, continuous line

After a few minor hiccups at the start of the session last night ended up being really good. I very much enjoyed my drawing and it was great to have a couple of new faces come and join us. It's very interesting how the dynamic changes when there are more people, there seems to be more energy in the room.

Mixed studies

Pen, continuous line

Pen, continuous line

Our model for the evening gave us some excellent poses and I very much enjoyed making multiple drawings of each pose. I am very lucky with my models, I can just give basic (and sometimes somewhat random) instructions and they are able to come up with really interesting poses. Once again I stuck to just working in pen but I did try and vary the way I worked in other ways.

Pen, continuous line. 'Blind' drawing

Pen, continuous line. 'Blind' drawing

I did quite a bit of 'blind' drawing, where I draw without looking at the page. These drawings are very quick and involve very little thought, the results I find quite interesting as although they are rarely, if ever, accurate they do tend to give the feel of the pose and I like trying to pick out later which bit is which!

Pen, continuous line

Pen, continuous line

Pen, continuous line

I also looked at working very quickly with simple, single lines to describe either the whole pose or part of the pose. As with the blind drawings they lack accuracy but they do give a feel of the pose. I like the challenge of drawing something solid with just simple lines, using those lines to describe areas of shadow as well as shape to give form to the drawing. I did a couple of drawings where I used these simple lines but experimented with exaggerating the poses slightly, for example working in big loopy curves to accentuate the shapes in the pose.

Pen, continuous line

Pen, continuous line

In contrast to these very quick drawings I also tried doing a couple of drawings where I continued to work with simple, continuous line but in a much slower and more deliberate style. In these drawings I tried to capture the pose a bit more accurately whilst retaining the fluidity of my drawing style. I'm really pleased with how these have turned out, I like the sparseness of them.

Pen, continuous line

Pen, continuous line

As regular readers will know I love drawing hands and feet but I really struggle with faces so tonight, as I was feeling quite positive and up for a challenge, I had a go at including the face in a couple of my drawings. The results are a bit mixed but I think there's potential there, so long as my models don't mind looking a bit rugged!

Happy Halloween!

This years pumpkin, bought to you by wine and knives!

Happy Halloween everyone! 

Harry, admiring my handiwork

Eye detail

Happy Halloween cat

Life Drawing October 2014

Green pen, continuous line

Last night was the second life drawing session with my new set up. It felt nice and relaxed as I had a better idea how it would all work having got the first session out the way and it was great to see a couple of faces back again from the old group. The new space works well for us and is warm and inviting.

Pen, continuous line

Pen, continuous line

Pen, continuous line

I really enjoyed my drawing last night, I felt quite relaxed and didn't worry about how the drawings would turn out. Unusually for me I worked quite small, almost fitting whole figures on a page! Usually I like to work very large and end up taping multiple sheets of paper together but last night I was quite content to work on a smaller scale.

Pen, continuous line on tea stained paper

Pen, continuous line on tea stained paper

Pen, continuous line on coloured paper

As usual I worked almost exclusively in pen but I tried to use some different coloured pens and different coloured papers to see how that affected the drawings. I like the neutral coloured paper but, particularly with the more simple line drawings, I do like the contrast of black ink on white paper.

Red pen, continuous line

Green pen, continuous line

Pen, continuous line

We had some really interesting poses from our model for this session, lots of twists and unusual angles which are a challenge to draw but make even quite simple poses exciting. Particularly in the longer poses I found I was struggling to get the proportions and details right so I stopped trying to and did some fast continuous line sketches. I tried to not think too much about what I was drawing but just to let my eyes tell my hands where to go without interference from my concious mind. I like these drawings because although the proportion still isn't quite right the drawings give a real feel of the pose, more so I find than a more considered drawing because it is a very direct response whereas the more time you spend on a drawing the more time there is for other things to creep in.

Pen, continuous line

Life Drawing 16.9.14

Pen, continuous line, 3 minutes

After a break and a re-organise this week saw the return of my life drawing classes. I have changed days, times and venue and instead of being every other week I am trying out running the sessions once a month instead. So, lots of changes but it was really good to see familiar faces again; I am very lucky to have a regular group of people who support my sessions and are a large part of the reason I keep them going.

Overlapping sketches

Hand studies, pen

Running life drawing sessions is a funny thing, there is lots of interest and people keep complaining about the lack of opportunities to do life drawing and yet I struggle to get enough people to come to sessions and from talking to other organisers this is not a problem unique to me.

Pen, continuous line

Pen, continuous line

Anyway, I digress. The session went well, the new space is lovely to work in and our model gave us some excellent poses. I have been getting back into daily drawing but despite this I felt very rusty and it took me a while to get into the flow of drawing. My proportions were a bit out in a lot of my drawings and there were a couple of times I just couldn't get it to work as I wanted but I enjoyed the session and felt myself improving  as the session went on.

Pencil, 5 minutes

Pen, continuous line

I worked mostly in pen and continuous line as I wanted to work with something I was familiar and comfortable with until I got back into the swing of it. I was really struggling with one of the poses (a longish pose of 30 minutes) so I got out my trusty permanent markers and worked with them. You have to work really quickly with permanent marker otherwise it just makes a hole in the paper so it's a good thing to turn to when you need to loosen up and just draw.

Pen, continuous line

Pen, continuous line

'Blind' drawing, single line

I did a drawing of the models feet with the permanent marker that I was really pleased with. I hardly looked at the paper and drew really quickly. I like working in this way, it's almost like bypassing the thinking part of your brain and letting your eyes talk directly to your hands. Sometimes the results are rather strange but I find it helps capture the idea of a pose and it has, for me, an appealing simplicity and immediacy.

Permanent marker, continuous line

Permanent marker, continuous line

It will be interesting to see how my drawing is next session, a month is quite a long time but hopefully I won't have rusted up too much!

Life Drawing

Dressing a Giant

Lady M on the Salkeld Screen in Carlisle Cathedral

Following on from my last post about Prism Arts Summer School I thought you might like to see how we got from a pram, a pile of sticks and some fabric to the finished puppet of Lady Margaret Balfour.

Willow frame

We started by using dowelling and willow to build a frame on a pushchair. This frame is lightweight and sturdy as the puppet has to be manoeuvrable. The head is also a willow frame which is covered with wet strength tissue paper and PVA which is then painted and decorated and varnished. The arms are made from dowel and insulation pipes and are jointed to allow more natural looking movement when the puppet is being animated. The hands are made from newspaper covered with tissue paper and PVA and are again painted and varnished. 

The bodice under construction

The costume is made in a similar way to a 'normal' costume but the scale is greatly increased. One also has to remember that a willow framed puppet does not move and bend in the same way as a human so allowances have to be made for this. 

Block printing a pattern for the skirt front

Hand printed fabric

Lady M's costume consisted of an under-shirt, petticoat with hand printed front panel, over-skirt and bodice. The bodice is laced at the front which makes it easier to dress the puppet and if repair works are necessary it is removable. To give plently of body and movement both the under skirt and over skirt were gathered. Again, this also made it easier to dress the puppet. 

First the under-shirt

Then the petticoat

Nest on is the over-skirt

Then the bodice which needs to be laced

And she is dressed!

Attach the head and hands

And she's ready to parade

Overall the puppet worked pretty well, there were a few hitches but we know how to solve them for next year...