Life Drawing: A catch up

Pen, June 2018

I've been a bit behind in my blogging recently as there's been lots going on. I've been particularly lax about blogging about my Life Drawing sessions so I thought I'd do a quick catch up post for the last few months. I really enjoy my Life Drawing sessions and I've built up a great group of artists and models. Before each session I almost always feel tired and fed up and wonder why I do it but by the end of the session I always feel re-energised and glad that I keep it going. I really enjoy catching up with everyone and sharing news and I know I'd really miss them if I stopped the sessions.

Blind drawing, June 2018

Experimenting with adding shading, June 2018

There's always a good atmosphere at the sessions but I find it interesting how much it changes depending on the group, sometimes relaxed and sometimes more energetic. The June session was really busy, we had to squeeze in a bit but everyone was very good humoured about it. There were also a couple of new faces and a couple of people who'd only been to one or two sessions before so it felt quite new and fresh, it felt like quite an energetic session.

Continuous line, May 2018

Continuous line, May 2018

The model also has a big effect on the atmosphere and each model brings something different to the session. I love drawing different people and I find it fascinating how my drawings change depending on who I'm drawing, I find I want to draw each model a little differently depending on their personality and the poses they choose as well as how they look.

Blind drawing, May 2018

Blind drawing, April 2018

Over the past couple of years I've been working on drawing faces as it used to be my weakest area. The only way to get better at something is to practise it and so I have and I'm finally at a point where I'm reasonably comfortable drawing faces and there's some drawings I'm even quite pleased with.

Pen, April 2018

Pen, April 2018

I've also been continuing with my 'blind' drawings (drawing without looking at the page) and these drawings are now an important part of my process. Working in this way is particularly useful for challenging poses as it helps me really observe and understand the pose so that I can then go on to create a better, more accurate drawing.

Pen, March 2018

Continuous line faces, March 2018

I'm not going to be running Life Drawing sessions during July and August because the Prism Arts studios are going to be very busy and full of puppet making activities for Carlisle's Puppet Pageant Parade (Saturday 1st September.) I'm hoping to restart the sessions in September but as we're in the process of moving house at the moment it might be October, depending on how smoothly it all goes! If you'd like updates about the sessions and to be informed when I have new dates you can sign up to my Life Drawing mailing list here.

Blind drawing, March 2018

Life Drawing 9.1.18

Black felt tip pen, continuous line

A New Year and some new Life Drawing sessions! I was looking back over my pictures from last year and realised that we had the same model in January 2017 as we did this evening. This is no bad thing as I always enjoy drawing this evenings model and am generally quite pleased with how my work turns out. He's very confident and solid and somehow I find that translates into my drawings, I want to use strong bold lines and just go for it.

Felt tip pen, blind drawing

Felt tip pen, continuous line

Felt tip pen, continuous line

I did have a minor tragedy, I only had one of my favourite drawing pens (where on earth have they all gone? I had loads) and this ran out before the end of the session. However, I did have a lot of fun drawing with felt tips, I really like the way it glides across the page and the strong bold lines it creates. I'm not sure I'd like to draw all of my models with these pens but they were perfect for this evening and I felt like it got me out of a bit of a rut.

Blind drawing

Very fine fine liner

Blind drawing

I also went back to my sticking multiple sheets of paper together approach as I seem to be incapable of fitting a body on one piece of paper. I really enjoyed the expanding drawing and actually spent over twenty minutes on one drawing, which for me is a long time. I think for the first time ever I wanted slightly longer poses as I was really focused and intent on my drawings. Maybe that's what I'll do next session, which I suspect will please the other artists who say that five minutes is not long enough for a drawing!

Blind drawing

Blind drawing

Blind drawing

It was also good to see the other artists after the Christmas break. As usual I was tired from work and could quite happily have gone home and gone to sleep but seeing everyone and getting into my drawing really energised me and I felt very positive at the end of the session.

Felt tip pen, continuous line

Continuous line

Continuous line

Blind drawing

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Continuous line

Life Drawing: 14.11.17

Sketchy Faces

After a few months off it was really good to get back to Life Drawing. I haven't been running the sessions since June for various reasons too boring to explain and I didn't realise how much I'd missed them. For the first couple of months it was nice to not have to rush around getting everything organised and ready and after that I mostly forgot about it. However, being back I realised how much I missed the challenge and also how nice it was to see all my regular artists.

Continuous line

Continuous line

Blind drawing

Continuous line

I've been keeping up with my daily drawing pretty well recently, I've only missed a couple of days in the past few weeks but even so I felt really out of practice at this session. I'm always telling people how good for their drawing Life Drawing is and it really is different to other types of drawing. I think it's a lot to do with the fact that your drawing a real live human rather than an object, which is obviously a very different relationship.

Left handed drawing

Continuous line

Blind drawings

I wanted to try something a little bit different this evening so I took a roll of paper to work on. My idea was that it would last me the whole session and I could just unroll a fresh section as I needed it. That plan didn't work out quite as I'd anticipated, I'd filled the roll within about twenty minutes but I did really enjoy working, quite literally, on a roll and I like the way the drawings from different poses flow into one another. I think my problem is that however much paper is in front of me I feel the need to fill it, bigger paper doesn't mean I can fit more drawings on it just means I draw bigger! However, I think I will try this again as it's quite satisfying rolling the paper along as you draw and the resulting narrative of the drawings I found very interesting.

I also did lots of blind drawings (drawing without looking at the paper) in this session, particularly for the poses I was struggling to capture. I find this a very fun and liberating way to work, the results can be quite comical but I have found that it helps me improve my proportion in my drawings as it really forces you to properly look at what you're drawing and observe how different sections relate to one another. I often find that if I'm struggling a couple of quick blind drawings will usually help me see where I'm going wrong.

Continuous line

Continuous line

Continuous line

I'm now looking forward to the next session in December!

Life Drawing 28.2.17

Continuous line 

Another month flies by and it's time for Life Drawing again. I really did not have any drawing mojo for this session and this is really reflected in my drawing. Usually within quite a short space of time I find myself getting into the sessions and really enjoying my drawing but this was one of those rare times where it never really came together for me.  That's not to say it wasn't a good session, it was lovely to see everyone and have a chat and I enjoyed the discipline of sitting and drawing even if I didn't really enjoy the drawing as much as usual. We had some interesting poses and I enjoyed seeing everyone else's work at the end of it.

Continuous line

Continuous line

Continuous line, permanent marker

I think that as with all things when drawing sometimes you're just not in the right frame of mind and things just don't seem to work out as you want them to. I don't mind this, it's part of the process. I know that it won't last forever and one of the things that I really like about Life Drawing is that part of the point (for me) is that there's no pressure to produce a particular, finished outcome. Sometimes I'm pleased with almost all of my drawings, sometimes I'm not pleased with any of them and usually it's a mixture.

Continuous line

Blind Drawing

Angry pencil drawing!

In an effort to try and get into the session a bit more I did a lot of blind drawing and I also attempted something unusual for me, I used a pencil. "You've done a conventional drawing!" Not a comment I often get about my work at the Life Drawing sessions I run but on this occasion it was so, I had indeed produced a drawing using a pencil and there was shading. Admittedly the model looks a bit angry in the picture but I did rather enjoy adding a bit of structure to my drawing. As much as I love working with line sometimes it's good to try something a bit different.

Blind Drawing

Blind Drawing

Blind Drawing

This departure from the usual, or rather to the usual, reminded me that throughout my drawing career I've struggled to follow the rules but that this hasn't always been a bad thing.  At college when we were doing portraits in pairs I created my portrait of my partner almost entirely through smudging graphite with my finger. The tutor called it 'smudge and fudge' but did also say I'd made a pretty good job of it! At university I created a series of drawings on black paper using gel pens. One of those tutors (who it's fair to say I didn't really get on with) gave us all a lecture about not using gel pens but then cited my work as the one exception. I think it was one of my proudest moments on that course!

Blind Drawing

Blind Drawing

Blind Drawing