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