For this exercise I used a book of photographs of nudes intended for artists (Harwood, J (ed), 1989, Illustrator’s Reference Manual – Nudes, Bloomsbury, London); this particular book, which I borrowed from the West Devon Group of Artists today, contains photos of both men and women in various poses, and each pose is “shot” from 8 positions – as if you had walked around the model and stopped 8 times to take a photo.
I chose a straightforward standing position to work from, and managed to draw all 8 poses within the art group session – so, allowing for stops to chat, about 10 min or just over per pose. I am still using my left hand, which is my non-dominant hand, and today I worked in my A3 sketchbook using a 5B pencil. I worked sitting down, which doesn’t allow for the application of the same pressure as a standing drawing as it is less of a “whole arm” movement but is more restricted to the forearm.
I concentrated on the whole body rather than the face, but used the length of the head as a measuring unit to mark in where the rest of the parts should fall – I have been working on the basis of the head being one-eighth of the whole. I also tried to draw in the rough basic shapes first before refining them by adding bumps and wiggles and I didn’t erase any marks which weren’t quite right.
When I had finished each sketch I tried to mark in the line of balance, starting at the head and going straight down – I was pleased that most of the lines of balance were fairly close to where they should have been.
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