These drawings come from my life drawing groups – they come from different sessions (and therefore with different models), as we generally only have one or two 10-minute poses per session – so they are not a sequence as such, although I have tried to show them here in date order to show progression – if any!
These two are of a male model, drawn in pencil. I did rather fear for him in the second pose as he went quite a deep shade of puce trying to hold it. Working left-handed still, I find it takes a while to hit my stride accuracy-wise; however, I am fairly pleased with the proportion with these, including the bit of foreshortening of the right forearm in the first pose, and have managed to indicate at least the darkest areas of tone.
This lady is a group member from a session where the model had not appeared and so we took turns at drawing each other for 10/15 min – clothed, naturally. I think I’ve given her rather a long neck in my efforts to show the slight slant of the front shoulder in the slumped pose she had chosen, but I think I’ve done rather better with the proportion of the legs – and again, have managed to get the darkest tones in. This was drawn with a 3B pencil.
The last two in this section are from a session with a very striking lady model – she was extremely slim and seemed to have a very long body, especially abdomen, as a result – I found her fascinating to draw as her bone structure was really clear.
Hard to get it all in in ten minutes! I was pleased with the first sketch in particular – I had done quite a bit of reading about marking in the major joints (shoulders, elbows, hips, knees) and I measured particularly carefully as her body looked so unusual to me, so I think in that first one I really “caught” her, bones and all, and still had time to add just a little bit of shading. It was I think my first go at using the H Nitram charcoal for a live drawing – this particular hard grade of the Nitram takes a bit of getting used to and I struggled rather with establishing the darks quickly; however, I think I achieved the tonal shading side of things better in the second sketch, which was a tricky pose to capture in 10 min.
Has there been a progression?- Yes, I think I’m gradually beginning to look automatically for key markers and measurements.
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