Lesley reads a newspaper: four lightning sketches

As my wife Lesley sat reading a newspaper, I did four sketches of her, allowing myself just two minutes for each (I used a stopwatch). For some reason the, the bottom picture insists in staying upside down.

Life drawing 2: Female form in various poses

My second life drawing session featured a young black woman who adopted a series of poses for the group, starting with very quick sketches and working up to a pose of around 40 minutes.

This first one was done in about 4 minutes, in charcoal on plain blue paper.

The second, also in charcoal, took 6 minutes (not much time to ge the feet right)

The next pose allowed around 20 minutes, with the model lying back on a large cushion with her leg up on a stool. I found it hard to get the legs right as they went off into the distance from me. I used pencil for this sketch on watercolour paper which has a stiff and rough surface.

For the final long pose of 40 minutes, I reverted to paper on blue paper and tried experimenting a little with Conte crayons just to highlight certain parts of the body. Clearly some more work to be done on this technique....

Unhappy with the general look of the drawing, I decided to start again, going back to watercolour paper and pencil (4B). This was the result, which I was slightly happier with...although I've not quite conveyed the position of her left shoulder, which she held slightly in front of her as she supported herself on the edge of the stool.

Life drawing: man holding a window pole

This was still part of the first life drawing session, but here we had 45 minutes to study the model in a pose.

I switched to pencil for this, hoping to achieve finer detail. I did add some charcoal, and then some graphite pencil, in order to get rather more tonal variety. I got rather frustrated with the hand holding the pole - hence the series of hands down the side, where I tried to improve on it.

On the whole, although I'm not satisfied with the sketches, I'm looking forward to going back in a fortnight to try and improve. This is my first experience of life drawing, and really enjoyed it.

By the way, the model came round to look at this final picture, and decided to photograph it, which I took as a compliment!

Life drawing: Ready, Steady, Go

I've discovered a regular life drawing session that takes place just down the road from me every fortnight, so this will provide me with a plentiful supply of models for this next stage of the drawing course.

These pictures were done on my first visit, and were based on the model holding the pose for just four or five minutes. The theme was an athlete going through the ready, steady, go series of movements. (I arrived slightly late and so missed "Ready").

They were done using charcoal. The Go pictures have two versions as the model struggled to maintain his position and so I had to restart.....

Steady...

Go...

Then two pictures showimg the athlete in action...

Then the athlete lies exhausted on the floor...