Life drawing: 2nd session with Geoff

It's a couple of months since we last drew Geoff, so I'm keen to see if there is any discernible improvement in my drawings of him.

The session went through the usual routine: a series of very short sketches just to get warmed up (which I've not included here), then some of 10 or 15 minutes, concluding with a 50 minute pose.

This first sketch was done in about 10 minutes, using charcoal pencil:

Then I tried this with Conte crayons. It's a difficult crouched pose of 10 minutes with not much of interest except the hands, which I am still trying to master:

This pose was of 15 minutes, and was quite hard again because of the angle and the foreshortening of the whole figure. I switched back to charcoal pencil for this and used to watercolour pencil to get a different texture. I didn't particularly enjoy doing this drawing, and I'm not sure it captures the subject very accurately, but I think it has a pleasing abstract appeal (which is somewhat accidental, I have to confess):

In this final 50 minute pose, I struggled for some time to get the right shape of the body, and was constantly rubbing out lines and repositioning the back, the right arm and the position of the right shoulder until I reached what I believe is quite close to the actual subject.

I used Conte crayon on coloured paper, and also spent some time on the folds of the draped sheet hanging from the stool on which the model sat. (I've been practising drawing fabric)

This drawing took 40 minutes, so I used the final 10 minutes to do a quick sketch of the same pose with charcoal pencil. Although it is not very well finished, I was able to achieve the shapes with far less use of the putty rubber - which goes to show that it's probably worth having a few cracks at the same pose until it comes more naturally..

Anyway, here is the quick pencil sketch followed by the longer one...

Life drawing with Karin

The session began with a 15-minute pose. Having forgotten my new charcoal pencils, I reverted to standard pencils on coloured paper.

Karin the model draped herself in a sheet, but in the allotted time there was little opportunity to depict the folds of the material properly. I also spent too much time working on detail around the face and upper body, and didn't have the time to work on the legs.

Here's the result:

For the next pose of 25 minutes, the model lay on the floor with her legs propped up against the wall.
The main challenge here was her arms and hands which were partly hidden and in the case of the right arm, greatly foreshortened by the angle of the pose.

Here I switched to Conte crayon to achieve a better contrast between her and the sheet.

In the final 50-minute pose, I reverted to pencil, which I think works quite well for depicting the Chesterfield sofa, and the shine of the leather.
However, the model herself looks a bit anemic in my view (maybe I should have been bolder with the use of soft pencils), and I now realise her head is slightly too small.