Life drawing with Richard

This was the final drawing of the session, completed in around 35 minutes, using 3B pencil. I decided to go back to using pencil (rather than my usual Conte crayon on coloured paper) in order to focus on line and getting shape and proportion right.
The pose was quite tricky to pin down, because Richard had his right hip slightly raised so that both knees were slanted away from me. I'm not sure what he was doing with the left arm but it was out of view for me. After some considerable use fo the putty rubber, I think I've come up with a fair approximation of the figure, although I did struggle quite a lot with the hand and the feet.
Preparatory sketches
In the lead-up to the final study, we did a number of faster sketches in quite with some quite interesting poses, such as these....(lefthand took five minutes; righthand 10)
I'm quite pleased with the right foot of the lefthand figure, in which I appear to have captured the shape and the foreshortening, despite (or possibly because of) having to work at speed.

This 15 minute pose, although quite simple, did not come out quite so well...maybe because I couldn't see enough of the model from my angle...I re-worked the right arm several times, trying to get the shape of the elbow and fore-arm, and I'm still not sure it's quite right.

Life drawing - 2nd session with Marie

I first drew Marie during one of my early life-drawing sessions back in May, so I'm hoping that these drawings will demonstrate some improvement since then.

The session started with a couple of very quick (three minutes) sketches in different poses, folowed by one of five minutes. I used charcoal pencil on white cartridge paper for these...

Then followed a crouching pose of 15 minutes, for which I chose Conte crayon on coloured paper. This was a tricky pose with both the head and most of the arms hidden from me, and the stool she was leaning on was covered in a white sheet. I decided to focus on the line of the spine and buttocks to anchor the image and then build out from there.

Finally, we did a long pose of nearly an hour. I stuck with Conte crayon and tried using the white and grey crayons more extensively to pick out the lighter parts of the body. The left leg and knee gave me a bit of trouble for a while, as the knee was pointing out at me and the foot was tucked under tucked under the right leg.
While there is obviously more work to be done, especially on hands and feets, and getting a better facial likeness of the model, I think I can see and improvementover the pictures done in May....

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.

Life drawing with model Chris

In this session with new model Chris, we limbered up with some short poses.

In this 10-minute study, I used charcoal pencil and initially struggled to get the right proportions and general shape of the body. But after ample application of the putty rubber, it got slightly closer to the right image...The left arm still looks a bit odd, but I ran out of time.

Then came this 15-minute pose, with Chris curled into a ball. I used Conte crayon for this, and I'm fairly pleased with the result.

Then for the final long (55 minutes) pose, I went back to charcoal pencil adding Conte crayon (white and brown) later to get more texture and shape. I'm quite pleased with some aspects of the picture, such as the sheen along his back which was created by the white sheet on which he was laying.
I still need to work in the finer details of the hands, but I think I've managed a better job of depicting the foreshortening of the legs which went away from me.
The left arm, I now realise, is slightly shorter than it should be, but I was running out of paper (classic mistake!) and wanted to include the hand.

Life drawing: 2nd session with Sarah

Our model came armed with some props - an umbrella, a hat, a scarf and a chair - in order to provide some variety.

This 10-minute sketch was done using Conte crayon, and presented a challenge because the left leg was curled under the chair away from me. I tried to convey this in the drawing, but I still think it looks a bit too small.

 

This 20-minute pose was in some ways easier, but I didn't really have enough time to get in more detail. Also, although I tried to reproduce the structure of the colllar bones and the shoulders, they don't really look quite right.

However, I think I've captured something of the playful nature of the pose.

 In this last 50 minute pose, I did two sketches, one using pencil and the other Conte crayons.

I'm not too sure about the results, which seems ot lack any real life to them. In both, I've tried to capture the foreshortened feet, which were turned towards me. 

Also, note in the pencil sketch the right hand is wrapper around the hat; however, the model did at one stage stretch out her arm to relax it and so I took the opportunity to do something that looked better to me (which explains why the arm looksa bit rushed!)

Life drawing: a 2nd session with Erol

In this life drawing session our model used a set of steps as a prop, and we did a series of short skecthes of him from different angles (the member of the group rotated around him, rather like musical chairs, every 10 minutes). This one, using charcoal on coloured paper, was probably my most successful of the four sketches I did, as I managed to convey the weight applied to the step and with the hands on top of the ladder.

Our final longer pose lasted 50 minutes, with the model seated in a corner and illuminated by an anglepoise lamp.


Here I used Conte crayons on coloured paper. The pose was a little tricky because of the foreshortened right leg and feet, so I'm not really too happy with the result which seems a bit lifeless for some reason.