Life drawing 3: male form

This was my third session of life drawing, this time with a male model of around 40 years old.

We began with a couple of five-minute poses, and I used charcoal on coloured paper just to capture the rough outlines quickly. Working from a seated position with a board on my lap, I found it a little hard to assess how well I was doing at the time - maybe I should use an easel which would allow me to step back occasionally from the work. I wasn't too happy with the results at the time, but I feel rather better about them now, and feel they do at least get the flavour of the pose.

The next pose was for slightly longer, about 10 minutes, but again, I found it hard to get the proportions right, and I was probably too close to the model. I switched to pencil, hoping to get a more precise image, but I've ended up with a somewhat elongated image that's not very convincing....especially with the outstretched arm going off into the distance.

This next pose was 25 minutes, and I decided to stick with pencil.
Again, I struggled at first with proportions, making the head far too small, but after a lot of rubbing out, I think I managed to achieve a fairly accurate representation of the seated figure. Again, I've failed to convey the sense of his right arm resting on the knee, and the legs now look a bit weedy and thin.

The final pose allowed us around 45 - 50 minutes, with the model reclining on the ground.

I really don't think any of these are very successful. I'm still struggling to convey limbs that go off into the distance.
I managed to do three pictures in the time allowed, hoping that a new angle might produce something better.

In the first, I think I've got the proportions correctly, but the legs look a bit flat.

 I then decided to try using chalk on coloured paper, and did this picture very quickly, really just to try out the effects that can be achieved with the white chalk in highlighting certain areas. It's very crude, but I was pleased with the look of the white chalk, so I might try out this technique a bit more to get a bit more accuracy.

Finally I switched to another position to see if that was any more successful, and spent around 10 minutes on this. Halfway through, I decided the buttocks and legs were not quite right rubbed them out and then attempted to correct them. The result is probably worse than what I rubbed out, and the legs aren't right. Again, it's limbs going off into the distance that seem to defeat me, so I'll have to keep working on it.

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...

Assignment 3: View from a window

It took me quite a while to settle on a subject for this assignment, and I ended up using the most obvious subject available to me - the view of my garden seen from my patio doors.

The garden has a paved part near the door and then steps down to a small lower lawn.

The intention was to show the paving close to the house, with bushes in the middle and far distance.

After several try-out drawings to get the perspective right, I mapped out the drawing with a hard (2H) pencil and then went for watercolour pencils to provide colour. I ran a wet brush over some of the areas to get surafce colours, and then returned with dry pencils to try and introduce more detail.

On the whole, I'm not very happy with the result. The bushes in the middle distance look as if they are at the back of the garden, and the various flowers (mainly daffodils and Christmas roses, which have whitish bell-shaped flowers that hang down) just don't look as they should do.

What have I learned?

I need to do a lot more work on depicting distance through tone as well as through perspective. I also need to speed things up - this drawing took several days, and the previous drawing and preparation tooks a couple of weeks.

Anyway, here's the finished drawing...

An old plane tree in Beckenham

This old plane tree in Kelsey Park, Beckenham, must be more than 200 years old and bears the scars and damage of the years. It is gnarled and obviously one of its major branches broke many years ago but continued to grow at an angle from the main trunk.

I've tried to capture the underlying structure of the plant, with its strong lines running up from the roots and up the trunk.

I drew it from life, despite the cold weather, and found myself surrounded by ducks, geese and pigeons, all hoping I was there to feed them. I also took some pictures to help me fill in some of the details back home in the warm.

I did the main drawing in pencil, and then added some colour using watercolour pencils, although I didn't add a lot of water (except the odd damp finger to spread the colour around a bit).