Life Drawing

 1 Minute warm up sketches -

Starting out with the 1 minute warm up sketches i found the first three poses very difficult to get down on paper as it has been a while since i have been able to do any life drawing, i think you can definitely tell that my confidence in life drawing has dropped throughout all of these drawings, my lines are scratchy and lack definition in places which just tells me i need to work on this more.  The drawing of the figure laying on their side in the second image is probably the pose i felt most confident with and the one i am happiest with, in general i tried to work more gesturally and get down the movements of the limbs.

5 Minute sketches -

Next were the 5 minute sketches which i still struggled with greatly, you can see that i tried out the poses several times and still didnt end up with a well proportioned final image. The last two pages of these sketches are a little better, the one with her back to me and the one where she is looking over her shoulder are probably the best of the bunch, i think i captured the movement and placement of the limbs best in these ones. anther thing i picked up on is i use the same line weight throughout the drawing which can make things difficult to read, i think i need to work on putting the heavier lines in the darker areas and lighter lines in the more highlighted areas.

Walking exercise -

We followed this up with drawing from a moving model, the model was walking around in a circle and we attempted to capture the movement through the model in any way we wanted. My approach to this was to try to capture the biggest parts of the movement such as the outstretched leg, cocked hip, position of the feet and position of the hands, there are some elements i like about this drawing such as the line of action in the first one and the upper torso on the second one, though i think next time i will try to really push those lines of action and rhythm through the limbs to make it feel more fluid as at the moment my drawings still look quite stiff.

10 Minute sketches -

Towards the end of the session we did a set of 3 10 minute sketches where we could put more detail into the poses, this is where i made my best drawing of the session, and also really identified an area of weakness that i need to work on. My favourite drawing is the one of the model with her back to me, i think i was able to capture the lighting and the figure quite well, and i found it interesting to see the muscles of the upper back and the obliques and figure out how they affect the lighting on the back as a whole. The other two drawings i really really struggled with, and i think this is due to them being a reclining pose, before Christmas break we did an exercise where we drew one of our classmates [Francis] on a sofa in a similar pose and i also found this very difficult, the position of the torso to the hips and the placement of the legs gives me quite a lot of trouble, this is something i think i will take some time to practice as i think my hesitation and overall lack of confidence shines through an awful lot in these poses.

20 Minute sketch -

The final 20 minute sketch i had much of a similar issue as before, and looking at this now i think i did too much and it looks off. I had some advice from my tutor to put in some background elements of the couch to make the figure look a bit better and the pose read better overall, and while i agree this helped i still feel the anatomy is off especially in the feet, legs and i think i made her torso too short. Although i was incredibly upset and disappointed with my drawings in this lesson overall, i think it tells me more that i have to practice and really look into why i made the mistakes i did, i will take this lesson as a sort of issue identifying lesson and try to work on these areas in specific next time to build up my skill and overall confidence. I think working with nude models really helps challenge my anatomical skills, i don't have any clothes or folds to use as a safety net for poor anatomy and i think in the long run this will help me quite a lot.