Life Drawing 5th Nov

I hadn't been to Life drawing for a few weeks, I went with a new pad which was a different sort of paper to my last one. Not sure about it yet. I also tried out doing a portrait which I don't normally do. It's not perfect, but for a first try I'm pretty happy with it. I shall try and do more of them in future.

15 min pose.

13 min pose.

21 min pose.

20 min pose.

20 min

I think this one is my favourite of the night, even though noticing now his most forward hand is way to small! Doh! 

The model here was actually reading a book during this 45 minute pose, I didn't want to draw any more after 20 min.

Life Drawing 8th Oct

Trying to apply the suggestions from the Force book again. Not sure if I am getting it but I've been getting compliments so something must be right. Shall keep working at it.

20 minute pose

20 minute pose

20 minute pose

Always good to attempt a difficult pose.

20 minute pose

The torso is a bit long and as a result I cut his head off, but I like his legs so that's good.

Life Drawing 1st Oct 2013

I think this is the first life drawing I've done since rereading the book, "Force". I'm not sure if it helped. I shall keep practising. On the plus side I think it's stopped me over working the drawing.

I think this one was about 15 min.

This one was 20 minutes

Space Donkey

I've been working on this for a while now. Trying to find the motivation to finish. In the end it didn't take long once I'd committed to it.

Life Drawing 28th August

This week I decided to try something a little different with my life drawing. I found that my previous drawings, which represented the models in a realistic-ish manner, was lacking in life and spontaneity. So this week I tried less to draw what I accurately saw and more the life and pose of the model.

3 minutes

3 minutes

3 minutes

15 minutes in total.

15 minutes in total.

15 minutes in total.

Life Drawing 6th and 13th August

I missed a few weeks due to being very busy and then forgot to upload last weeks. So here are two weeks worth in a row.

20 Min pose

20 Min pose

45 Min pose

I sometimes think 45 minutes is to long.

20 Min pose

20 Min pose

45 Min pose

Life drawing - 16th July

This week I decided I'd had enough of doing my life drawing in my usual A4(ish) sketchbook and went and bought myself an A3 size sketchbook. These are the results.

20 minute pose

First advantage of having a bigger sketchbook is that I seem to have been able to not chop off anyone's feet!

20 minute pose

I even managed to get a decent facial likeness going.

45 minute pose

My only thought is that now I am drawing bigger I don't have as much time to fill in the details. Though that is both good and bad.

Life Drawing 4th June and 11th June

I didn't get a chance to put up last week's life drawing so I am putting up two weeks worth now.

The first pose was this, I wasn't sure if I wanted to attempt it as it looked like she had been decapitated but I also like a challenge so went for it. It was the best of my work for the evening. 20 minute pose.

20 minute pose.

I decided to try and get her face in this time and spent too long on it and ended up running out of time for the rest of the body. 20 minute pose.

As a result of spending to much time on the face in the previous drawing I ignored it completely. 20 min pose.

These are the drawings from the 11th June session. 

I was particularly pleased with this session as I managed to keep the feet on the page! 

I liked this pose a lot, the only problem with this drawing is the leg is a bit to long. I think I've been over compensating at the start with the rough to make sure I don't lose the feet off the page. 20 minute pose.

20 minute pose.

This pose was an hour long. I used my mechanical pencil for the first time in about 2 weeks and found it surprisingly soft. May look into getting a harder lead and also getting a bigger sketchpad for longer poses.

Cat refured

The other week I posted a cat face painted to practice fur. I was happy with it at the time but by the following day I thought I could do better. So after looking into it, I have re-furred him.

Here he is with the new fur. I think this looks much better. But then ask me again tomorrow and I may have changed my mind.

Here are the old cat and the new cat, side by side, for comparison. Maybe I'll dig this cat out every so often and re-fur him to see how my furring is progressing :P

More Life Drawing

If you draw from life then you will know of the types of models out there. The amazing models that hold a pose for ages; those that can pose well but occasionally, without warning, move and stretch but put themselves back to where they were. But then you get the type of model I had for this session, the type that throws themselves into a pose to be dramatic but can't hold it, so they very slowly, over the course of the pose, re-position themselves so they are more comfortable. You start the drawing by blocking out the pose and then when you come to fill in the details you find that the arm is in a completely different position. It's highly frustrating and very annoying. While I appreciate his attempt to give us interesting poses, as a life model he needs to be aware of his limitations. As a result I only have two drawings to show.

Maybe the extreme poses tired him out. Thankfully it did as this is my favourite of the night.

I chopped off his foot, doh, but I think I handled his back quite well.

Furry Cat face

I find being a tech artist, I lose track of the artist part of myself. It's also difficult to finish illustrations at home after a full working day and I realised it might be because I have started off to big to soon. So I decided to do smaller drawings, playing around, testing things out. So I have spent my Sunday drawing this cat face. Had to fight through the, "This looks terrible what am I doing calling myself an artist phase," and keep at it but in the end I think it turned out alright! Shall try and do more small illustrations in the future and then hopefully I will find myself doing bigger pieces again.

Life drawing coloured in.

Life Drawing

I've recently started going to some untutored life drawing classes in Holborn, London. They have two models each week, one does a long pose while the other does short 20 minute poses. I prefer the short poses as I get to practice many in one evening.  Here are a few of the results from my sketchbook:

Week 2

 Week 1 I worked in a different pad that had bigger paper but I now prefer to work directly into my A4ish sketchbook, it's smaller but I find it's easier to carry around and everything stays together. I find I have a particularly sketchy style which on the whole I like. I'm particularly proud of the arm in the top picture.

 I have a tendency to chop off feet, something I am trying to improve apon.

 In this one I ran out of room for the hands.

Week 3

The male model turned up late so I drew the long pose female model while we waited. For some reason I drew two 20 minute poses on one sheet so decided to do some small detail detail drawings while I waited for the next pose.

 Again chopped off his foot, but I like how I interpreted his back. 

 I know! It's ridiculous how I keep doing it. But on the whole I like this one the best. Something is not quite right about his deltoid, but other than that I like it.

Week 4

Huzzah! I managed to keep his feet in, and yet, my usual sketchy style just was not working for me this time.

 Back to chopping off feet and I was still struggling. The model had a massive physique, even his muscles had muscles, he kept moving about so much, even his muscles didn't seem to stay in the same place.

 I decided to try something a little bit different and take my time and not be as sketchy, I think it came out really well, and look, his feet are in the drawing!

 This one was definitely the best of the evening, I was a lot more deliberate with the lines and took my time and tried not to be so sketchy. I still think I can do better though. Looking forward to the next class.