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.