Life Drawing 5

In our last session for the year, we were given the task to do a long pose for the entirety of the session. I chose to do a 3/4 length portrait, putting a lot more detail into elements such as her face as well as some of the things she wore. Again, by using mid-tone I could utilise chalk to add in highlights, which worked to some success. However, there are a few accuracy qualms, such as with the face, which seems off. For example, the right eye could be smaller and is a slightly different shape to her left eye. Also, the shading, whilst well done, feels a little flat compared to some of my other mid-tone long poses - I could have gotten away with darkening the left side of the picture a little more, even if it wasn't quite like that in real life.

 Even so, I can see improvement in my observational skills, as these poses look a lot more life-like than some of my first drawings when beginning life drawing.

Life Drawing 4

This session we had another model, and our first task was to draw something like a character sheet, where we draw the person from four different general angles to get an idea of what they look like from each angle. Again, I had the issue of needing to warm up before I could begin drawing in a way that I was happy with, but beyond the first botched drawing I believe I did a fairly good job on matching the parts of her body up to keep each pose level with each other.

The second task this time was another long pose, and again I picked mid-tone paper. I am particularly happy with this due to the use of blending to create varied shadows and lights throughout the piece. For example, the shadow created by her arm as it lies across her stomach is a lot sharper than the shadow that is created as her thigh and stomach fade off into darkness. This, I feel, makes the lighting seem a whole lot more convincing and life-like.

Life Drawings of Norwich

As a change of pace, I went out and did some observational studies of some buildings in Norwich. I selected the City Hall to be my subject and drew small sections of it at a time, trying to capture the overall shapes and shades of the subject area.

These first two I was fairly pleased with the results because their simple shapes made it easy to focus on the detail rather than spend time trying to get the shape right. This resulted in more finished looking pieces overall.

The spire on top of the City Hall was a bit more of a challenge, and one I think I could have done a little better. The irregular octagonal shape of the spire caught me off and made it difficult to get the perspective to look believable. I had to redraw it multiple times and even then, I'm not entirely happy with it and, given the time, I wouldn't mind going back and re-doing it.

Life Drawing 3

Even though the subject of my life drawing is not relevant to my current project, I still think that it would be a good idea to demonstrate how my skills with drawing from life are improving, as these skills are vital in creating realistic looking assets, be it human, object or environment.

During this session, we were first asked to draw some quick poses whilst our model moved toward and picked up an object. This was a challenge as often I have to re-draw the lines to make sure I am happy with them, which can waste time when drawing quickly. As usual, it took one or two drawings for me to get up to speed, which I hope to improve upon as time goes on. Perhaps I should consider doing some warm-up drawings by myself before life drawing sessions so that I am more prepared.

 Our second task was to do a series of even shorter poses, about 30 second poses whilst the model walked around in a circle. The biggest thing to get to grips with was being very rough and trying to capture the essence of her shape with few very quick, very erratic gestures. At first, I was spending too much time trying to actually draw the pose which meant I often lost track as she moved around and would run out of time. However, I now have a better idea of quick gesture drawing, focusing more upon the dynamism of the pose rather than the detail of a model's body.

Our final task was a long pose, being advised to draw in the box and the floor to get a more completed piece. I chose to use mid-tone paper as I enjoy bringing out the lighter tones with chalk, which gives a much more balanced piece. I could have spent more time on the face as I feel it is not quite as accurate as the rest of the body, as I spent a lot less time on it than I did making sure that everything was in the right place. Either way, I am pleased with how effective the shading is, as it is clear to see where everything is and how it is shaped.

Life Drawing 2

Finally we were able to get a session in for drawing from a nude model. It was rather difficult to get used to considering this was my first time drawing from the nude, but I eventually got into the flow, though I do see that I need a lot more practice.

This was the first piece I did from life and, to be blunt, it isn't very flattering. I struggled at getting the angles of the legs right, so eventually I left them off. The torso is probably the least bad area of the whole thing but I felt I could have done a whole lot better here. Though, for my first time it was a lot better than expected, but I know I have a lot of room to improve.

We then moved on to quick sketches, at 5 minutes (Row 1), then 3 minutes(Row 2). At first, I struggled to make sure that everything fit in the small space that I was working in, meaning that in some images, the top of the head was cut off or the bottom of the legs were omitted. Despite this, I felt like I was getting the hang of drawing quick and getting the overall gesture down before the time ran out.

The next two are done at 2 minutes per piece (Row 1) and 1 minute per piece (Row 2). As the time grew shorter I ended up miscalculating on the first piece, which meant I often ended up with at least one unfinished piece. This gave me a feel for the next three, however, and I eventually ended up getting far enough that I could draw the basic gesture of the human body in just one minute. Though I do know I need to practice more, this is good progress and I feel a lot more confident now than I did before.

We were then given the rest of the session to draw an accurate representation of what we had in front of us. The tutor showed us measures to make sure the angle on certain body parts was correct, which was using your pencil to lay across the edge of the body and transfer it to the paper. He also advised us on using the head and body parts to measure into other body parts to make sure that it was proportionate. I was surprised that this had never occurred to me before, but I was going to make sure to use it in every life drawing afterwards. Considering it was my first time using these techniques I was a little shaky, but I think it helped make my work more accurate in the end.

We also had another life drawing session today, but this time we were drawing costumed characters. This time the model was lying down on the ground so I had a lot of foreshortening to contend with, but I made sure to do a lot of measuring out so that the proportions would look correct. I am seriously impressed at the quality of work that I came out with, and I did not expect to get the foreshortening down so easily. Though there was another model to draw, I only had enough time to focus on one but I think it really paid off, as I am actually happy with this piece.

Life Drawing 1

Every other week we've been taken out to do life drawing. It's unfortunate, however, that our group has been missing the sessions inside where we would draw from a nude model, as I would really like to brush up my human drawing skills. Nevertheless, this is what I've produced so far.

 This piece was actually done at the beginning of the course. We went out and drew Norwich Cathedral. Although I was already familiar with the concepts of perspective, it still took a while to get the form exactly right, especially making sure that the proportion of the building is correct. I also wasn't aware of making sure to map out your drawing area so I ended up going off the page to the right and the top.

Another perspective drawing, and this time it is in the town, just above the market. Again, perspective was little to no problem for me, but this time I focused on making sure that everything was in proportion to each other. It was not an easy feat but I managed it better than I did before, I believe.

We were then taken the next fortnight to Norwich Castle, where they have a section with a lot of taxidermy animals. We were asked to combine multiple creatures into one that, whilst not real, would make sense anatomically. This was a lot more difficult than initially thought, but I started out by looking at goat heads, trying to get a feel for how they are ideally proportioned and how the horns fit on the head.

I then took a look at the lions, trying to capture the sense of movement that the taxidermy created by using loose, flowing lines. I feel like I captured the movement pretty well, and by this point I began to formulate an idea on what I wanted to combine together.

This was the result. I combined an antelope head, a lion's body, and a pelican's wings. I'd initially started a different sketch but I was informed that the balance of the body was off so I restarted into this. I did not have much time to finish so it was left in a very sketchy state when I had to present. The tutor thought that the seamlessness of the form was good, especially on the wings. However, he also had to point out that I could have spent more time on it to get a more finished result. I agree, though it was a lot more difficult than I originally thought to get a shape pinned down which I thought would suit the creature.