The Longer Pose

The longer Pose 

I found that a mechanical pencil was a good medium for this pose as it is fine enough for detailed areas like the facial features and fingers and dark enough to give a pronounced positive confident line and feint line with lighter pressure. In a pastel drawing of a nude bather by Degas  I noticed that he used many repeating line lines in the contours, but here they don’t appear to detract from the drawing at all. Perhaps also,  because of the way he has handled the medium, the repeating lines are quite soft and used only in places requiring more emphasis.

Edgar Degas - Nude Bather

1. Have you managed to make a complete statement this time? What were your main problems?  I think there is enough detail in the pose to communicate what the model is doing. I could have added more shading but I don’t think it was necessary on this occasion. There are too many repeating lines along many outlines which I think look a bit confusing and clumsy. I should have looked for the edges in light and used a more delicate line. This might have assisted the look of form.

2. How well have you captured the characteristics of pose?    The model appears to be reclining comfortably in the chair rather than perched unnaturally on top of it. Indicating the chair and footrest contribute towards the illusion. The left foot looks a bit wooden and the toe shape of the right foot also looks distorted. I don’t think the model’s socks helped me here. The neck area (rear) looks like a dark jungle. Although area was covered in whiskers and in deep shade it still looks like overkill to me. I later erased a small area between the chair and neck in an attempt to give the illusion of light in the space and some suggestion of the curve of the back of the neck to help it appear to be resting naturally on the headrest. However, the result doesn’t look convincing.

3. Do the proportions look right? If not how will you try to improve this? The feet were initially too short when checked against the length of the head, causing the head to look too large in comparison, so I lengthened them slightly.– another thing I had trouble with was the chin which was moved to in to the left slightly, so I lightly erased the original chin. The top of the head was tricky to position until I aligned it with the top of the knees. I put so much concentration in getting the location and details of the hands correct before the model moved them – they couldn’t keep them still for long, that I soon realized something didn’t look right about their positioning – they appeared too far away from where I had marked in the head. The upper arm looks slightly too long. It was tricky to determine exactly where the shoulder was on this pose, as it was obscured by the model’s clothes, but as far as I could      estimate when measured against the distance from the elbow to the fingertips it should be around the same. Because the forearm is foreshortened on this pose I think comparison with the length of the upper arm would have been pointless, so I tried to estimate if the hand was in the right position by checking that it was in a horizontal line with the chin. I think the whole drawing would have been easier if I had made certain that the head had the right proportions and position by checking its relationship to the chair.