Life Drawing Class

Pencil

Sat 16 July today I went to my first life drawing class ever and glad to say I enjoyed it, when I finally found the venue, after getting lost on the way, then arriving late! It's over an hour's drive away from my house, but the most local one I can find at the moment. There was plenty of help and encouragement from the tutor, the class was small (only 7) and there was good lighting. It is a pleasant environment to draw in - beautiful old room in a larger building which is a museum.

I began drawing the model with contoured edges, but the tutor encouraged me instead to focus on building up areas of tone to depict the model’s form, rather than using any outlines. As well as going to life classes, this was also a new thing for me. It took some getting used to, but I think I got the hang of it before long.

Charcoal

This week we used a reverse process, toning the whole paper with willow charcoal, lightly adding the outline of the figure then erasing areas in light, and adding some darks towards the end to strengthen the darks.

1 charcoal (below right) - using shading to display the form with charcoal – full figure – 2 (above) same with pencil focusing on smaller area

Quick gestural warm-ups

Charcoal - everything below the knees,
particularly the feet,
looks too small in relation to the rest

4^th week began with quick gestural sketches. I didn't mind these as I'd been practising at home. Then a long pose in pencil.

Life drawing class has been helpful for: pointers on proportion, placement, angles, looking at tonal values and different techniques for rendering the effects of light. I think I have learned quite a lot from practice at home from two library books – Basic Figure Drawing (editor Greg Albert) and Basic Anatomy and Figure Drawing by John Raynes – forms and proportions, central axis, the balance of the figure and line of movement.

Long pose in pencil

By avoiding outlined edges it really made me look closely at the negative space around the model and observe how it appears lighter when next to a dark edge and darker when next to a light edge. It was easier to begin this by working on and around the edges.
There was a break in classes soon after this week. I later joined a life drawing group, which is more local for me, but there have been a few unexpected setbacks and I'm still waiting for it to get off the ground. Hopefully it will soon as I really miss  the classes...
Update - the group did get under way and proved to be quite a success, although our numbers are low up to now.  I have yet to upload some of the many sketches and drawings I produced there......