DGA120 - Life Drawing (Week 1)

Today we had a 3 hour session of life drawing, using a female model which was refreshing since last term I only had male models. I also feel much more comfortable drawing female bodies as I've drawn them more often and drawing/studying myself as well. We did these in 12/15 minutes per pose.

I started with this one, the first drawing being the right one, where I drew the pose too big and then couldn't see the proportions very well from my close up stance to the easel. I also didn't correct the pose that much after drawing it, so in the remaining time I did some mediocre rendering, which now I feel I should've left, as it makes it harder to see the lines of the drawing, and they aren't very good anyway. I do like the start of shading on the legs though. The second drawing on the left I did much smaller, and was therefore able to draw the proportions a lot better, however I did still have to make changes as I went along, especially the width of the whole body. I don't like the legs in this one, which seem to be my biggest downfall in life drawing - they seem to float weirdly in space, not really feeling grounded or weighted like they should. I like the arms and shoulders in this drawing though.

These were my second lot of drawings, which I think camd out the best of all the drawings. I swapped to willow charcoal rather than the heavier one for these, which I think helped me to use a lighter touch and then rub it out easier as well. I really love the right one, which has an interesting silhouette and feels like it has depth, and you can see the curve of the body's pose, with the shoulders and hips at opposite angles to show the lean to the right. The right arm is a bit too high though.

For the following drawings, we were given cooking needles/sticks to use to measure out our model's body and get correct proportions when drawing her. I found it very useful for checking things like the angle of the shoulders and the hips, which elbow is higher, etc. however when using it to measure out the size of the body, like measuring in heads, I found that it made it harder, as I then relied too much on the marks I made for where things should be, rather than checking that it was definitely right, so these drawings ended up too long in most cases, as I didn't measure accurately enough.

 For the right drawing below we were given 15 minutes, and the left one 10. In the right drawing, I made marks for where the legs should be and how long they should go down the page, however the foreshortening ended up being forgotten and the legs look as if they are almost upright, which was not how the model looked. I rushed the pose a little bit and then just drew the cloth and cushions which was more relaxing. These poses aren't too bad though, however the left one doesn't feel very grounded or strong, the right one does a bit which is good.