Open studio on Saturday is the best because I can get my figure drawing practice done early in the day and I don’t have to deal with rush hour traffic. Tonight was a good session, I turned out a few well done drawings and I wasn’t having any big issues with accuracy.
For the beginning of every drawing session I do my warmup page.
Figure Drawing Practice Pages
Good gestures seem to always elude me. I really don’t get enough practice with them. It doesn’t take much to do several sessions of gestures, their actually quite easy and relaxing to do. But to do them really well takes a lot of skill.
Here are the 5 minute poses. Hipbone open studio always goes through the same routine each drop in session. Ten 1.5 minute poses, three 5 minute poses, two 15 minute poses and 3 30 minute poses.
These drawings are nice because I feel I was able to keep a lot of the gesture while getting almost all of the figure done and keeping the proportion correct at the same time. The beginning lay-in of drawing the figure will determine the course of the full drawings, so with this I could expect a good outcome.
Here is where it gets interesting. I was having a bit of trouble with the models face in the first 15 minute drawing on the top so I decided to take an easier route and go more with form rather than line. At first I was happy with it, I used to draw like this all the time, but I realized that it was an easier way out and I wouldn’t learn as much if I just focused on line.
In the second drawing I focused fully on line and placing the elements of the figure accurately. Surprisingly, I like the linear drawing better, and it forces me to take the harder route and learn more.
Sorry for the bad photo on this one. Here is the first 30 minute drawing with a full focus on line. I was happy with the face of the model but I spent a bit too much time on it and couldn’t get the rest of the figure more resolved before the 30 minute were up.
Not only do I need more figure drawing practice, but I should also practice portraits a lot more. The biggest struggle I was having today was with the face and placing the features correctly. The tough thing about drawing faces is that if your the tiniest bit off and any line the likeness to your model is lost.
I think most people didn’t like this pose. Most of the artists in the room like seeing the face. I was really happy with it though. I don’t get forced often enough to work on feet. Portraits take great care to get them correct but the same is true for the feet and hands.
For the last 30 minute drawing I pulled back a bit and focused on blocking in the figure accurately with straight lines. This is a different way of arriving at good proportions where you deconstruct all the curves into straight lines with focus on getting every line in the correct place. I have seen this done a lot with many of the french Atelier’s.
