I was determined to make up for the failed drawing yesterday. I was very discouraged and feeling like a failure, I hoped that the drawing I did today would reinstate a bit more faith in myself.
I figure I will go through each page of drawings and add comments where necessary tonight.
Jamie started with 1 minute poses tonight. I was thinking about “Chasing the pose” and really trying to see the weight in the figure, its balance, and the gesture of the pose. But I mostly ended up with stick figures.
1 minute poses again, and here you can see the left is stilted and stiff, while the right drawing is a bit more loose and organic. I let go with the drawing on the right and tried to capture the gesture, weight and balance of the model through lines more sensitive to her contour.
More 1 minute poses, now I’m back to the stilted stiff look. I’m trying to see the angles of the hips and shoulder and the center line of the body, but its harder than I thought.
On these 1 minutes poses I’m getting better with balancing the organic with accurate proportions.
Once we got into the two minute poses I really let go. I just moved with the form, my whole body was moving when I was drawing. It was more like I was listening to good music rather than drawing. And the proportions with the two drawings on the right may not be exact with the model, but who cares the drawings are really nice.
I’m not sure what happened here, these are still 2 minute drawings, but I think I’m thinking too much here.
Into 5 minute poses and charcoal. Right away the scratchiness of charcoal is throwing me off and I’m just drawing with form and not lines, this drawing is just a transition into the next material.
Again, I’m thinking about the material, stiff drawing here, way too reliant on getting the proportions perfect.
Better on this 5 minute drawing, I’m working with the material not fighting it, and flowing with the form a bit more. Also Jamie was saying that I should research an artist named Zhi Lin who is a professor at washington university. And wow, he is great.
We ended up with a 1 hour pose. I was so relaxed with this drawing that I think I talked with Jamie just as much as I was drawing. I feel like I have had a bit of a breakthrough here. After such a bad day of drawing yesterday and now being able to really turn that around I learned a lot in very little time.
Jamie and I were talking about rendering only the essential essence of the figure or any subject, and I was immediately reminded of hands painted by Sargent. He could describe so much with the most minimal amount of brush strokes, truly masterful. This is what I need to work towards.
