Thanks to Jamie Bollenbach I had the wonderful pleasure of attending a “pin-up” themed drawing class today. The class started at 11am and went all the way to 6pm. It was a marathon drawing session but all the artists had a ton of fun. The models were amazing and each pose was exciting and new. Jamie even had a makeup artist for the models and a wonderful set full of props to add to the mood. There was no lack of interest and I could have drawn for much longer than 8 hours.
The Drawings
Emily was the first pin-up model. Unfortunately I had a rocky start and decided to focus more on the portrait rather than the whole body. She was dressed as a french girl from the forties and looked much more elegant and beautiful than my drawing shows.
Danielle was our second model. She was the farmers daughter today and we had joked that we should have had Jamie pose behind her with a shotgun. Danielle is model known for her super long legs and her “daisy duke” shorts really showed off their length. I believe at some point she is going to sell her own line of artists paper with a very wide format so you can actually fit her legs on a page.
During the first drawing Jamie was urging me to focus on flowing lines much like the pin-ups of the forties but I was too far along on the first drawing to do that so I focused on a ” Vargus” like approach to this drawing. Here is an example of a master pin-up artists Alberto Vargus, it really makes my drawing look amazingly bad.
Of course my excuse is that I only had 2.5 hours to do my drawing but its good to see a comparison with a master. I think most people would be discouraged but for some reason I see the huge grand canyon of a gab between my skills and his and it just makes me want to jump into a fast car and do an “Evel Knievel” over the chasm.
The last model of the day was Amanda. Her outfit was absolutely amazing and was the perfect pin-up look for the day. I could have drawn this one pose for the whole 8 hours, or all week. Unfortunately we only had a little over two hours to draw here which wasn’t near enough time to get a Vargus like drawing done but I’m very happy with how this drawing turned out. It really does solidify my love for drawing with form rather than line. Maybe I should model my pin-up style after J. C. Leyendecker.
He is really amazing, probably my most favorite illustrator.