Figure Drawing

Yesterday I attended my first figure drawing session (as an artist instead of a model) in over a year, possibly two. I felt rusty and was pretty hard on myself for a few moments, but had to bear in mind that my purpose in attending these sessions is practice, not the completion of a finished work of art. Looking at the drawings now, I’m not offended by them, and have even befriended a couple.

I’m going to try to make a habit of going every Saturday, as it is a free session.

Two-minute poses:

10-minute poses:

I attempted three different media before settling on the orange pencil... and by then the pose was nearly up

At this point I was a little frustrated and began to play

The final pose lasted 45 minutes:

I brought a lot of different pencils with me, even some charcoal, which I started to use and then erased. My sketch pad is 11×14, which I found is really not big enough to use “fuzzy” implements on. My standard 6B, HB, and other art-type pencils were a frustration, as I have become accustomed to using regular technical pencils of the sort one writes with, with the smaller lead. The lines are so smooth and accurate… I realized this in time for the last drawing, which was a 45-minute pose.

The other pencils are great for larger paper, but 11×14 really isn’t as big as it may at first appear. Not much room to swing the arm.

If you look at these drawings, you can see how much importance I place on contours. Most have a very “outlined” feel. Particularly in the second and fourth 10-minute poses, you can see where this causes trouble for me: instead of casting lines within the drawing to determine where the contour should fall, I’ve eyed the contour, too large at first, and had to adjust the line inward, resulting in a very belabored-looking outline.

You can see a few internal lines on the second two-minute pose; even at that speed, you can establish some accuracy by throwing down some internal structure. (I also tend to draw internal lines lighter, so they are easier to erase; this is habit more than reason.)