Sunday 3 October 2010

Don't Stand Directly In Front of the Model

A slightly unsuccessful life drawing session this week, though I think mostly due to feeling ill than the usual artistic reasons. I had a problem this week in that everyone turned up early and booked their spot on the quick pose floor- so no quick poses- darn.

I decided to go for a long pose and set up pretty much directly in front of the model. I had an inkling this was a bad idea but it got worse once the model was set up and posed. At home I've been enjoying drawing twisting torsos and dynamic poses but today....completely flat pose and it kicked my butt back to 800 BC. Of course if I had the abiltity I could twist the drawing a bit to make it more interesting but I'm still focused on getting a fairly accurate drawing on the canvas so I'm not there yet. Pelvis and torso where straight as an arrow and at my particular angle quite a few of the landmarks where hidden by cloth. Eventually I will make these up out of my head when I can't see them but at the moment that really threw me.

Oh yes and I got my leg muscles mixed up, I thought I was looking at tensor when I was looking at the Satorius; that's odd I thought, how it doesn't connect to the trocanter...em that would be because it's not remotely the right bloody muscle you dimwit.

The drawing below is from the week before. It's not the best drawing in the world but it does have something that I'm trying to get into my work. In true me style it was done in the last 15 minutes of the 4 hour day after struggling quite a bit. I figured out I wasn't enjoying how pastel handled on my cartridge pad so I switched to newsprint and...there it was. I do seem to get quite badly affected by the materials I use, sometimes it just doesn't feel right and it all goes downhill. My thought process is a lot better now though, I constantly think about what I'm doing, I know what I'm looking for, I don't always get it right but it's in there and it's getting easier gradually. In the beginning I just drew without knowing what I was doing.

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