New paintings and regular art updates.
I had the great pleasure of spending the day drawing my friend Eve when she came and modelled for us at Newcastle Fire Station. One of the art groups I’m in, Orme Art group had booked he as a clothed model for the day.
Here are my attempts at drawing her. The red dress was really spectacular and hard to draw! I felt really out of practice but I felt like I was getting into it more as the day wore on.
This is some old flooring which may be tiled. I don’t think it’s actual parquet flooring which is a type of wood block flooring. Usually laid in a herringbone pattern. The floor is then buffed to a shiny finish. I saw this floor somewhere in the recent past, and it reminded me.
We had a floor like this at the gym at school, and then in the life drawing room at college. I remember painting and drawing many models there and trying to draw the floor pattern from lots of different directions. It made the pictures more interesting and once you got the hang of it quite easy to draw.
Anyway I was doing quite a bit of life drawing early last year but things got busy. But I’m going to try and go back. I also want to learn some new drawing techniques. I think they have parquet on the floor in the hall where they do life drawing. Things do come round full circle.
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We had a lovely sitter tonight called Debbie McAndrew. She is an author and play write and also sometimes acts. She wrote a brilliant play called “dirty laundry” that was on last year . It was set in the past and was about the history of the potteries.
We had an entertaining session drawing her and discussing all sorts of things, including how she got into the theatre and acting and how the group got into drawing and painting.
I really enjoyed the session and think that I got some relatively accurate portraits from it.
I used pencil, charcoal pencil and black ink to do the drawings. The sketches are in a small sketch book with good thickness cartridge paper.
I like drawing in these books. There is enough room to fit the drawings in, and they are small enough to hold so that it is not a struggle to hold the book. Other people were using A1 or A2 sheets to draw or paint on but I prefer the smaller size. About A5.
Anyway I shall just leave you to decide if you like them…
Tonight’s life drawing model was called Richard.
When I’m feeling out if sorts I like to go to life drawing. I can sit and draw without worrying whether the picture is saleable. I suppose I could frame up some of these but I don’t really want to.
I find nowadays that my eyesight isn’t as good so I look through my glasses at the model, then over the top of them to see my sketch, half the time my glasses are slipping down my nose, which probably looks comical.
I tend to use a small sketch pad but if I go for a4 or bigger I use the back of a chair to rest it on. I used to use a donkey at college…a long thin stool you sit astride with a rest that pulls up which you can lean your sketch pad or drawing board on. the advantage of these is you can be seated without having to mess about propping things on a second chair. If you use a large easle its generally easier to stand up, as the legs of the easle can get in your way if you sit. Drawing on a flat peice of paper means that when you lift it to the vertical the image stretches and ends up elongated, this does not look good when you are doing figure studies.
Anyway, going back to the class, I did 7 drawings tonight…they call me prolific!
Tonight life drawings at Caverswall.
The model is studying yoga so her first pose was based on a yoga position. I was drawing with a very soft pencil so the final drawing is a bit smudged ( I use both sides of he page and the graphite from the pencil can transfer across).
The first two drawings were 15 minute poses, enough time to get a reasonable representation. The last three drawings were all the same long pose but I chose to try and draw it for half an hour before the break, which was not very successful as I struggled with the fore shortening. I am quite pleased with the models face and upper body, but the legs and hands are a bit too small.
The fourth drawing was also for half an hour. While I might have got the figure slightly more in proportion I think the face is wrong and the drawing is too tight .
Finally I gave up and moved so the last drawing was for half an hour drawn from the other side of the room. I was much happier with this and used the final few minutes to draw the surrounding objects and a couple of the other artists.
Life drawing does help with understanding the human body.
There are quite a few local classes, and if you want to learn how to draw or paint portraits, or even just so you have a working knowledge of the human body I would recommend joining one.
I did 3 drawings, 2 were 10 minute sketches, then one over 35 minutes and finally an hour painting a small portrait. I like trying to capture accurate images and I think I was quite successful this week.
One thing I tried was using two colours in the background , turquoise and gold . I think this worked quite well. I used only 5 colours, orange, black, gold, turquoise and white.
The lighting caused good shadows which help to define the shape of her body.
Overall I really enjoy honing my drawing skills.
Tonight we had a musician called Mark sitting for us. He is an accomplished singer and accordion player, and we had the pleasure of drawing and painting him while he played and sang.
Two hours of hearing music such as the Stoke hornpipe and cajun tunes ensued.
It did make drawing him difficult but that was part of the challenge. I did a couple of sketches and a close up drawing and a small acrylic on canvas portrait .
Good way of spending an evening.
The model is very good at interesting poses. I do not know how she could remain so still, but it certainly made drawing easier. We did a series of short poses, then a long one which lasted the rest of the session.
One of the things I love to do is try and draw fine detail in pencil and coloured pencil. The sketchbook I am using is only about tablet size so what the drawings lack in scale I can try and make up for by adding details.
They are by no means perfect, but that’s the reason for practicing.
I decided to take my tablet tonight which has a few drawing apps on it. I used sketcher for galaxy, (I think its called) to do a final drawing. It was difficult as I lost my stylus and need to get another one. So I ended up doing a glorified finger painting.
I find I have to swap tools on the app to try and get close to what I would find far easier to do in crayon or conte. However it makes for a looser drawing, and I think the result was quite interesting. I even found the way to colour the background. No doubt there will be more to follow!
I think I’m reasonably good at drawing, but I do sometimes draw without looking properly. The first two pages of drawings here are 5 minute sketches. No real time to think, you have to be spontaneous to try and capture the whole figure before the pose ends.
The more worked up drawing took an hour. It was only after I had finished that I realised either the head is too large or the rest of the body is too small…I was doing something wrong, concentrating in the detail and not looking at the whole picture.
One thing I could have done is put the paper on an easel so that the surface would have been at a better angle. By tipping the drawing pad the top was further away, and there is a tendency to draw those areas slightly bigger. You can sometimes see the same effect if you have your drawing flat on a table, the image will look elongated when you pick it up. Sometimes the image will be skewed to one side if you drew with the paper at an angle. It’s all a learning curve. No pun intended.
The final picture was painted on a black canvas. I think this helped make it more interesting. The lower thigh is very foreshortened. I would have used the drawing of the pose to rectify this but I dont think its accurate enough. So I will continue to go to life drawing to improve my skills.
I would recommend drawing classes to anyone who wants to get better at sketching.
Mallaband-Brown