Life Drawing practice - 90 minute photographic pose in graphite

To try and make my live life drawing sessions a little more useful, I want to do more timed practices to get basic pose gestures down a little quicker. The website artmodeltips.com has a decent array of poses from a variety of models. The plan is to do at least one timed-out practice from these a week, photographing the process as I go to see where adjustments happen and to make sure that I'm applying detail only when ready.

3 minutes: I tried to capture the whole pose in as short a time as possible. The general sweep seemed OK, you can see where amendments have been made already to the left arm and side and the right leg.

10 mins: Detail added to the face and upper torso. Usually I leave the face until the very end but the angle of it seemed important to how the pose worked, in pulling the spine around to the curve which decides the position of the legs. At this stage the torso down to around the middle rib level is pretty much set.

20 mins: Once detail was added to the torso I could see the proportion issues in the lower body. The hips were lowered, the curve from the waist to the hip lessened in severity and the thigh straightened out. Detail marks were added to the stomach and legs. At this stage, the whole pose is largely finished, at least in terms of basic outline.

35 mins: a few touch ups but this time was spent almost exclusively on adding detail to the face. The angle of the nose was especially important to get right, to ensure that the downward cast of the face was as it should be.

60 mins: without a fixed deadline, I decided to concentrate on completely finishing the head. After that, I worked on the upper arms and around to the forearms, which meant I could sketch in the hair and be totally finished with the top part of the drawing. Next, shading in the shoulders, ribs and back meant that the tension in the arm muscles were in context. Anchoring the navel in allowed the rest of the drawing to be completed using the centre line that curves from the hollow between the collarbones all the way through.

90 mins: all shading added from the hips down through the legs. Contrast added by erasing the smudged pencil from the line of the right side that runs along the inside angle and down to the top of the knee cap, and along the outer edge of the left thigh.

Finished sketch after returning to it some time after. Tweaks to the jawline, left side of the stomach, and further defining the left clavicle area by removing some of the shading.

Overall this was instructive. For one, there's the issue of positioning on the page. I'm not visualising the finished drawing on the page so ended up unable to finish the full length of the pose because I ran out of paper. Next time I'd like to try measuring out the key signifiers (i.e. top of the head, bottom of the chin, shoulder, hip, knee, and foot, if a standing pose) and mark those horizontally on the page to work to.
The face bears a passing resemblance to the model but was really there to ensure that the picture works as a whole. It looks kind of like an older painting, less photo realistic, but I quite like it. Next time I may try and hold off on detailing the face so closely as early as I did, just to get through the pose as a whole quicker. Working down from the torso was useful as, judging from most of my previous attempts at figurative drawing, I have a tendency to shorten the lower body somewhat, and it's much harder to remove that once it has been lined in too heavily. In longer (20-25 minute) poses in life drawing I'd be tempted to line the pose out in graphite and check proportions before adding detail in charcoal, if I have time.

Life Drawing week 3

I managed to get a few more poses down in the shorter, 3 minute gesture practices but definitely need to find a way to get through a whole pose much quicker.

A couple of very quick warm ups. The pose on the left is kind of a mess, but the pose on the right generally captured the proportions of the arm, torso and left leg

Trying to save on paper led to a pretty weird playing card effect. The pose at the top again just about caught the proportions.

A short standing pose that had some issues with the left leg (thigh too long) but showed some promise. The left arm is clunky and the right arm is just there to hold the space but could have been fixed.

A longer standing pose that worked fairly well, albeit very sketchy. The left arm was the first thing in so needs work at the transition between upper and lower arm, and the hand obviously ended up as just a sketched shape. But the muscle tension in the buttocks and legs shows the weight distribution quite well, and the back suggests the arc that the head thrown back would have finished. The back of the head is too high and too straight so doesn't quite capture the pose properly, I think this would have made a huge difference.

A longer seated pose, which caught some of the posture right. The left thigh is too thin, and the transition at the knee is awkward. Also the right arm is a little narrow. There's an issue of proportion where the left side of the chest slopes off at a sharper angle than the left shoulder, which means that the neck and head position would need amended. With a bit of work though this could have been fairly accurate.

The first short warm up pose with the other model. A lot would need fixing here, the left shoulder is too sharp and tall, and the left hip and leg are totally incorrect. But the line sweep from the right side of the chest through the knee was promising.

The longest pose of the evening, and the most finished. The left forearm should be a little longer, or more readily suggest that the foreshortening is a result of it being turn slightly towards the viewer. The left thigh is also turned towards us, which would have been better suggested if the left shin and foot were turned more towards us.The shin seems a little short; the ankle region truncated. The foot is too parallel, if it were turned flatter and angled slightly down if would help suggest the proper shin angle. The right foot is OK but perhaps could have been more rounded, i.e. the little toes dipping behind the top of the foot.

Life Drawing week 2

A lot more false starts this week; really struggling with the 2 minute quick poses, getting the basic curvature of the figures down in such quick time doesn't come naturally. The only pieces I considered finished enough to keep hold of were a 5 minute and the two longer seated poses.

This was the 5th pose of the evening, and the first where I felt that I got a handle on the relationships between the arm, the torso and the legs. Before this I was struggling to get anything significant on the page.

This was a 20 minute pose, and I felt that I managed to capture some of the dynamism of the muscles, although I think the transition from upper to lower body is a little truncated. One important piece of advice I was given was to avoid awkward line transitions, such as where the muscle down the centre of the back leads on to the tricep almost exactly in line. By using a shaded patch instead of continuing the same line over to different 3-dimensional planes, it looks less awkward. Picking out lighter patches can also break up these lines.

The angle of the head resting on the shoulder in this 20 minute pose presented a real challenge in terms of relative size and also trying not to make the model look uncomfortably hunched. I think the left shoulder and back ended up a little too rounded, the left hand ended up rushed and too small and at the wrong angle. The left arm in general is a little too short, and too narrow throughout. The face was an afterthought, so lacks character and definition, and is too full faced (the pose was more downturned).

Overall this week was even more challenging that last week. The first thing to take care of is to practice two minute poses, to be able to quickly get from the top to the bottom of the pose without getting bogged down with detail too soon. This goes for longer poses too; I was in a rush to get to work on the last piece so didn't take the time to rough out the full pose, starting instead with the left arm and torso, which led to the incorrect size relationships. The trunk and legs feel much more accomplished though.
Secondly, while taking care of the physical shape, I should start paying more attention to shading to capture the light that is actually in the space better, rather than simply using it to define angles as works best for me.
Thirdly- faces. I need a viable short technique for sketching in faces without getting bogged down with too much character. Just the eyeline and jaw should suffice.

Life Drawing Week 1

First life drawing session at The Vaults, Waterloo.
Monday 12th January '15

2 minute warm up

5 minute pose

10 minute pose

10 minute pose

15 minute pose

20 minute pose