Life Drawing - Week 1

Hey guys. I'm just fresh from my first week of life drawing. And I really love it. It is a total of two intense weeks, Monday to Friday, 9am - 4pm of constant drawing. It's been an experience. Each day we come into class and continue to build on our knowledge of the human body. I REALLY recommend those who have not chosen their electives yet, to do this at some point this year. Had I known it would be as helpful as it has been, I'd have recommended you guys to do it over the intensive two weeks. It really helps change the way you go about drawing the human form (and other forms for that matter.) The human body is an integral part of our work. I don't know why this isn't a compulsory subject for us illustrators. Instead they have us doing two theory subjects. Where is the logic in that? God knows I won't need much of that crap when I leave uni...

ANYWAY, I thought I'd share some of the work I did during the week. It's nothing special. A lot of the earlier pieces of work were aimed to loosen us up, so we had to draw without looking at the page, and using out left hands for a lot of our line work. Joanna, for those who have dine Desktop/Advanced Desktop Publishing will know who I'm talking about, really knows her life drawing. She's a bloody ball-breaker at times but brings out the best in our work.


This first image was done on the first day. See how clinical and repressed my line work was. I's still pretty happy with how the proportions turned out but it lacks character.


This image was done on the second day. We had to draw the negative space around the figure without blocking in the positive space in. That was hard but it helped us to look at the objects around the image and how they can be used to plan out the figure.


These two images were done with out looking at the page and with my left hand. I find using my left hand really helps to loosen up the hand. Joanna said gotten us all to get an A5 blank diary and we have to draw really fast, capturing the lines and movement. It's great. Really helps with your over all abilities.


This face shot was the first time I have used this technique with the puddy rubber. I really enjoyed it and to Joanna's annoyance, have continued to use it in my other works.


These last two images were done today.I'm relatively happy with them. I do enjoy this technique quite a bit. Only way I can handle charcoal and conte. In these we had to look at how the light falls on the muscle/chest area. In fact the past few days we have been analysing the bones and muscles so that we have an understanding of what is under the skin we're drawing. Having this understanding will really help us pick out the formations in the body. Good stuff.

Sorry for the lengthy post guys. I haven't been able to post for the last two-three weeks so I guess I'm making up for lost time. I do recommend you guys to look into this subject. It's been so benifical for myself. It gets you thinking in another mind set. It's too much fun.