Playing with watercolours

I have just bought a travel watercolour set and I wanted to test them out. I am very taken with them I think mainly because of their easy accessibility. I think I may use these to try out a few ideas.

Updates from my Tuesday Life Drawing Class

 

 

Both of these are 2 - 2.5 hr poses. I had a lot of difficulty with the legs on the first one. Next week we move on to a 6 hr pose that will extend into the following week so maybe I will get into some rendering.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fridays’ Long Pose WIP Update

 

 

Here is the current update from my Friday afternoon class. I have a habit of getting carried away with the rendering and using too much graphite and I am showing signs of this on her left arm. It is all a learning process for me.

Friday’s Long Pose

 

Unfortunately the model was feeling unwell and had to leave after a couple of short poses so the tutor found this replacement.

Initially I was a bit overwhelmed but kept plugging away. Surprisingly I really started to enjoy myself and learnt a few things on the way.

All in all about 2 hours work and I would not mind doing it again. 

Life Drawings 20 May

Here are today’s drawings from my Tuesday class, 2 five min gestures, 3 20 minute block-ins and a final 40 minute block-in. The lines are a little faint and do not show up too well in some cases. click on the pictures to view a larger size.

 

   

Hopefully we will move on to tonal work next week.

Long Pose

 

This is the first of the long poses we will be doing in my Friday afternoon class. The model is holding this pose for 16 hrs (so I might get more than one drawing in!). I have had to ramp up the contrast to show all of the lines and the camera has again failed to realise that the paper is white.

Again I started with a gestural block in and then refined the block in further and then after 30 mins was told to start again because it was too small, according to the tutor - the paper size is 45cm x 65cm. So I started again.

At the end of the session I added two areas of tone, one cast shadow and one core shadow. I wish now I had waited. The core shadow will have some darker elements and I think that the cast shadow needs to describe her form a little better. I will study some good tonal drawings before going much further.

The tutor thought there may be some proportional issues but would not tell me where because 1. he though I would realise them as I added tone and 2. he thought it was a believable drawing anyway. Maybe the legs are too long but I did lots of sight measurements to validate.

Adding tone is where my drawings tend to fall apart so I am just a little terrified of the next steps.

Figure Drawing Term 2 Week 1

These drawings are each from a different class though as luck would have it they are the same model. The techniques used in each class are significantly different to get to this early block in stage.

  

In this class we are taught to get the gesture down on the paper as quickly as possible. The gesture is developed in block form and serves to help with initial placement of the figure and to set out initial ideas on proportions. I do not complete this stage quickly enough for the tutor.

To get to this stage took me approx 30 mins and I was concentrating hard on getting the right proportions and sizes despite the shrunken head.

 

 

 

 

 

In this class again we are trying to get to the initial block in stage and we start with a gesture drawing. In this case however the gesture is completely different in the we just use lines to describe the curvature of the inner form, the first generally describing the head torso and leg relationships and a second describing the arms.

There is a great deal of attention given to the development of these lines and the focus is definitely not on speed, rather direction size and proportion. I got to this stage too quickly for the tutor!

The ideal is to try to describe the 3D nature of the subject using these gesture lines by coming across the form with the lines. It has taken me a long time to understand what I am supposed to be doing but I think I am getting there. The block form is then built out from these lines. The objective is that the resulting drawing should display more life by the incorporation of these gesture lines throughout the drawing.

 

 

In both of these classes we will move on to longer poses, 10 hours + and I am looking forward to seeing if there is any discernable difference in the life of the drawings, though I doubt it since I expect my learnings to cross over.

I think that these are better than the examples earlier in this blog but I attribute some of that down to the fact they are graphite, not charcoal.

My First Painting

Here it is, the result of my first oil painting course. I am very pleased with it and hope I can go on to improve.

It is from a picture taken from a book called ‘Anatomy for the Artist’ by Sarah Simblet. I have been informed that I should not have painted this or posted the picture of the resulting painting to a web site since it may break copyright laws. I know nothing about copyright. The book is wonderful and I advise anyone wanting to learn more about artistic anatomy to purchase it. I have no intention of selling this painting (its my first) or claiming the subject matter to be my own. I hope I don’t get sued!

The details - it is oil on canvas, 125cm x 35cm. It took me about 20 hours to complete which is possibly far too long but I was learning as I went. The image here is not quite the finished article some glazing needs to be applied to the arms. I will update the image when I have taken a final picture.

Click on the image for a bigger view.

Where did the year go?

Just 4 days short of a year since my last post, it seems an appropriate time to re-commence documenting my artistic journey. So why did I stop posting and what happened in the year gone by?

I look back at the life drawing exercises that I have posted below and they tell a pretty good story. I have to face the fact that they are pretty terrible.

They were produced during what was supposed to be a tutored class at a local art school. As usual I was frustrated with my progress but I did not attribute this to the class, in fact as a result of these classes I decided to dedicate more time to developing my art and set myself on a course to pursue a Master of Fine Arts at the same college. I spent the next couple of months working on producing a portfolio of work to support my application. (When I get time I will photograph the portfolio and add it here). I submitted my application and portfolio and was over the moon to be accepted onto the Fine Arts programme to start February 2008. This triggered within me a full stop to any further art being produced, presumably until I started the course six months in the future, who knows? Why I stopped I don’t honestly know, I could offer a number of reasons but I will never know for certain.

So the course start date got closer and closer. I made plans to resign from my day job. I told selective colleagues of my plans. I eventually told my boss of my intentions. Everybody was supportive. I was getting worried.

My worries where nothing to do with giving up a job and entering full time education. My worries were the nature of a Fine Arts degree. I have some specific goals in terms of what I want to achieve, and I did not want to spend four years not progressing towards these goals, be they good, bad realistic or not.

It was soon November and I was invited to my future art school’s end of year exhibition. I went to the first, second and third and fourth year exhibitions, and I was disappointed by them all, in fact very disappointed. There was nothing on display that would have made me proud to have produced after one whole year of study, never mind four.

Maybe I was being unrealistic but I came away thinking that at best art school was more about making a grand statement rather than developing core skills such as drawing and painting. I do think that art is a fantastic way to make statements and to alter peoples’ perceptions but there should still be a place for the development of core skills.

So, I started to look around to see what other education was available and found a number of schools teaching classical realism, however I quickly realised although this looked like what I wanted, I was not even going to get close to these schools unless I showed a dramatic improvement in my figure drawing, and learned to paint.

At the end of last year I made my decision. Art school is not for me. I need to follow a more traditional approach. I found a course in my home city run by a tutor who studied classical methods at schools in Florence and France. I enrolled for 10 weeks commencing last February. I enrolled again for the second term that started last week. I have recently discovered another tutored life drawing course focusing on tone and line in which I have also enrolled. I started an oil painting course and have just finished my first painting.

So here we are a year later and a year wiser. Is my life drawing any better? How are my painting skills progressing? What are my plans and am I achieving them?

Hopefully we will find out here.

Life Drawing Week 3

Not much progress I am afraid, in fact I feel I am getting worse.

All charcoal on newsprint.

30 second gestures.

5 minute sketches

40 min’s (never happy with this)

Gave up and tried again in the last 5 min’s

Life Drawing Week 2

All charcoal on newsprint.

 30 second gesture sketches

15 min’s

 

15 min’s left handed

A study in tone

 

15 min’s again

 

 

40 min’s (additional time does not seem to make much difference)

Figure Drawing with Pastels

Just experimenting! A3 cartridge and soft pastels.

Life Drawing Week 1

I recently started to attend a tutored life drawing class and these are the results from week 1. All charcoal on A1 newsprint ranging from 5 - 15 mins.

After Michelangelo

I found a great tutorial by Rebecca Kimmel here. I was inspired to try something similar using Michelangelo as a reference. Here is the result - I need to spend more time that I did this time. Overall I found the experience very satisfying, thinking I was drawing something that Michelangelo had drawn, and I am sure I can only learn from this - I look forward to copying more Masters’ drawings.

Click the image to open in a larger window.

The original reference can be found here.

Reclining Nude

Having spent the last 2 months far too busy with work I finally managed to get some time to myself to allow me to start to draw again. I never seem to have enough time to draw despite new year resolutions and this is something I regret.

Anyway given the two months I have spent with no pencil in hand I am pleased with how I seem to have progressed. I made many mistakes on the way with this and learned a lot. In fact just about as soon as I started I regretted using white paper. I am happier than usual with the hands but had real problems with overall proportions - her ear could be better and I may do some more work on this.

Overall, I am pleased with the outcome and cant wait to try my next project on non-white paper.

The source was a photo reference from Deviant Art and I used graphite (2b) on white paper (24×17).
The attachment is a photograph of the drawing and as usual is rubbish (it is supposed to be white paper!)

Charcoal and Chalk

I really do not like this. The picture reference was too dark to understand what was happening with her ear. I really was hoping to do better, it was a nice photograph but it is not a nice drawing.

Click the image to open in a larger window.

Lights and darks to sketch facial features

Just trying to better understand how to use light and dark chalks to quickly describe facial features. I want to apply the lighter colours at the end but that just does not work.

Click the image to open in a larger window.

More Pastels

This is from a photo reference - I am not too happy with the face or the hands.

Click to open a larger view. 

Figure Sketching with Pastels

I am really beginning to enjoy this technique a lot more than just using graphite.

Click on the thumbnail to open in a new window.

Hatching Practice

Courtesy of the Jack Hamm figure drawing book.

Colours

Friends bought me a drawing set that contained some chalks so I tried something different. Hope you like it Jackie and Nigel.

Figure Sketching

Spurred on by the Sargent sketch I wanted to try something similar from a photo reference. Here is the result. I feel like I an hitting a plateau.

The photo reference was from the Miss-Kreant gallery at Deviantart

Sargent’s Aphrodite

Had a few minutes to spare so did a quick sketch of Sargent’s study for Aphrodite using ballpoint pen on copy paper.

Drawing Legs

Here are some legs, one a bit too fat and all with odd shaped feet.  Focusing on legs though not feet.

 

Back to focusing on the Figure

Since my New Year resolution for the last few days I have turned my focus back on to drawing the figure. To help I have been using these books

• How to Draw the Human Figure by Jose M. Parramon
• Drawing the head and Figure by Jack Hamm

Now I have had the book by Jack Hamm for quite a while now and I have only just realised how good it is, and I have no idea why it has taken me so long to read it properly. Here are my drawings from the last few days.

The last one was created using a method of inverted triangles described in Jack Hamm’s book - I really liked this idea, simple, easy and effective as all good ideas should be.