Figure drawings

Over the last couple of days I've been focusing more on the female figure, developing on previous sketches or making new ones in life drawing sessions.

Using coloured paper for life drawing made a nice change. It really helped to highlight the lightest and darkest parts of the body.

Rachael has neglected her blog!

Sorry, better update with the things I've missed out.

Firstly, a little editing with the photograms I did last week - adding colours as new layers with different blending affects on Photoshop. These were inspired by the work of Dennis J. Wojtkiewicz whose fruit paintings are absolutely mind-boggling.

Plus I've been to a couple of extra life drawing sessions, going back to using traditional paper.

For the ones below, it was only myself and/or two other students in the session so we had more freedom over the poses of the life model.

Here are some quick sketches of the model in a position where she may be holding a snake - it's an idea I'm trying to follow through (thinking about Eve in the garden of Eden), but the posture was difficult to determine and I'll need to gather some reference photographs before I take this further.

This was one pose where I walked around the figure and did various line sketches.

I also requested that the model stood as if holding an apple above her, as if she is taking forbidden fruit from a tree. I made an accurate line sketch and a rougher one to get down the most prominent shading.

Here I developed the sketch a little, combining the shading with the accurate line drawing and adding colour as well as the apple (for which I used a different reference for the hand holding the fruit).

Sun and Moon

Miss Saigon. That is all.

Also, I finally managed to get pen pressure working on my tablet by downloading the latest driver software.. horrah!

Fruity fingers

Fruit photograms!

Animation

I didn't do what I was supposed to do in the animation workshop today (it involved Macs and After Effects) so I did my own thing instead...

Bit fast but nevermind...

Oops forgot to make a post about Birmingham HA

A variety of work done

Today in life drawing we were concentrating on using colour, comparing 'muted' and 'jarring' tones.

First we spent 20 minutes producing a bold and striking image (what I produced is on the right).

We then spent 30 minutes using less saturated colours for a sitting pose, and I produced the picture on the left.

I'm not very confident with using paint, especially in such a short time frame so I didn't enjoy this session too much. I quite like the colour palette used for the muted painting, and I supposed I like the roughness of it since it isn't something I would usually do. (Though to be honest I much prefer more accurate drawings..)

 
I also spent some time making sketches from a book regarding the religious symbolism behind Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel.

And then I spent the rest of the afternoon in the 'Chamber of Darkness' (ie. the dark room) producing photograms which I will have to collect later on in the week before I can post the results on here.

Complete

On Sunday evening I finished the self portrait!

This was pretty tiring at times but fun to do - I really enjoyed messing around with the colours (unfortunately some of the purple in the darker areas of the hair have been lost in the scan, but you get the general idea).

I've had lots of comments about it when I put it up in my bay which is nice. They've all been very supportive and some people asked me how I did it. I'm glad it's had an effect - the whole dark feeling of the picture gained attention for it too; many people identified the subject as me but were confused by the piercings and cold stare. (To those who listen I tell them that the piercings weren't added randomly - they are the same piercings of Lisbeth Salander from the Swedish films, since my look reminded me of her character..)

Oh noes

I forgot about the photograms I did on Thursday and collected Friday!

A self-portrait with a difference

It seems that the photos from Wednesday inspired me to draw a little further...
I started to draw a much more detailed portrait on A3, using mainly blues and purples to highlight the hair and skin. (I've also added a few piercings just to give the image more character...)

After sketching the face I painted it in watercolour, using lots of layers to build up a base.

 I then used colour pencils to gradually build up more, using a light skintone pencil to blend together the blues, purples, pinks and light yellow.

I've definitely enjoyed working on this but it's taking a long time and can prove to be frustrating at times - especially the hair!

Can I also say I love seeing the transformation when I add the colour pencils...

An interesting start to the day...

Wednesday morning I did some modelling for a couple of first year fashion students. It was quite enjoyable but pretty hectic - most of the students hadn't slept properly since the weekend, and they'd all been up all night finishing off their projects.

I modeled two outfits and had to have my hair and make up done a little. Walking was actually the trickiest part - wearing massive heels to walk back and forth in front of a group of students and tutors whilst having people flash cameras at you? Not so easy! Still I had a good time and hope to be asked to do it again sometime!

 Give me a couple of lip piercings and I'd be the spitting image of Lisbeth Salander.

And now for some sketches.....

I tried to do some quick self-portraits. Really I tried to be quick. On each page I tried to be quicker and rougher than the last... it never really happened.

Anyway I enjoyed doing the sketches, trying out different pens and pencils and overlaying sketches.

Below is a sketch I did when waiting as the students prepared and ironed their clothes.

Sketches in the studio

Tuesday sketches!


And yes, on the right is a sketch of George with his hair pulled back with a hairband. (Charlotte was casting his face with plaster of paris so he was actually staying still enough for me to draw his face!) Drawing portraits from life isn't easy, I'll tell you that...

Life Drawing

Monday = life drawing.

Today was about identifying text within the model, be it using shadows, colouring, skin tone, body form etc. 30 minutes was spent on each drawing, but I spent further time on them when I returned to the studio.

For this first one I used the curves of the body to group together certain areas to use for positioning words. I spent most of the 30 minutes conducting an accurate sketch of the model and highlighting areas to add typography. Back in the studio I added the text, choosing words to represent a certain state of mind.



For the second sketch I tried to directly observe letters within the model. I looked particularly at the shadows cast, and added letters that I felt resembled the body in that area.

Quite an interesting take on life drawing and I actually quite enjoyed it.