Indecision at life drawing

I found this sketch from an old life drawing session, and I was amused by my notes down the side of the drawing, expressing my dismay, acceptance and finally pleasure at how the drawing went.

Life Drawing 21/10/2013

My first life drawing session in about two months! I've been working hard on a new project, that I will hopefully reveal quite soon...

Life drawing 26/08/2013

Although I’m not late, I am usually one of the last to arrive for life drawing, so I’m obliged to take a space at the side. This is fine by me, since the lighting is usually more interesting and, besides, profiles tend to be easier to draw.

Today, since it was a bank holiday, there were fewer people and when I arrived there was one seat at the front, centre stage. Well, I chose it immediately.

I sort of regretted that. Because the model needs to give everyone in the room a decent angle to work from, a lot of the poses were facing forward. In other words, straight at me. I struggled at first with this. I kept telling myself it shouldn’t make a difference, but the lighting and the pose seemed a lot flatter than usual.

The best of a very bad bunch

Finally, in the long fifty minute pose, I was faced with someone doing a sort of lotus pose. I was depressed at first: after a load of drawings with no sense of movement, you couldn’t ask for a more sedate model. But this time, I decided to focus on the symmetry rather than ignore it, and I think it turned out okay.

Life drawing 29/07/2013

Life Drawing 01/07/2013

This was my first life drawing session for a few weeks and, up until my brief break I’d been growing uneasy about my drawing style. On the one hand, it usually produced things which I found pleasing to look at. On the other, it was becoming a little too easy.

The style in question was to use rougher, more haphazard lines that I previously had, and no shading at all. This was a reaction against my previous style of drawing, in which I tried to use as few lines as possible, relying on shading to bring out the shapes and forms. But this meant I ended up with vague, ill defined, washed out drawings. Hence the change to a bolder stlye.

Now, after some months of drawing predominantly with lines and no shading, I decided it was becoming too familiar. Also, I noticed that if I tried to shade in a drawing I done, it would often reveal that the proportions were wrong. I’d stopped looking at the model properly in favour relying on a style that I knew would produce something nice.

So, today I forced myself to shade in my drawings (assuming there was time). I’m quite pleased how well they came out.

Life drawing 21/05/13

Only one good drawing this week.

Life Drawing 6/5/13

It's been a few weeks since I went to life drawing, and I'm quite relieved that some came out as good as they did.

Life Drawing 11/3/13

As usual when I haven't written anything, I think I'll put up some drawings.

I'm getting into the habit of doing a quick sketch of each pose without looking at the paper. I don't know if it helps, but they often have a quality to them that I like and wouldn't get any other way.

Life drawing 18/02/13

Actually, two of these are from last week. About a month or so ago, in a typical session, I was happy with a lot of my drawings. I thought that maybe I'd cracked it and was now good at art. In the past few weeks, though, I've slipped right back and now I only produce a couple of good things a week.

On this next one, I was a bit desperate after failing to come up with anything worthwhile all session. So I did the drawing without looking at the paper and then shaded it in as if I'd meant it to be that way. It's a nice way to loosen up, and I think it lead to the last drawing.

Life drawing 28/1/13

Well, today was a new low. Nothing I drew today was very good, and some of it was shockingly bad. For the first time ever, I left during the break because I was sure I wasn't going to get any better. The best thing I did was a short one-minute sketch where I didn't look at the paper (the last one below). It's surprising how drawing like that can often turn out pretty good.

At first, I wasn't going to post them but then I thought if I'm going to show off my best stuff and be smug about it, then it's only right that I show off the worst.

Life drawing 21/1/13

Life Drawing 14/1/13

Quite a good session today. There was one guy today (I think I've seen him before) who just did tiny doodle-type drawings in the corner of his A3 sheet, and spent most of the pose with the female model just staring at her.

Life drawing 7/1/13

First session since the holiday break. A bit rusty. These are the better ones.

Life drawing 17/12/2012

So today I was drawing and I looked over at the man sitting next to me to see how he was doing. I noticed that his lines were very smooth, and his shading quite uniform and it occured to me that it looked like he was drawing it as if he was going to make it into something else later on. I thought "he's probably a sculptor."

Then, when I got talking to him during the break, I found out that's what he was. I was quietly impressed by my own powers of deduction.

But then I wished I'd asked him if he was a sculptor before he told me. Would've been pretty impressive.

Life Drawing 10/12/2012

Life drawing 26/11/2012

Eleven post in one month. Woo hoo! No wonder I've got a headache.