CDDA - Life drawing - Woman model

This week at life drawing we had a female model making it a much more interesting session with the different shapes and shadows to be drawn. We started with 5 minute poses which went okay, it was quite a lot different from drawing our normal male model. The main difference that I struggled with was the size of the model, a slim build, which was very different to our other model.

We then did a 25 minute drawing. This one went quite well, I like it from the hips up. The legs are too thin and bend slightly. I also decided to use orange for highlights and my charcoal for the shadow giving a nice effect. I was pretty happy with this.

Lastly we did a 45 minute drawing. I used the same medium again. It went pretty well, I was really happy with the shapes and I felt I got the general idea of the shadows and highlights on her. I drew her face which I was pretty happy with too though I didn't have time to add colour and shadow. 

CDDA - Life drawing no model

This week at life drawing our model was absent again so we drew pictures of poses that couldn't be done by a single man. We were given 5 minutes to draw structure and add some linework then 10 minutes to add to the picture. Whilst it was kind of interesting, I didn't really feel that it was useful to me or my skills. I also got quite bored by the end. It was an interesting yet mostly useless session.

CDDa - Life drawing - Texture

These are my life drawing sketches from last week. Sorry for the bad images, they have been rolled up all weekend as I had to leave straight after the life drawing session. This week the focus was on texture. I used a charcoal pencil but would have preferred some actual charcoal this week, I feel that would have been easier to get more onto the paper with. Our model was sat on a dark, shiny bean bag with 2 different fabrics covering parts of it. My first 2 drawings are 10 minute sketches near the start of the session. The first was just me getting warmed up.

The second is better, I began to add a little texture but too slowly. 

My third drawing was much better, we had 15 minutes for this. This time I quickly got the model into the picture and started detailing the area. I didn't finish all the texture but I feel that I at least showed that the different objects he sat on were different textures and materials. 

This was a 45 minute sketch. I spent most of time focused on the robe, the theme was textures after all, and feel really happy with the finished robe. It was quite a heavy, large robe and I feel that I did well with this sketch. The material folded in a similar way to the sleeve ends of my Dwarfs undershirt for my character and I feel that I may be able to use this image for reference on the different kinds of folds. 

CDDA - Life Drawing - Pastels

 This week in life drawing I used pastels. Having little to no experience with the medium, the exercises proved difficult but more rewarding than using my normal choice of pencil. We started off with 4 different 10 minute poses centered around a magic ball of sorts. As you can see with my top piece of art I struggled initially to get the lines I wanted but as you go down the page I become more comfortable with the pastels eventually ending with a picture with a range of shading which I was very happy with.

We repeated the task after this but with only 5 minutes per picture and we were told to try and use 2 different colours for light and dark. The action set was based around 2 small swords. The first image I did not have time to add any red but after this I managed to do the task and learnt a few things. First of all was to pick 2 colours which go together better than green and red which does not give a good image effect. As for the horse head, it was Halloween and our model wanted to get into the spirit of things.  

We ended with a 30 minute pose. I did this larger than most of my art on A3 paper. Again we were told to put a lot of emphasis on light and dark by using 2 different colours. I chose a dark blue for the shadow and a light yellow for highlights and feel that these go together a LOT better than green and red. The exercise was very interesting and I like the end result I had. I did the line work very quickly so I could get a good amount of time on the colours and this shows a little but it is worth it for the effect of the colours. I really like how all this came out in the end.

CDDA - Life Drawing Session 3

This week in life drawing we had a focus on perspective and short poses. The first piece of art we were directed to do was a drawing focusing on perspective. We were allowed to choose any kind of perspective we wanted so I went with a simple one point as I'm not very confident with perspective artwork. We were told to populate the page with simple blocks at first and then draw the model at the forefront of the picture. We then had to draw the same pose in the middle of the picture, still in the same proportions as the front picture using the lines from the vanishing point. We then drew him in a new pose standing up at the background of the picture, still to scale. I managed this quite well I think even though I struggled to add the detail because of the size of my drawings.

Next we went onto doing very short poses showing a set of movement using weaponry. The first set used nun-chucks and we were given only 2 minutes to draw each pose. This meant getting in the basic look of the body, focusing on angles of limbs and where the joints were. I enjoyed this and I like what I came out with.  

The next set of drawings we were given 3 minutes to draw and the weapons featured were small short swords. This time through I had a minute to sort out the actual body lines after blocking in the skeletons angles and joints so they look quite a lot better this time. I really enjoyed this exercise and could definitely see the benefit of it. 

The last 30 minutes was spent on a longer pose focusing on our perspective of the room. I am a bit mixed about this picture. I really like the full body image of our model, I feel I got the material of his robe and his pose down well (yet the legs are a little short sadly). But I got bogged down in that and had to rush to get any other parts of the image in before we finished.

CDDA - Life drawing session 2

During my life drawing session this week we focused on learning new ways to get the correct proportions in an average human body. During the last sketch we focused more on shadows and putting someone in a scene but still focused on correct proportions. The first method we looked at was to simply draw a stickman of the model, showing lengths and angles of the limbs and locations of important body parts such as the hips. I used to use this method when I first started doing any artwork so it was very familiar to me and I still found it helpful during this session.

The other method we looked at was using 8 spaces to help create the body. These spaces were each the size of the human head as 8 heads is the same height as the whole body. Whilst helpful, I found that I didn't really enjoy this method as much as the stickman. Not that it didn't help me create the correct proportions, I just find other methods easier. 

The next picture shows 2 drawings of my model with incorrect proportions. This is because we did an exercise where we had to make certain spaces different sizes using the 8 heads method. This meant that certain areas of the body were stretched longer whilst some had less room. This was fun and shows how it could be used to create creatures or humans who are not perfectly average size.

My last picture was focusing on light and dark whilst putting someone in a scene. The lighting within the life drawing room could not be controlled this week so the lighting changed with the sky outside, sadly making realistic shading all over difficult. I enjoyed this exercise and found that putting someone in a scene can make it look better overall. It was also a good exercise in that I learnt a bit of how the human bodies structure looks between light and dark. 

This session did help me a lot even though we did not practice drawing with my preferred method of getting correct perspective (using a skeleton with joints, similar to the stickman). Putting the model in the scene was the most useful part of the session as it is something I have always struggled with and I now feel more confident towards future work. 

CDDA - Life drawing session 1

I had my first life drawing session at uni this week which was treated as an introduction in which we were simply left to draw the model as we though best. We did 5 minute poses for the majority of the session.

At the end of the session we did a 30 minute drawing of the model allowing us a little more time to draw details and add shading.