1st life drawing session 20/2/13

On February 20th I began my first ever Life-drawing class; Primarily I signed up for these sessions as it was a skill I was inexperienced with and would act as an essential facet of my coursework portfolio when it came to applying for a foundation degree course in the near future.

Drawing 1 - Graphite pencil on A3.

On the 20th - like for all my future sessions, we were given 2 hours in which to produce a series of sketches - each one having a duration of between 10 and 20 minutes.

Drawing 2 - Graphite pencil on A3

  

 The first days work would ideally serve the preliminary task of defining my basic style; for these reasons I was not limited in my technique or medium - however I stuck to standard Graphite on cartridge paper for the first five drawings and only changed position once on the final instalment.

Drawing 3 - Graphite pencil on A3

It is clear from these first 3 sketches that I had initial difficulty in framing the subject accurately; subsequently this meant the model's feet were partly cut off at the bottom of the page.

At the other end, though I had no problem attempting to sketch the facial details of the model - in this case however the beard made it tricky to fully give an impression of the model's head; Drawing 2 being an example of the head appearing partly shrunken into the shoulders.

Drawing 4 - Graphite pencil on A3

These reclining poses gave me the first real opportunity to depict the feet and crucially, give a sense of depth. A problem that I had with a lot of these sketches was conceptualising 'the spine' and building the structure around it as to accurately present a stable figure. Overall this simply meant that the torso looked quite large - a small issue, but still one I would hope to rectify in the future.

Drawing 5 - Graphite pencil on A3

In summary I am quite pleased with the outcome of my first life-drawing sketches and over the coming weeks I hope to use a greater variety of media in presenting an equally varied array of model's.

If I had to describe my style at present it would be 'classicist' - but still for the most part, accurate.