Life Drawing focussing on balance poses

I found todays drawings quite difficult to do as some of the poses were very unusual and the body was contorted in strange shapes. This made it hard to capture a realistic impression of how the body looked.

Today was very cold and we took the life drawing session outside. Sadly my hands were far too cold to  draw so the later drawings are very disappointing. I must take gloves next time!!

Some more Life Drawing to Figure Drawing

Firstly the Life Drawings....

And then the Figure Drawings using the same poses....



I feel that I captured the material of the clothes in these sketches well, more so with the ink drawings as I could work faster. The charcoal drawings took more time and were quite messy so I don't think they look as good. I need to get more of the environment in the sketches as this will give the figures more context.

Life Drawing to Figure Drawing

Today we watched an old film called The Third Man. Our Life Model then matched poses that were in the film, firstly without clothes so we could get an idea of how the body naturally works when creating these movements.

Our Life Model then did the same poses but this time clothed. We also drew outside so we could incorporate some interesting backgrounds into our drawings. It was interesting to see how much the image changed when clothing is used and it's put in a setting.

I found it hard to work fast enough so that I got all the details of the life model and the surroundings into the sketch. Maybe if I worked smaller...thumbnail size then I would be able to get more of what I can see in the sketch.

I took one of the poses we sketched today and made it into an illustration. It's very useful to have a 'bank' of all of these different poses, you never know when one is going to come in handy. I liked playing around with the pose and putting clothing on the figure, and working out what worked and what didn't. Also moving the limbs so that they look right for the composition was interesting, but I think this has worked well.