Figure Drawing at Art Society

The Model Sitting

Good morning everyone. This week at our art society we did a session of figure drawing with our lovely model Suzi. And I was very rusty, but I gradually warmed up. The pen and wash sketch above was 25 minutes. First of all we worked on some quick sketches, 5 and 10 minute ones like these below.

Two 10 minute poses

At the moment, we have an interesting exhibition in our local gallery of the drawings of the sculptor Henry Moore. And I love the way his drawings emphasize the three dimensional quality of the figure.

Henry Moore drawing

To help me out with the technical side, I did a drawing exercise on figure drawing before I went to the class. Every little helps!

Drawing exercise

And here is just a reminder of work that I was doing with my friend Suzi before the pandemic. Because I went to Life Drawing every week, I was much more comfortable and creative. Anyway, this was something based on a Jack Vettriano painting. Happy Days!

On the Phone

Catching up and Finishing Off

Coming Down to Earth

Good morning everyone. This is the second of the series on angels that I am painting in gouache. Perhaps you may have seen the first one here that I did before Christmas. Actually, I want to point out that I don’t paint these for any religious purpose. But I just love the motif and the opportunity of trying to achieve different light effects. Anyway, I spent some time this week catching up and finishing off several pieces I had on the go. And, in this one, I needed to make the figure look more realistic. ( I’m really missing my Life Drawing practice!) In addition, I experimented with the texture of the feathers, and the golden light effect around the angel.

Meanwhile, I kept thinking about a class I did a couple of weeks ago. In fact, it was very good. Our tutor tried to help us to move away from figurative style into a more abstracted representation. Firstly, we sketched a simple line drawing of a ceramic object. Then, we tried to abstract and exaggerate the features and maybe change the colours.

My first two attempts at abstraction in watercolour

Then we were encouraged to go one stage further and create a completely abstract composition, using the ideas in our previous stages.

My abstract composition

Well this was just the start of my idea, we ran out of time in class. Hopefully, I will get a bit more done in my next catching up and finishing off session!