Ten years ago, the July weather was mixed and I was on the beach for some of it. But it was still cool enough to enjoy some indoor events. There was quite a fashion for public storytelling back then, so I had a bit of a scribble as I listened. The sessions took place in the old courthouse attached to the old police station in Swansea, which now has a magnificent stained glass window. You can see that I’ve drawn a bit of it in the third sketch.
Here’s the last pose from the recent life drawing session at Swansea Print Workshop, an hour long. I decided to go for a portrait because I really like faces in profile. I worked with Caran D’Ache NeoPastels onto vintage paper prepared with some left-over acrylic paint in a dusty pale blue. I don’t like working directly onto white and the paint, applied with a squeegee, is often mottled and interesting in its own right. This is a pretty good likeness, I’m pleased with it.
I prepared some vintage paper with a bluish acrylic paint, applied with a squeegee for my recent life drawing session and as I was sketching the model, I noticed that the uneven distribution of the paint was suggesting a ghostly face. I decided to stop drawing our model’s own face, I’ll go back to this and work up a face that is suggested by the different tones and shapes in the paint. This is similar to the way that some Surrealists worked in the past. I drew with Caran D’Ache Neopastels.
I changed the medium I use at last night’s life drawing session at Swansea Print Workshop. I’ve been using conté crayons but I switched to Caran d’Ache Neopastels. They’re so soft and buttery, gorgeous to use. I also changed the paper, preparing some vintage paper with a pale blue acrylic ground, which really complemented the pastels. These are 2 ten minute poses. I cropped the figure on the left as I don’t want to risk being censured for publishing a nude. There’s a much more prudish attitude to art than there was back in the heady early days of MySpace. Remember that?
This model has very large eyes and I’m struggling to get the proportions of her face right. This was the final drawing I did at last week’s life drawing session and although I think I got the eyes reasonably OK, I over-compensated by making the mouth and jawline bigger. I was drawing what I thought should be there not what was actually there!
I’m working with a new model at life drawing group, this is only the second session I’ve drawn her and I’m struggling to get a good likeness. I’m trying to analyse her features, but it’s not working out too well. She has exceptionally large eyes and I keep thinking my measurements are wrong. I’ll get there eventually and then I’ll wonder why I ever had a problem, but some faces are like that, very hard to draw at first.
Drawn in conté crayons onto heavyweight paper prepared with a green acrylic ground.
The last of my life drawings from the other week when the heatwave was at it’s worst. The final pose for our model was a nice comfy lying-down one on some soft cushions. He had a bit of a doze, which is fine because he went above and beyond the call of duty by modelling during a heatwave. Life modelling isn’t easy in normal circumstances. I used white and sanguine conté crayons onto vintage paper prepared with an acryic ground in various greens.
I tried something different with this pose, using solid blocks of colour and very thick outlines, trying out a different style. I used black, sanguine and white conté crayons onto a heavily textured re-used paper prepared with a green acrylic ground.
Here’s a digital drawing of Sparta Puss from September 2017. I was experimenting with a Markers app on my Samsung Galaxy Note 8, getting used to it. I did a lot of digital drawings for a while, then I got bored with it and went back to analogue drawing.
At the life drawing session last night at Swansea Print Workshop, we had two mirrored poses of 15 minutes each. I enjoy these, it’s interesting to draw the same pose from a different angle. I used conté crayons in sanguine and black onto a smallish piece of vintage paper. What a difference a week makes. Last week we had a heatwave and our model needed fans blasting to cool him down, this week our model needed a heater.
scribblah 