Life Drawing: The Final Curtain


 So it comes to the end of term- and we have a life model in our painting class. At first the idea was to do some mono prints direct from the life model kind of Tracy Emin style.. but we weren't allowed to as it would be too much mess and everyone is getting ready for the end of year exhibition. It's down to pastels-one of my favourite mediums.

The model turned out to be the first woman I've drawn in this context who is not of Asian or European descent. She was an utter delight to draw - threw some fabulous shapes in the quick sketches- some of which I've posted to the beginning of the blog here.. And I really wished I had hours to work out all the different colours in her skin tone. I was only really getting started on playing with that when time was called on the final drawing.

You can see the beginnings of my experiments below. With European skin I'm so used to throwing in blues and pinks and greens (and I've been used to relying on my own set of pastels too). So to try to get the different tones I picked up a red and a yellow to blend in. I'm thinking now that perhaps I could have done with a really inky dark blue to mix into the shadowy areas. -Or a dark green!-

Life drawing is a very peculiar and delicate art form. You will all know how much I love it by now- and how excited I get when I have the opportunity to explore different body types and shapes. Larger women are a delight because they have so much mass and beautiful curves and soft features to explore.. then I've drawn some extremely bony men (old and young) and that's fantastic because you can really see the shape of the skeleton and how they are all pieced together- and you can come out with some amazing angles.

I love feet and hands too but haven't spent a lot of time on them recently- I think they are very beautiful and in fact had an idea to do a series of drawings just of people's feet. I think there must be some famous photographers who've done a similar idea - as a documentary idea. I'm sure I've seen a similar thing being done before.


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