Thursday, October 16, 2008

Figure Drawing Techniques...lighting and props

The last couple of drawing sessions have been male models, and I think I make "moodier" work when I'm drawing from the male model - the shadows and the poses always turn out to me dramatic than the female drawings.

What a treat last night! Our model was new to me - James - but he has modeled for many years - and he was probably one of the top 3 models I've worked with in the last 15 years. The poses! My goodness! When we were finished with gesture drawing I was actually sweating! He did some incredible poses - kinda like my other favorite Mike - who is also a human pretzel!

The standing pose was lit from above and below, which gave some great highlights on his head (love drawing a shaved head!) and on the thigh.

The more compact (human pretzel) pose was very challenging. I actually like the parts I worked on the least - the entire right side of the drawing. I think I got too tight on the left side. Maybe I'll play around with it a bit more and try to resolve the arm and his face.

Both of these were drawn on gessoed masonite board - an awesome surface because you can rework the charcoal again and again (I like to gesso it myself - the machine rolled gessoed boards are too slick)

The final drawing is from last Thursday night - Gord is contemplating a skull. I don't know what is about the male models...I get a little dramatic!




2 comments:

sMacThoughts said...

I saw your post in the Etsy forums...What beautiful light in these pieces!

kp said...

wow, i really like these. glad i stumbled onto your site. i found it through your post on the craigslist topic: figurative & abstract art.

would you be interested in linking to each other's blogs? id also like to ask you a few questions about how successful etsy has been for you (but couldnt find an email addy). please get in touch if you get a chance. and keep up the awesome work!

http://www.krapart.com
krapart (at) gmail (dot) com