Figure unit

In today's art class we began a 4 week figure unit. I really enjoyed sketching today - we have such a great group of artists... some of the sketches were amazing. Sharon led us through some warm up exercises. First, we had the model do several very short poses so we could capture general body position - line angles for shoulders, hips, arms, legs, next did slightly longer poses and added hands/feet in simple mitt/sock shapes and the head placed at the proper angle. It's surprising how expressive these simple drawings can be. The pace is quick though, so we soon moved on to blocking in the chest and abdomen, then reviewed proportions for arms, legs, feet... We continued on adding more detail with each new sketch. At the end of the class we did a couple of 10 minute line drawings. Time really flies in these classes!
I've included one of my drawing here to show you the type of drawings we did. This sketch is about 24"X36" but even with that much paper I managed to run off the top with her head and off the bottom with her feet - clearly something I need to work on :o) If you'd like to see a bit more information on the process of figure drawing click here. Cheers!
P.S. Sharon posted some amazing photos of cedar waxwings on her blog. Click here to see them.