Last figure class

Figure drawing was a lot of fun this year! Our last class was yesterday. Wow that went by quickly! I thought I'd include a few photos of yesterday's work here with a short description of what we were trying to accomplish with each photo...

1. Warm up... using the side of a 1" piece of dry media [charcoal or conte], capture the general mass of the figure shape and add in the most important/descriptive lines - 20/30 seconds

2. Still warming up with the same method but now we're up to a minute. It's still not enough time to "see" and convert the information to paper. But it's a bit more descriptive. Sharon's reminding us to look for the musical/graceful/interesting lines. We're also supposed to be getting hands and feet onto these quick sketches - yikes, I can't move THAT fast!

3. More time now... although I can't remember exactly how long these ones were. I've switched to charcoal and I'm liking that better.

4. Still more time [I'm wishing I'd jotted it down, oops] - I think these might have been 3 minutes??? I'm having better luck with the extra time.

5. Switch to painting but using a similar method. Block in with one wash for first 10-20 seconds and then define further with a second color. I could have used less water and more pigment - these are faint. These were more difficult poses with limbs crossing, etc.

6. We switched to a heavier paper. I used some cheap watercolor paper and struggled with it from the get go. This is the only longer [10 min] pose that I did that turned even a teensy bit. I think I captured the light and shadow reasonably well. I struggled with the shape of the leg that was foreshortened [pointed directly at me]

I hope you enjoyed this little walk through a figure drawing class.