Drawing From Life

April 21 2017

Seeing Things

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I was invited to do a short workshop on figure drawing this week. One of the artists at the session commented on how their hand doesn’t obey their brain – if only the hand followed instructions from the brain, their drawings would have been so good. He was right, provided the brain saw clearly and gave specific instructions to the hand. One of the reasons drawings don’t turn out the way we want them to is that the brain does not issue clear instructions. And that’s because the brain doesn’t have the tools to understand and interpret what it is seeing. So, how to make our mind see human figure clearly?

The human body is visually very complex (to the say least). There are many shapes, volumes, planes and structures. The only way we can train our mind to see the human figure clearly is to train it to see the figure in simple volumes first – spheres, boxes, tubes, bowls etc., I have an example below. This charcoal life drawing was done at a sketch session at the Art Students League, New York. It was a seven or eight minute pose – we had seven or eight minutes left for the end of the drawing session before we had to vacate the room. I did an overlay drawing using the software Clip Studio. The overlay drawing is made of simple volumes: sphere, lines, tubes, bowl, etc., My suggestion to artists who are learning figure drawing is to train your mind to see the model in these simple volumes. The mind can then do a far better job of giving clearer instructions to the hand.

October 7 2016

Another 20

A twenty minute life-drawing. Drawing hands and foot took time. This was done at Society of Illustrators Sketch Night.

October 7 2016

20 Life

Like all the charcoal figure drawings at this website, this was done at a life drawing session. There were about forty or so artists drawing and painting at that session. This was a twenty minute pose – the model was about twelve or fifteen feet away – on a small podium. He was leaning onto a wall.

He was a great model. Very muscular. I got the overall gesture with a few light strokes first. Then focused on areas that interested me. Drawing in a life-drawing session surrounded by many other artists isn’t a great place to produce ‘masterpieces’, in my opinion. But it’s a great place to learn figure drawing.

October 5 2016

A Seven Life

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This drawing was done on a Fashion Night sketch class. Understanding human anatomy helps immensely with drawing clothed models. Clothes hang from supports – draw the supports and the fold lines on the clothes that emanate from the supports. Study of folds can be daunting but this is where ‘draw what you see’ triumphs ‘draw what you know’ – at least, in my case. The dress on this model was reasonably tight – making it easier to draw. Not many folds to ‘analyze’.

October 1 2016

Head Five – Detail

This was a quick gesture drawing. I enjoy drawing really dark from the get go – which isn’t a great way to start a ‘successful’ drawing. One can’t really undo the mistakes done with dark charcoal. Usually, if the light charcoal line isn’t in the right place, one can go back and draw a darker line next to it to ‘fix’ the light charcoal line. The darker line gets all the attention and the light line gets lost. But if all the lines are really dark, and a mistake is made – no escape but start on a fresh paper. So, be careful when you are using 6B charcoal sticks/pencils.

And I call any drawing that achieves one’s intent as a successful drawing. That implies that one is able to do a good drawing through intent – not by accident. Usually, I know exactly how a drawing is supposed to come to light in my mind but, often, my hand doesn’t obey my mind and the result is a bad drawing on paper

September 25 2016

Two Minute Ink Life

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Ink life drawing, no under-drawing with pencil etc., I destroy many a good start with my drawings in ink. I hope to get certain spontaneity and freshness with ink lines. Sometimes I get lucky. This one was a two minute drawing. I thought it has the right amount of details with right amount of caricature.

September 11 2016

Two Minutes Ink

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Another two minute quick ink life drawing. This drawing was done in a small 8 x 5.5 inch sketch book using felt tip pen. I can draw nude drawing a lot faster than clothed drawing. I have had more practice drawing nude. It helped that the model wasn’t wearing too many clothes – it would have hampered the nice gesture she posed. I wish I had focused more on the clarity in this drawing. I will write more on this idea later.

September 3 2016

Twenty Minutes Life

I should have done a better job with this drawing. Twenty minutes is a long time. I should have fit the full figure in this drawing – which would have reduced the head size which, in turn, would have made drawing the model’s hair a bit simpler. I spent most of the twenty minutes drawing her hair – using a 2B charcoal pencil. A lesson learnt. Next time, when I have a pose like this, I will compose the drawing mentally first and then start drawing.

September 2 2016

Four Minutes With a Hat

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A quick sketch on a newsprint paper done with charcoal. I was trying to get the model’s gesture and facial expression. I don’t remember exactly the duration of the pose but my best guess is that it was a four minutes pose. Fashion Night Events sometimes have seven minute long poses for simple costumes and four or two minute long poses for elaborate costumes. There aren’t really any hard and fast rules. Artists who use other media like watercolors get a lot more done in a short time – using large washes.

September 1 2016

A Quick Pose

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This drawing was done at Art Student League. The poses were dynamic and fun. The muscles and bones on the model’s body were very clearly delineated in the studio lighting. The room was, as usual, crowded but they were very appreciative of the model’s poses. When drawing complicated poses, one has to account for slight changes in models posture. Specially the head tilt. For short poses – this was a five minutes pose, when the head happens to be in shadow, I tend to make the gesture more dramatic. Not having to draw the head in full detail frees me up, I guess. It gives me more time for rest of the drawing.

A drawing without a model

A drawing done without a model

Another example of head in a shadow. This drawing was done while waiting for the models to arrive. I just made up the pose and kept drawing. A lot of lines were done randomly, without any advanced planning. It looks dynamic but I believe it lacks clarity. I enjoy seeing clarity in drawings – actually in anything. We tend to hide lack of clarity with too many details.

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