Life Drawing | Session 1

'Initial 20 Minute Warm-up'

'Turnarounds'

'Final Drawing'

 The first session was essentially a reflection on our current progress, and goals for future sessions.
 In my case, working more with relating subject to space, scale, and putting more consideration into the environment. Vicky suggest british painter; Jenny Saville, known predominately for her large scale oil paintings, exploring the "palpability of flesh", and "extremities" in anatomy. While her work is predominately portraiture in oil, charcoal and pastel...  something to take note is the use of scale and placement in her work. Her composition and dramatic angles emphasis elements of character and appealing aspects of the body.

Jenny Saville, 'The Mothers', (2011), oil on canvas.

Jenny Saville, 'One out of two', (2016), charcoal and pastel on canvas. Photo: Mike Bruce

Placement is something I've started to feel more in control over, but still need work in.
Over the summer I'd read 'Expressive Figure Drawing; by Bill Buchman which provided useful exercises and techniques relevant to this- one of which saw the drawer take 2 minutes to sketch out a rough layout of the figure in an 'imaginary window'. Taking a second to look for geometric shapes, contrasting forms, lines of action and ways you can accentuate these using the subject's positioning, negative space, and page size etc.
Incidentally, making it habit to think about placement before jumping in, is something to work on.

Other aspects to consider is the over technicality of my drawings, and learning more about 'rendering' a final image while retaining the original fluidity/movement of the original sketch.