Life Drawing- Sixth Session

It's close to Halloween, and to celebrate the spooky event, we've had a horror themed life drawing session, inspired by 1920's 'The Cabinet of Dr Caligari'.

Robin, our life drawing model, embellished with twigs and pale makeup, embodied an antagonistic, 'Cesare' like character, while a projector depicted stills from the film in the background.

Throughout the session I'd darted between shadow and model alike, trying to experiment with different ways to capture the foreboding, and uneasy feeling one often gets from the horror genre.
I found, through the 1-2 minute drawings, and another students own personal response that in some ways, not showing the face is in fact scarier, than choosing to do so. This could be because identifying some glimpse of humanity, or knowing what the threat looks like is slightly more reassuring.

Additionally, drawing things intentionally out of perspective, so they don't quite match up, makes for unnerving imagery. As again, there's that sense that the being is not quite human. Though not quite typical 'monster' either.

 Francis looking knowingly into the distance, while contemplating the monster that had lead him to the courtyard, and his ruin.

Here's an experiment with marker pens. I tried to imitate some of the lines used in Caligari's intertitles, though they are not as obvious as I'd have liked. Additionally I had to try and match that kind of line with the movement of the whole image, which wasn't achieved as well as it could have. However, the use of colour seems to bring the work out more, which is good.