Life Drawing- Seventh Session

20 minute warm-up

The first exercise I'd used again,  to help initially warm-up for the session. I quickly noticed, upon starting that I was having more trouble than usual with seeing the body as a 'whole'. Often finding I was concentrating solely on separate areas, as opposed to seeing how they relate to one another, as a whole.  Incidentally, I'd used shape to help link them together. However,  the upshot of this was: the next image relies a little too much on curves and circles to get back into the flow of drawing.
The lecturer had helpfully pointed out the fact that the use of circles (within the figures), in general, could be a matter of habit, and something that I could do without at this point.

Five 10 minute Sketches

She then went on to share with us the work of Francis Bacon.
Discussing the way he'd went about representing space, through means of blocked colours, and unconnected lines (dictating edges, and perspective- which he then proceeds to distort in his own work). In the midst of which a pencil or painted subject is left stranded, or superimposed upon this built environment.

The 10 minute sketches were used to explore the ways he uses these lines to suggest and distort certain spaces. I'd looked around the room, and drew visual inspiration from both the lines of the wall, and the corridor extending back, into the distance.

The curved lines, I'd used, however, were more associated with the directional movement, and the internal space we unconsciously impose onto the real-world space around us.
As seen in the crouch pose, where the lines of the corridor and the line of the wall (that had been transitioning across the page) cross, now represent the prominent area of the model's gaze. Marking off the peripheral area, and enclosing the space that is being felt, by the model, as his existing reality in that second. As viewed from someone else's point of view.

In reflection of this image, we noticed something was lacking. Something that would ultimately bring it to 'finalisation'. We suspected it could be the distance, and knowing how to make certain elements come out, as vocal points. We brainstormed, and we agreed using basic shapes, and/or blocks of colour, perhaps, much like Bacon's own drawings as seen below, could be the answer:

This is the result:

Final 30 minute pose

Here's my start to trying to work with those elements in my own drawing.
I intend now, to take these images across into Photoshop. Colour them, and work into them, without having to alter the original copy. This way I can experiment with these ways of 'finalising' an image, grounding the subject and creating the 'narrative' of the drawing.  Hopefully it'll help people know where and how to look around the image for future drawings.