This week we used watercolour in life drawing. Painting isn't my strong point, in the past i've never been successful with or favoured paints, especially watercolours. However I found this week that my portraits weren't as terrible as I had expected. I didn't particularly enjoy doing the portraits, as I get impatient with paints, but considering this i'm impressed with my results.
This week we were working with oil pastels. In the past, i haven't favoured using pastels as i find it hard to blend and create tone with them. But today i found a way of making pastels work for me so i actually really enjoyed myself, and am extremely happy with my portraits. I would definitely use oil pastels again
We were asked to choose colours that match, but ones that are bright and colourful, rather than ones that look realistic or black/white/grey as used in most of our sessions in the past. I chose orange, red and pink (using black for intense dark areas, and white for brighter areas of skin where the light was hitting). Other people used different shades of blues and even greens, so throughout the class there was a huge variety shown in our work. Also shown on '3D' page
This week, we used clay to create our portraits. At first, i found it difficult to understand how it was going to come together because my first move was to create several "sausages" as the legs, arms and back. However, due to only being asked to create one sculpture during the whole 2 hour session, we were all extremely concentrated which allowed for us to work really hard on making these the best they could be. Overall, I enjoyed using clay to re-create the model This week, we were monoprinting in life drawing. I find monoprinting quite difficult in that when you lean on the page you create a smudge, and you have to get the right thickness of the ink (but not too thick) in order to get a decent print. Also, there's no rubbing out, so if you make a mistake it has to stay, or you have to start again (and with me being a perfectionist, this problem was the one that aggravated me the most). All of these problems became apparent during life drawing, which made it hard for me to focus solely on the model herself.
So far, this is the session i least enjoyed. However, i found the final task (using 'jiggly' lines, shown in the first two pictures) the most successful for me. It allowed me to be less precise, and if any mistakes were made i could hide them by 'jiggling' more with my pencil. We used charcoal and chalk again for this session, and the tasks given to us were the same.
This week, our life drawing session was focused around the media used, rather than the different techniques/ways of drawing. We were using black and white chalk and charcoal. I find drawing with chalk and charcoal helpful in that you can create a variety of different textures, for example by smudging you get a softer effect (good for large areas of smooth skin) and by using the chalk/charcoal on it's side to create straight, harsh lines for shoulders and any creases in the model's body.
Every monday we have a life drawing class. Our first happened yesterday and lasted around 2 hours. Despite the initial nerves, due to never being presented with a live model before, it was actually really fun. For the first four poses we were given 10 minutes to sketch the model. Then for the remainder of the time we were given tasks such as using our opposite hand, only straight lines, a certain number of lines etc to create our portraits
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