Osher Figure Drawing with Model Sophia

Friday's Osher Figure Drawing class brought us model Sophia, whose remarkable creativity and flexibility inspired us all.  We began with 3-minute gesture poses in which we focused on the skeletal underpinnings first, then added in contours and shading. 

We moved on to 4-minute poses, focused on drawing wrapped lines of cross-contours to help us understand how to express Sophia's foreshortened forms.

Sophia put a Herculean effort into the back bend pose below, with much of her body weight held by her right arm.  We shortened the pose length to 2 minutes, yet everyone managed to get a full drawing.  Energized by Sophia's effort, we artists drew faster, intent on capturing as much of Sophia's pose as we could.

We incorporated a study of drawing feet into our foreshortening theme, taking 10 minutes to draw Sophia's feet in a close-up study.

We finished the class with a long pose that included foreshortening and excellent lighting to show Sophia's contours.

Many thanks to model Sophia for inspiring us with her joyful spirit and expressive poses!