Osher Figure Drawing with Model David

In Friday's class, I focused on new ways to approach gesture drawing to help those new to the concept.  We looked at the structure of the body through mass gestures -- starting within the form and drawing with the side of a charcoal stick, pastel, or other soft media rather than just capture the bubble of surface contours.  

We moved on to wrapped-line gestures, sometimes called tornado drawings, which focus on capturing the cross-contours of the body.

We then combined techniques, and started with mass gestures as a foundation that we added a few contour lines and some shading to (4 minute poses).  I used colored chalk for my mass gesture and built up from there with a charcoal stick.

We finished our gesture marathon with a 5-minute study of foreshortening, drawing just the limb that was coming towards us, and incorporating cross-contours to help us see the foreshortening.

By the time we got to the final 25-minute drawing, we were loosened up and ready to tackle David's foreshortened pose.

Many thanks to David for his hard work and beautiful poses!

The Benefit of Living with an Art Model Update

 

In a recent Zoom class, I worked the camera while David modeled. Professor Sue Powers demonstrated using different colors to represent values. Doing this keeps the brain from focusing on outer lines around the body, and builds the mass of the body from within, finishing with a few contour lines on top.  It's easier to see the real construction of the body when you focus on shadow shapes.  Here, I used hot pink as the base body tone, white for highlights, aqua for medium shadows and black for dark shadows.  

This technique helped me to construct a realistic and live-looking hand.  Sue recommended working quickly, and keeping your drawing implement in contact with the paper, even if you only make thready little lines.  Thanks, Sue!

Figure Drawing Update: Kathryn's & David's Duo Poses

I have wanted a chance to really sink myself into drawing duo poses for a long time.  When I teach in the studio, I focus on helping my students, and don't have much time to draw the models myself.  A silver lining to teaching art via Zoom is that I get to draw just as much as my students.  I'm grateful to Kathryn and David for their creative poses to challenge and inspire us!  It was an amazing session.