Figure Drawing with Model Amelia

We've been fortunate in my Osher Figure Drawing class to have a different model each week.  Last week, model Amelia brought us fresh new poses, like the one above that she held for 3 minutes.  

In our gesture series, we focused on capturing the interior structure of Amelia's body with a light-colored pastel (yellow here) for the first minute.  For the remaining 2 minutes, we added mass, contours and shadows (purple).

Using complementary colors makes the gestures pop graphically, and expresses the interior-exterior tension in the form.

We practiced drawing hands and feet in this session by doing a 2-minute blind contour in one color -- looking only at our model and not at our paper while following contours (yellow). We used the remaining 8 minutes to draw in our usual style (purple).  

Blind contour drawing, while feeling out of control and uncomfortable, allows us to tune in directly to the contours and forms we are drawing.  I've noticed that my subsequent drawings contain more life -- even if my blind contour drawing look like a pile of messy lines.

We finished with a long drawing for the final hour of class with Amelia in a meditative pose.

Many thanks to Amelia for her elegant and lively poses!
 

Osher Figure Drawing with Model Kathryn

I like to present different ways to approach figure drawing in my Osher class, so that we don't fall into the tedium of one known -- yet rutted -- way to draw the human form.  Friday, I suggested my students join me in using a brush and ink or paint to capture Kathryn's lively gestures.

How freeing to let the brush's sweep follow Kathryn's contours! She gave us a series of elegant, powerful, dancerly poses, ideal for the medium.

We moved on to tackling the challenges of drawing hands & feet. I presented two different ways to look at capturing  these intricate parts -- a gestural approach and a more blocky technique I call "Robot Hands."  Below are my brush paintings.

Gestural Hands:

Robot Hands!

I used a combination of both techniques in the feet. I think I got too excited about drawing toes, because they grew larger on my page than in reality!

I was enjoying the freshness of the brush and black paint, so I created two different versions of Kathryn's long pose.  The bold strokes of the brush produced high contrast images, with a few light washes for shadows. The brush seemed to have a mind of its own, creating stylized images I didn't expect like this:

I noticed that the new medium inspired my students, too.  These gray winter months, anything fresh feels like spring!