Figure Drawing at Breakfast

Sometimes in the morning news, a photo will catch my eye, like that of professional basketball player, Alysha Clark, above.  All I need is a pencil and my sketchbook as I sip tea and draw. It's a wonderful way to practice.

You can also find figure drawing reference photos online on several sites like Line-of-Action.com   

I like to think of drawing as being like a sport -- the more you do it, the better you become.  And, you have to stay in practice or you lose your conditioning.

Even drawing your own hand is good practice.

Happy Creating!

Figure Drawing: Portrait Practice with Model Emily

Recently, in Osher Figure Drawing class, I led my students through the process of drawing faces.  

We began by looking at portraits by masters like Peter Paul Rubens for inspiration, noticing how their mark-making, color choices and lighting created portraits that were full of vitality.  

We warmed up with some quick gesture drawings, then, had a 15-minute practice pose with Model Emily.

I began by sketching the structure of Emily's head and face with a light colored pastel pencil, then built up areas of tone and details with chalk pastels and pastel pencils.  The pencils allow more control for fine details like Emily's eyes, nose and lips.

Many thanks to model Emily for her beautiful and creative poses!  Having a good model makes drawing so much easier.

A Mixed Media Face with the Unexpected Gypsy

As one of the Patreons of the British artist Wendy Robinson, The Unexpected Gypsy, we get monthly videos showing us how Wendy creates her art step-by-step.

They're instructive and inspiring, and feel like a cozy visit with The Unexpected Gypsy herself.  You can find out more about The Unexpected Gypsy's Patreon, follow this link:

patreon.com/theunexpectedgypsy

I created this face by following along with Wendy's latest video.  She started the process with a loose watercolor sketch.

We added in skin tones and shadows.

Deepened some of the shadows,

and layered on more skin tones.

We let our faces dry, and began adding Prismacolor colored pencils to define the features.

Having the control of a sharpened colored pencil allowed me to fix problems I had with the tip of this imaginary woman's nose.

The Prismacolors were easy to blend.

Creating rich, layered colors, like the complexities of the lips.

Taking your time with a project like this allows you to relax into the process.

And when you're done, you've expressed a part of yourself.  You can give your person a name, and ask them if they have any messages to share with you.

I hope you give this process a try!

Happy creating!

Copyright 2024 Betsy Bangley.  All rights reserved.

Pencil Drawing: Portrait Practice

On the last night of my Pencil Drawing class at CCBC, I showed my students how to draw faces from photographs.  Above is my sketch of a student's adorable great granddaughter.  

We practiced drawing some of the models on my Portrait Reference Photo page here.

I find that it takes me several tries at drawing facial features.  I make an attempt, then see where I went wrong, erase and try again.  

That's the essence of drawing -- You make a sketch, step back, then reshape the parts that need it, and then step back again to see what you'll modify next.  

Pencil drawing sometimes feels like sculpting because it requires a series of corrections, reshaping your original marks into a final drawing.  

But as you draw, you can drop away into a place of calm focus, like a meditation.   When you step back, you've got a drawing and a new perspective.

I hope you'll keep drawing -- whether you were in my Beginner's Pencil Drawing class or not!

Osher Figure Drawing with Model Sophia

 In my final Osher Figure Drawing class of the summer, we were fortunate to have model Sophia.  Her graceful presence on the stand inspired us all, and I stole a few minutes from instructing and assisting students to make this sketch in pastels on Canson Mi Teintes paper. 

Many thanks to Sophia for her uplifting performance!  

Pet Portraits in Colored Pencil: First Class

 

Tuesday night, we had our first session of "Pet Portraits in Colored Pencil" at the Community College of Beaver County.  The participants brought photos of their pets -- all cats in this case -- and we played with techniques for rendering our furry friends in color.  

My primary aim was to get everyone playing with their art materials, because we create our best work when we can take on the spirit of exploration and adventure.  We can listen to the tiny voice of our intuition, and make discoveries!

We explored gesture drawings to find the structure of our cat's form, and we played with colors -- complementary and analogous.

When I mentioned my colorist bent, and showed the power of adding unexpected colors, several folks took on the adventure of rendering their cats in vibrant hues.  It was a collaboration of the best sort, and everyone came away with a beautiful, expressive drawing of their cat.

The drawings above are my demonstration pieces. I drew from a photo my friend Brad Silberberg took of his cat, Sedona, Arizona.  You can see the reference photo here.

Osher Figure Drawing -- Portraiture with Model Robin

 An impromptu visit from my best friend, Robin, intersected with an ice storm that kept my scheduled portraiture model from being able to travel to my home studio, and the result was a wonderful class on drawing the face and head.

My dear friend stepped in to fill the gap, and we began with 1 minute gestures of the structure of Robin's head in various different poses -- looking up, looking down, presenting profile and front-on views.

We then took 2 minutes to create more developed gesture drawings of just Robin's head and neck, refining our sketches and adding in more details.

My final 2-minute drawing was beginning to look more like Robin.

I demonstrated how to draw the face and head in more detail including the placement of the features, and studies of each in the front-on view and in profile.

We finished up the session with a long pose of about an hour.

Many thanks to my dear friend, Robin!

Osher Figure Drawing with Model Sophia

Friday, November 19th, we had a wonderful session with model Sophia.  An incredibly inventive and flexible model, Sophia created gesture poses that stretched our abilities and strengthened our drawing and observational skills.

During the gestures, I asked my students to spend the first minute of each three minute pose looking for the underlying structure of Sophia's body. We used one color for the structure, capturing Sophia's spine, her rib cage, her skull and other bones.  With two minutes remaining in the sketch, I called for a color change and we chose a contrasting color for the outer contours and shadows, building upon the armature we had laid down in the first minute.

Sophia's last pose was so abstract that it pushed our observation and drawing skills, and was a valuable workout.

All warmed up, we moved on to practicing drawing faces.  I demonstrated the process of finding the shape of a person's head, laying in the eye line about halfway down the face, drawing the eyes, and then measuring where the nose and lips fit in.  

We finished up with a long pose that incorporated our study of Sophia's face.  I used pastels on blue Canson Mi Teintes paper, and followed my intuition on color choices within Sophia's figure and in the negative space.

Many thanks to model Sohia for an amazing session full of inspiration and discovery!

Osher Figure Drawing with Model Kathryn

 

We had a wonderful class yesterday with model Kathryn.  She inspired us with her gorgeous, dancerly gesture poses with our plastic skeleton Mr. Skellybones.  Seeing her poses next to Mr. Skellybones, we could consider the underpinnings of her form.

Always a delight when your model has a sense of playfulness! Kathryn interacted with our life-sized skeleton replica in her 3-minute gestures.  I began with a quick skeletal gesture in white and added contours around that.

We moved on to study drawing the head and face, and took 15 minutes to create a portrait of Kathryn.

My students love the long pose, and Kathryn gave us lovely inspiration with a her seated twist.  Her lime-green sari wrap looked lovely against her pale, rosy skin.

Many thanks to model Kathryn for her amazing work!

Osher Figure Drawing with Model Alexx

Our Osher Figure Drawing class had the good fortune to draw Model Alexx, who inspired us with her inventive poses and an expressive countenance. 

We started with 3 minute gesture drawings.

Now that we were warmed up, we moved on to study drawing the face.  I gave a demonstration of rules of thumb for drawing the head. 

Then, we practiced drawing Alexx's portrait from the front view. Alexx held her facial expression rock solid and still for us.

We moved on to draw a profile view.

We finished the class with a roughly hour-long pose,with model breaks of course, that incorporated the portrait.  Alexx gave us a dramatic & beautiful pose to work from.  

Many thanks to model Alexx for her hard work and inspiration!

Portrait of a Young Nerd

Sometimes I'm the instructor of a Zoom drawing class, sometimes I'm the model, and occasionally, I'm the camera and computer operator. When David models and the class consists of shorter poses, I'm kept busy  running the equipment.  But on a recent evening class via Zoom, David sat for a portraiture class, and I sketched while keeping an eye on the timer, the camera and the computer.  

Each portrait I draw of David has its own personality.  I call this the portrait of David as a Young Nerd.  As a big fan of nerds, I'm happy with that aspect of the drawing, and can remember him as a young man well-versed in physics, computers and technology.   

I used a graphite pencil, and it felt good to be able to work with a fine-pointed instrument after many Zoom classes using charcoal.