Drawing for Animators and Illustrators: Week 2: Intro to Life Drawing

In this session it was our first opportunity having a live model to work from. We looked at using a wide range of media and continuing to experiment with techniques from the last session as well as new ones, to create drawings and compositions that were exciting and visually interesting. I have done life drawing before, and found it extremely fun and useful, so I was excited to have another chance to take part. The session was very intense as we produced a lot of drawings in the four hour time slot - which was a good challenge, but did mean towards the end I was finding it harder to stay focused and this can be seen in some of the later drawings, where my proportions are less accurate. Despite this, I feel that it's useful to see these imperfections and be able to learn from them, and I am sure that as the weeks go on my ability to stay focused for longer periods will improve, as well as my skills with proportion.

15 MINS / SEMI BLIND CONT. LINE / 4B PENCIL

15 MINS / BLIND CONT. CONTOUR / CHARCOAL

30 MINS / CHARCOAL

This week also gave me an excellent opportunity to apply the techniques we learnt last week to a full body drawing and different mediums. Looking back through my drawings, I can see that some are stromger than others - for example, I really like the set of 3 speed drawings, which I feel are on the whole mostly proportionate and well arranged on the page. It was a useful exercise, thinking about how to place the drawings for the best composition. Last week I identified that my faster drawings were more successful, and I can see this reflected again in my speed drawings here. Another drawing I find successful from this week is my left hand drawing, using charcoal, because the loose lines gives the image a subtle and textured feel, and the tones are brought forward nicely.

20 MIN (CENTRE), 10 MIN (RIGHT) AND 5 MIN (LEFT) / SERIES OF 3 SPEED DRAWINGS / 4B PENCIL

5 MINS / CLOSE UP SPEED DRAWING

20 MINS / CLOSE UP SPEED DRAWING

10 MINS / CLOSE UP SPEED DRAWING

10 MINS / CHARCOAL DRAWING

Other drawings are less successful, such as my blind contour drawing, which I feel sadly became overworked. This is because we had 30 minutes for this drawing, and due to my habit of working fast I feel I rushed the drawing and then was left with lots of time to spare, during which I continued to go back over original lines and add more tone. This shows me that for different techniques my better results may come from taking more time, and knowing when to stop adding to an image. I was a bit disappointed as I feel that this is a very original and interesting technique, but I can see some elements of the drawing which have been successful and I am looking forward to improving with the technique in the future.

10 MINS / BLIND CONTOUR DRAWING / 3B & 6B PENCILS

The tendency to overwork is also obvious in my last drawing, where we had to use 3 mediums, and also in the face of the double handed drawing. The body of this drawing is much more effective as the form is only loosely implied and not fully sketched out. This is therefore something I will watch for in future classes.