Life Drawing session 1

Scanned some life drawings from a while back and jammed them together in one image.

~R

Life Drawing Highlights

Took the time out from promoting my Midnight harvest Kickstarter to scan a few drawings from three of the last Open Studio Life Drawing  sessions I run at Durham College.

Including tonight, there are only three left for this year.  Going to miss them over the Holoiday Break.

~R

October Life Drawing

Wow -- I skipped posting all of September!

I was actually quite busy between the college semester starting and my overcommiting to a few things that I didn't think would conflict as much as they did.

Anyway, more stuff coming in the weeks ahead, but I'm going to start off with a few quick drawings from the open studio sessions I'm running at Durham College. here.

~R

Back Drawing

Today's warm-up.  Prismacolor art stick and Derwent colored pencil on paper.

Most of my warm-ups are from places like http://figuresfordrawing.tumblr.com/ , http://www.quickposes.com/pages/gesture , or various picture from deviantART.
~R

April Life Drawing

Some of the life drawing I did in my classes this past semester, either as demonstrations or as the students were also drawing.

All are Prismacolor Art Sticks on white cartridge paper and the pictures were taken with a digital camera.

 Some of these were made with blue, orange and black, because I had them at hand.

Books You Should Have

George Bridgman's Books

Whenever I review portfolios I almost inevitably recommend George Bridgman’s drawing books. They were first recommended to me by the first professional comics artist I met, George Freeman. The story he told me was that these were the books that Frank Frazetta used to learn anatomy. SOLD!

I went down to my local WH Smith’s bookseller and ordered the Dover edition of Bridgman’s Life Drawing. The book was a revelation on how to approach drawing the figure. I’d already seen a number of approaches using the stick figure and spheres and cylinders, but this was the first time I saw someone using nice, solid blocks. For the first time I was reading how the body was really put together and learning a system that made sense when put in context of a real body. As limited funds allowed I obtained all 5 of the currently available Dover paperbacks of Bridgman’s drawing books.

Now, most people might think I might be as big a booster for Bridgman’s Complete Guide to Drawing from Life, but they’d be wrong.

It’ll do if you really don’t have a choice, but, if you’re using the internet and can follow a link like this: Bridgman’s Life Drawing , you have a choice. I haven’t parsed the Complete book to see if the language has actually been altered, or how much of Bridgman’s organization has been disrupted, but I feel that the whole of Bridgman’s intent and approach is best taken in context of the book he placed it within.

Using Bridgman’s Books
I’d suggest starting with the one book Amazon Associates seems unwilling to let me list in the widget to the right, Bridgman’s Life Drawing. Luckily, I have what amounts to at least a yellow belt in web fu and I made a link from the title for those interested.

This book is really the best place to start with Bridgman. It was suggested to me the best way to study Bridgman was to copy each page from each book, cover to cover, and repeat until I understood it all. I’m going to pass along similar advice, but in an altered form:

1. Yes, do copy all of his drawings as you go through the books, (and do make a manikin from wire and blocks like he suggests), but don’t ever let it be mindless copying.

2. Think about why Bridgman drew shapes in a certain way, about why he merged masses together in a certain way.

3. Interrupt you sessions copying Bridgman to try and apply it to drawing from real life.

4. Try to understand why Bridgman is exaggerating and simplifying and try to apply similar thinking to exaggerating and simplifying your own drawing in your own way.

5. Do read his text, but understand that the real content in his books is gleaned from his drawings.

6. Only move on to the next book when you think you’ve taken what you can from the one you’re currently studying. Don’t fight to extract every bit of knowledge on the first pass – let the information come to you when you’re ready. The book and its contents will be there for you the next time you come to it.

I think the best order to approach studying the Bridgman books is this:
Bridgman’s Life Drawing
Constructive Anatomy
The Human Machine
Heads, Features and Faces
The Book of a Hundred Hands

The last two can be interchanged depending on your whim, since I feel the real core study is contained in the first three books, while the latter two are more about refining or breaking down the approach into more complex forms.

A real benefit to be taken from Bridgman is a solid foundation in understanding form and mass in space, which if you want to draw the human figure well from your imagination, you need. Bridgman isn’t about surface or rendering, it’s about developing a structure. In many ways, Bridgman’s approach is applicable to all imaginative drawing; start with accurate, simplified forms in space and develop them into more complex and detailed shapes as needed.

On a scale of 1-10, where 1 means the book shouldn’t even be looked at and 10 means it’s an artist’s bible I rate the Bridgman books

Bridgman’s Life Drawing 10/10
Constructive Anatomy 9/10
The Human Machine 9/10
Heads, Features and Faces 6/10
The Book of a Hundred Hands 6/10
Bridgman’s Complete Guide to Drawing from Life 7/10 (only if the others are unavailable)

***

I'm using Amazon.com as the default link online bookseller for it's near-ubiquitous place on the internet. I'm Canadian and most often use Chapters-Indigo for my online book buying. You should be able to find any book I review and recommend here at the bookseller of your choice, though I might earn gift certificates to buy even more art books if you buy them from the links to the right. What's of real importance is that the artists out there get the best information and support possible.

~R

Friday Night Life Drawing

Another Friday night open drawing at TSA!
A good crowd and an interesting model again. I found out during the session that next Friday is cancelled due to tours at the school and I think I heard that that wraps up the Friday sessions until January --I'll have to check on that. I've found another place that's advertising Wednesday night life drawing a little closer, so that might allow me to continue trying to suck less at drawing through the holidays.

Last session I was rather disappointed with the paltry 15 gestures we did. Tonight we only did 10! Ugh. I need 10 just to get my rhythm started.

Yup -- that's, sadly, the best two of the lot. I weep real tears.

The prediliction toward 5 & 15 minute poses caught me off guard last time, so I decided I'd come expecting to do quick studies of interesting sections of the model instead of trying to get the whole in in the time alloted. One thing I've noticed is that I'm drawing much slower than the I expect, continually being caught by surprise by the pose ending. Hopefully that'll come back with more drawing as well.

Using vine charcoal to block in quick contours and areas of tone before using compressed charcoal over top. Never did that before, I like it, but I'm still finding my way with it.

Tonight's model had a tendancy to vvvveeeerrrrryyyy slllllooowwwwlllllyyyy move during the 15 minute poses, which kept altering my point-to-point and angles and I'm still too rusty to accomodate. Perhaps a few more sessions so I can strengthen that part of the memory to work through this.

Tried a quick head study; the block in was fine, but as I started placing features her head started turning toward me. . .

Was loosening up toward the end of the night and stopped trying to do something specific and just sketched big with the charcoal.

Last 10 minutes I decided to do another quick, but looser, head study.

Hoping to hit Dr Sketchy's Monday night and I might try this other LD place Wednesday.

Later,

~R

Un-life drawing

Here's a sampling of the life drawing I did last week at the Toronto School of Art:

Like I said last entry, it was a fine experience for the most part, though I do prefer far more than 15 gestures out of 3 hours of drawing. maybe I'm just really old and set in my ways or I'm just that rusty!

A large number of 5-minute and 15-minute poses were taken. I've never been a huge fan of 5 or 15 minute drawings (without a specific exercise in mind) as they seem to end just as I'm really getting into them.

So, I'm posting these as the best of the lot, even though they're painful for me to look at. So much rust I have to shake off before I think I can get back to thinking about improving.

I'm gonna try to do a least 2 sessions with the model a month, though I'll be aiming for 3. Hopefully the blog can serve as a track of either my improvement or abject failure!

I'm gonna try to find a few different venues for life drawing to take in different environments and atmospheres, so if anyone knows of open life drawing sessions North east and East of downtown Toronto, please let me know!

Later,

~R