Meet Emily

Last night in my drawing class we got to meet Emily.  She was our model for the evening.

We practiced all kinds of drawing - broad stroke gestures, circles and tubes, contour (even blind contour but that one looks like a drunken monkey drew it so I didn't bother including it here).

We drew the circles and tubes, then went back in to do gesture sketching, and then finally drew the negative space around Emily's body, which helped me to see where I'd gone wrong and correct a couple of things.

Uh, except for this one, where I went way off track because the classroom discussion got really interesting and I lost my focus.  One person was telling a story about how her brother-in-law planted his own marijuana in the backyard and his mom (an older, staunch Catholic lady) was super-impressed with his gardening skills and even helped him water it, all while having no idea what she was helping him grow.  I was pretty entertained by the whole idea, and forgot to watch what I was doing there for a minute.

I think this one is my favourite of the night.  I know I didn't finish the black before the time was up but I got all the pencil lines in that I wanted to, and I love her head and shoulder.

I love the shadow on the left side of her body in this one.  It really makes her body look 3D.  (Note to self: put that little trick away to use again sometime.)

All of these drawings are conte on newsprint.  They're on an 18"x24" pad of paper, so they are WAY larger than they look here.

She has a weird shoulder in this one but I like how her right hand turned out.  The teacher said people usually avoid drawing hands, feet and faces because they're "hard".  Oh yeah??  CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.

By the end of the evening we were doing 20 minute poses.  These last two have shadows, midtones and highlights.  I think they're pretty cool!

Turns out though, that even 20 minutes isn't very long to draw a person.  I really didn't get a chance to work on faces at all.  BUT!!  We have a model again next week, so I'll get to warm up the conte crayons and do this all over again.

BEST.  CLASS.  EVER.  

I hope you're all having as much fun as I am. 

Love Shelley!