Life drawing week 5:freedom

For week 5 of our life drawing we got to choose for ourselves what media we wanted to choose. Because of how well I got on with digital media last week I decided to start of with this. 

I really liked this reclining pose as i modeled the style around that of  Henry Moore's by Adding more contour lines than were needed.

After doing some digital work i reverted back to paint so i could experiment with colour. I chose to use my hands to paint as i found the effect it gave my work much more interesting then when i use brushes. Primary colours were chosen also because i wanted to challenge myself as i found the difficult to use in previous weeks.

Life drawing-week 4: Digital

I was a little bit nervous about using digital software to do create my art and my first piece looks very stiff, boring and plain but i feel that i quickly became comfortable with the software.

I then started experimenting with colours and backgrounds. I ended up really liking digital art and am really looking forward to using it again and trying some new pen strokes and combinations.

Life Drawing-Week 3: Primary paint

On our third week of life drawing we finally got to use colour. However, we could only use the primary colours of yellow, red and blue. instead of using brushes I used my hands like the previous week as I really found the effect this gave my work interesting.

This was the first piece I made and it's turned out to be my favourite. I'm not sure exactly why but I really like the bum and think the colours all go really well. The curves are good and yellow shading around really emphasize the curve of the body. I'm not so keen on the arm as the colours have gotten mixed up and too blended together so the shape was lost.












This piece I really liked again because of the use of colour. the painting looks alive and bright without looking garish.











This was my final painting and we were challenging ourselves with foreshortening. It didn't go well as I wasn't sure on how to paint the proportions right but I'll be researching this so I can try again and get it right ready for next week.

Frank Auerbach

Frank Auerbach is a German-born British painter. He is a figurative painter, who focuses on portraits and city scenes in and the area of London in which he lives. Auerback looses himself in the paint in his pieces which suggests his thick-paint style. Some of Auerbach's paintings in the 1950's being considered difficult to hang, partly due to their weight and according to some newspaper reports in case the paint fell off, is not primarily the result of building up a lot of paint over time. It is in fact applied in a very short space of time, and may well be scraped off very soon after application. This technique has not always been considered positive.

Life drawing-week 2:Chalk and charcoal

I was actually quite looking forward to working in chalk and charcoal as I remembered being quite confident in using the media. 

This first image was created my using no outlines but finding the light and highlighting it on the figure. I was impressed at how it turned out because I've never used this technique before but for me the drawing looks a little dead and lifeless. in my further work I tried to inflict more energy into the pieces as a result on reflecting on this piece.

 I began to focus on a smaller part of the figure instead of the whole body. I liked the un-neat lines of this piece. I was inspired to do this through research of Henry Moore and his style of drawing.

This drawing looked a little more alive than my other drawings which made me extremely happy as this is what I was aiming for.

For the first time since I was 7 years old I used my hand to paint, and I absolutely loved it. I'm really happy with how this piece turned out because it looks alive and the light is highlighted in the way which made visibly clear the curves of the body. Charcoal was used to add a little depth and to also darken the background to make the figure stand out more on the page.









My last paint and charcoal piece I loosened up completely and splattered as much paint on the page as I could. I managed to still maintain the figure which I was worried about because of the amount of paint i was using. I favor blanking out backgrounds because I think it makes the figure have a sense of depth. I really enjoyed making this piece because there was so much freedom with it. If I were to do it again however I would try to use the paint a little more constructively to add light and darkness more accurately.

Life Drawing-week 1:Pencil

So first of all, i had never done life drawing before in my entire life. Being faced with a naked woman for the first time was one of the most daunting experiences of my life. At first i didn't really have a clue what i was doing, i'd never properly drawn a full human form before. So of course my first five minute sketch was appalling. the curves and measurements to not accurately represent the model and i almost felt the need to apologize to her. There is next to no life or energy in this drawing and is one of the weakest pieces i have produced. however, i did learn from this and i slowly become more comfortable.

My drawings were still inaccurate here which annoyed me even further, i started to hate life drawing after less than half an hour. I hadnt used pencil for months, favouring biro, so i had to get back used to it.

By the time the final drawing of this sheet came around i actually liked the little bit of shading on the robe. After looking at this first sheet i saw that i needed to add more shading and not worry about the head so much.

 The drawing on the right of the paper was one of the first i was actually quite proud of. i especially like the legs because i think i got the curves just right to show how the model was positioned. i don't like the placement of the arms so much as these look a little odd and misplaced so i made note to take more care of arm placement.
The sketch on the left was drawing in just 2 minutes. As someone who likes to take their time on a piece i found it extremely difficult to gather all the information on the pose in such a small amount of time.

From 2 minutes we got less and less time to gather the information on the pose right down until we literally had 2 seconds. I managed just to draw a couple of lines because for me it was no where near enough time. Our time started to increase gradually and when we were given a whole minute i was amazed at how much i actually got down compared to my previous attempts.

 After our time was allowed to go back to a normal and acceptable amount i felt a lot comfier with life drawing. I started shading more however my proportions still weren't accurate.
we were instructed to draw lines on our paper without moving our arms but by moving our knees instead to drag all, of our body down the paper. This allowed me to feel freer moving around the space and the paper.

For our final drawing drawing we were given sticks. actual sticks from trees. we had to attatch our pencils to the end of the stick and draw the model at arms length. Surprisingly this turned out to me my favourite and possibly best drawing of the session. i like the messiness of the lines and shading within it and my proportions were actually correct for the first time! i actually looked forward to the next session after this drawing.