We have life drawing session from 6pm – 9pm every Thursday. They’re divided into 3 periods and I only stay for the first two because I don’t want to be going home alone when it’s that dark. However, I still get a lot out of the 2 hours that I’m there. At the beginning of each session the teacher gives us some tips to help us break down the body and draw with more ease.
From the first session to the second one there was already a clear improvement in the drawings. My approach between them was different, with the first one i started with the head and worked my way down, paying too much attention to make the limbs look detailed. However, with the second session I started with the torso and was more focused on capturing the motion and I cared less about making it look good and realistic.
Here is a 30 sec and 1 min pose sketches I did during the first class. During this session I started with the head, then drew a line of action and drew the rest of the body following the line, and without any more guide. Which resulted in the proportions being a bit off and even with the line of action the drawing feels so stiff.
In the second class, the teacher talked about using two circles or ‘beans’ to start the drawing and from there draw fluid lines for the arms and legs. Just from applying that tip and starting with the two circles for the torso then building the pose from there outward I could see a drastic improvement–which really amazed me. The proportions look way better and the poses don’t look as stiff, but of course there’s still room for improment.
As I continue to go to these life drawing class I can notice that, generally, with each class I’m gradually getting better and more comfortable with drawing the poses. I also noticed that my lines are getting more confident. I’m not drawing as much sketchy lines as before but more fluid, one stroke lines. Poses I used to think were very difficult to draw don’t seem as challenging anymore. Though, I still struggle a lot foreshortening. It’s my main and biggest weakness when it comes to art in general.
The life drawing model today (Nov 17th) was particularly difficult to draw. He did a lot of action and fighting poses. Also a hand full of the poses were laying down, especially the first 30 seconds poses.–laying down poses are the bane of my existence. I was struggling most of the time during this session, but even though almost all the poses were unfinished I’m still happy with how they turned out because I’m still able to easily figure out what the model was doing.
I used to really hate life drawing, mainly because I was very bad at it–bad at drawing in general. And at my previous university I didn’t see any improvement since the first and last class so I would leave each session feeling discouraged. However, now that I can see that I’ve improved and going to these session actually help me get better at drawing I’m enjoying them more than I thought I would. And I’ve gone too almost every session (expect for two because I was sick)
Thanks to the weekly life drawing class I noticed that my understanding of the human anatomy got better, mainly with drawing the legs. I used to struggle with drawing legs but now I don’t struggle with it as much. Of course that depends on the pose, the fanart here is a simpler example. Out of the four I only had a hard time drawing one of the character’s legs. When in the past it would take me ages to draw each one.
Here are some other practice sketches I did outside of class (original idea not mine) I’ve been trying to do more sketches and doodles, rather than constantly doing finished pieces.
Some more life drawings from after the Christmas break. It’s always very cool to look back on my life drawings from just a few months ago and seeing how much I’ve improved. That’s what motivates me to keep going each week, when I’m free, for at least the first hour.
Something new that we started doing during the life drawing session was moving poses.
<—These stress me out a lot because I have to try and get down the basic gesture before the model moves too much, and try to draw the rest from memory. However, compared to the first time we did it, it got a little bit easier with each session… It still be stressing me out though.