Life drawing: Foreshortening and perspective

 This weeks life drawing was focused on foreshortening, which is essential to make figures the right proportion when they are lying down or seated. Seated poses viewed from the front often need thighs to be drawn a lot shorter than the brain wants. I found the legs on both my drawings very difficult, because on my first line drawing, the legs were a lot smaller than I thought they were, and on the second drawing, the thighs were a lot shorter than I expected, and the lower legs and feet seemed very long in comparison because I could see along the whole length of them. I found that stepping back and looking at my drawing as a whole made it easier to see any mistakes in the proportions or perspective.
We only did two drawings this week, one line drawing, and one with tone. We spent most of the day on our second drawing, which gave us time to get the proportions right then focus on adding the tone. I am very pleased with this drawing because of the subtle changes in tone the charcoal can achieve. I think this is one of my best drawings yet.

Life drawing: Tone.

This week, we were using tone, with no lines. I found this very hard because it was difficult to put the blocks of tone in the right place and still get the proportions right. I also found it took more time to build the image, whereas with line it is easy to get the basic shapes in fairly quickly. I also found that the background plays a big part in the range of tones, as a dark background makes the figure look lighter and vice versa.At the start, we were just using charcoal on white cartridge paper, but I found it difficult to get the full range of tones, because a lot of shading was needed to make it dark enough that only the lightest highlights were still white.

Next, we shaded in the whole of the paper grey with charcoal, so that was a mid tone, and more charcoal could be added to make it darker, and it could also be taken away with a putty rubber to make it lighter. I found this a lot easier, because the background meant I had a shade to compare the figure to. If a part was lighter the background, I used the putty rubber, but if something was darker than the background I added more charcoal. This meant I didn't have to shade parts of the background in to make the figure look lighter. The only bit I didn't like was the way that the charcoal background picked up the texture of the drawing board underneath, so it wasn't a flat colour.







After this, we used creamy beige coloured sugar paper, with white chalk and charcoal, so the background was quite light. I had to shade in the background to make it contrast with the figure.

My favourite way of drawing with tone was with the three different colours, black (charcoal) white, and red (chalk) and we were still working on the sugar paper. When the red and white mixed, it made pink, and when the red and black mixed it made a brown.

I think working with tone has made me look closer at the different shapes and blocks of tone, instead of assuming, to capture the contours of the body realistically.

Life drawing: Line and Tone

We used pencil this week, and as well as line, and started to use hatching to build up layers of tone. we also had some more difficult angles and poses. We started with quick 20 minute sketches, then moved on to longer drawings, so we could get the proportions and tone.

We only used hatching, not cross hatching, so that the lines all go in the same direction and eye won't see it as lots of small lines, but rather areas of dark and light. I am very pleased with the collarbone and shoulder area of this drawing because I think it shows the contours well, but I think I could improve by using even darker tones, to make it look less flat.

In the lying down pose I think my hatching works better because of the very dark parts, like the shadow on her tummy and the back of her thigh.