My learning log as I progress through drawing 1
The category containing all posts for part 4.
I’ve been sketching the structures and different arts that make up the body whenever I’ve had a moment: here are a few! I think that in the same way that drawing a naked body helps you to draw a clothed body by being aware of what holds the cloth, so being aware of the structure of the body helps you to draw the flesh stretched over it.
I tried this a couple of times – first in ink on a large scale during a session with my housemate and then on a smaller scale in a different session (a3) using charcoal and ink. 
Working on a really big scale (1.5 metre roll) was great fun but I couldn’t reach far enough to give long enough strokes to show movement of the whole body – it was strangely restrictive for this particular exercise. I’ll try it again on a longer pose but for this I decided I wanted to try it on A3 instead:
These I loved! I was able to use minimal quick strokes to give a feeling of movement in a way that just wasn’t quite possible when I was crawling from one side of the paper to another!
I’ve been looking for paintings that show the human figure in a way that inspires me and researching how the body has been portrayed over the years. In the RA’s article Strike a pose: 250 years of drawing at the Royal Academy Annette Wickham looks at the progression from early traditions of drawing an idealised form to todays celebration of the quirks and flaws in the human form. Generally I find myself more drawn to the more modern and more seemingly truthful depictions that but some early works are just superb – I’ve included a mix here.
Titian, Venus of Urbino, Uffizi.
I love this, it’s such a gorgeous sensual picture with the directness of her gaze and the composition with such symbolism in the different elements of the painting. There’s something too about having both nude and clothed people in one image that makes the nudity seem exaggerated or slightly improper
Sandro Botticelli, Primavera. Tempera grassa on wood, Uffizi.
I’ve always loved this, and particularly the figure of Flora – due in no small part to me being a Flora too – but she is just so striking in this with her contented expression, crown of flowers and fantastic ripe figure. She is clothed but painted in such a way that she may as well be naked – it’s a false modesty when every line of the figure is so clearly seen through the cloth. I do love these images based on myths and legends where a whole story is laid out in a picture.
David Jones, Illustration to the Arthurian Legend: Guenever. Graphite, ink and Watercolour, Tate Gallery.
Here’s another image telling a story – there is so much going on here and I love how busy it is, the focal point of the nude standing out as a lighter calmer area of the image. The body is beautifully and playfully drawn; it’s so simple and in some ways naïve but it’s also brilliantly drawn.
Lucian Freud, Standing by the Rags. Oil on canvas, Tate Gallery.
Lucien Freud is so fantastic when it comes to flesh. He’s a great example of the more modern approach of celebrating warts and all and this is a particularly nice composition with the repeated folds of rags and flesh piled high.
Amadeo Modigliani, Nude. Oil on canvas, Guggenheim museum.
Modigliani is a pretty far cry from Freud – his nudes are so simplified and stylised – it’s all smoothed down to perfection but I love them all the same.
Duncan Grant, Venus and Adonis. Oil on Canvas, Tate.
Another Venus and I love way this body has been pulled and contorted into completely unnatural and impossible positioning but still has an authenticity about it’s curves. A good reminder that you don’t have to stick to the truth.
Duncan Grant, The bathers. Tate.
This is another of Duncan Grant’s – a totally different style of work but with that same contortion – somewhere between gorgeous and grotesque. I love the use of pattern and the flattened 2D feel of this too.
Pablo Picasso, Nude woman in a Red Armchair. Tate.
Picasso has to feature – again showing that you do not have to stick to realism to create a wonderful and instantly recognisable picture. I feel all the more keen on Picasso since going to exhibition last year and seeing the impact his paintings had in the flesh (so to speak) – there’s something quite magic about them.
Egon Schiele, Self portrait in crouching position. Tate.
Egon Schiele has been my favourite artist since I was a teen, his paintings are so grotesque and so so beautiful, I’d love to try to bring something of his style into my work. his marks seem so quick and careless but are always exactly right and like Freud he seems to celebrate the flaws – almost going beyond finding the beauty in them to exaggerate the ugliness in them.
In this exercise we were told to use a line of axis to show weight-bear and I was surprised at how helpful I found this. I drew the line first in each instance to give me a rough placement for the body and worked quickly from there – not worrying too much if the line matches complete it still finding the guide helpful. I worked in pencil which again I really enjoyed. I’m not sure at what point I fell out of love with pencil but I’m falling back in love with it now! The axis line isn’t correct in all of these but I got the hang of it as I went along and most of the drawings themselves I really like.
I thought I’d use ink for this one so that I could get broad strokes to show the tonal values within the ten minute sits, I think that was a good decision in so much as that aspect worked and I learnt a lot about working with colour within ink but I don’t really like many of the drawings. What I’d really like is another ten minutes on each to finish the drawings with dip-pen! The first two I didn’t fit the figure on the paper, I played with bold colours which was fun but they look incredibly wooden – the weight isn’t there at all and I wonder if it’s partly feeling cramped by the paper, though it may also just be that I needed to warm up! I didn’t really like the white background with these colours, it would be fun to rework them and add more colour.
I looked at these again the next day and on the second image I did really like the brush strokes but the head and hand don’t connect as they should – I tried cropping the image and I really like what it became.
This next one has a pinkish underneath, I allowed the ink on the brush from the previous exercise to carry through to see how that worked as the first wash and found the different colour quite useful for contrast but pink and black is such a naff colour combination it’s completely off-putting! The proportions are good until it comes to the head which is way too small, and I think the weight is good, but it’s not my bag.
I tried viewing the image in black and white so that I can see what the mark-making is like without being distracted by the colour – I like it a lot more like this but the head still seems too small!
This one I did in brown and found that the brown ink reacts quite differently with the water – like there are too many pigments in there, they start fizzing and separating. I thought as I was doing it that this would cock up the whole picture but actually it’s one of my favourites. It feels more three dimensional than the others and the proportions are good.
again I found it useful to view it in black and white just so I could see it without any colour bias and look at the brush strokes themselves.
Thinking that the brown hadn’t worked I tried using a light brown wash but following with black for this one, I really hate the combination. the top of the drawing has some really nice marks but the bottom half is terrible and there’s no weight or body to it. The proportions are good apart from the feet which seem to cock up the whole thing!
Tried viewing in black and white again and I cropped to see how that looks, much improved – I think for ink I’ll stick to bold colours or good old fashioned black and white from here on in!
Put off by my attempts in colour I stuck with watered down black for the last pose. Tonal variation isn’t great as there wasn’t time for the layers to dry between coats so it couldn’t build up depth but I actually really like this all the same. I think there is more body and life to it and you can feel the weight even if the details aren’t so visible.
For this exercise we did a long pose and were asked to first consider the central axis before blocking in basic shapes and working up from there. I worked in pencil and actually really enjoyed the breadth of tone that gives you, though I felt a bit like I was returning to A-level and my drawing style of old; possibly that’s more due to feeling constrained by having to think about how I was drawing rather than just drawing on automatic. still, I do like the image and this more measured approach does seem to help with proportions even if it feels a little clunky – I’m sure that would alter with practice.
This was really welcome after the quick sketches; generally quick poses are my favourite but I’m still finding my way with ink and wanted to play around with building layers.
I decided for this one to try just using brush and watered down ink (over a charcoal sketch) – I’m looking forward to adding dip pen but wanted to see how it works without that element first.
Overall I’m pleased with how this turned out, I think it’s quite a sensitive study and has a nice sense of stillness and peace appropriate to the subject matter. I think where it falls down is probably the hands – they’re actually much better hands than I usually manage but they’re both on the small side making both of the arms disproportionate too! The foot looks way too small too so they’re things to watch out for next time. I like the composition as a whole though and building layers worked nicely to give a three-dimensionality and sense of light and shade to the body.
I’ve been so looking forward to getting into this part of the course, and particularly exercises like this. There’s nothing I like more than life drawing and the quicker studies are my favourite! These were all done with the model in the same position.
First we were asked to do 5 two minute sketches using charcoal or graphite, I chose charcoal.
I then re-read it and realised it was asking us to draw with as few lines as possible so I went a bit more minimal!
Next was 2x ten minute sketches:
Then we were recommended to try working from a different position and in different media. I worked first in ink, then conte and then oil pastel.
Of all of these sketches I think my favourites are the slightly more minimal 2 minute charcoal sketches, but I also really like the ink.. I actually quite like all of the charcoals but I think with the ten minute sketches I’m less free with my drawing and it possibly suffers for that, though it gives them another quality which I do quite like – something smoother and a bit more blocky – I vaguely had picasso nudes in mind as I was drawing.
The proportions differ marginally from picture to picture but not by a great deal and certainly as I progress the difference becomes less so. The foreshortening on the left leg looks off in some of them but it looked a bit odd from that perspective in real life so I’m not too worried about that! I did really enjoy getting down the basic shapes in the more minimal charcoal nd ink sketches – finding that sometimes lines that are barely apparent in real life are integral to the weight of the pose and so play a bigger role on paper.
For this exercise I had my housemate sit for me wearing his kimono and we were asked to treat the figure and cloth as one whole. I sketched using line rather than tone and liked the way the lines built with the folding mass of cloth giving the cloth it’s weight. I may try this exercise again using tone and a different outfit if time allows though – I’m not sure that much of the detail of the figure was visible through the cloth – either in reality or in the picture.
I enjoyed this exercise much more than I thought I would. Having been looking forward to starting on people I wasn’t overjoyed to see that the first exercise excluded people..! However I can see it’s use and there was a real pleasure in experimenting with different techniques on the close ups. First I did 2 fifteen minute sketches of a blanket thrown over a chair – one using pen and one using charcoal and focusing on tone.
I’m not especially keen on either picture but only really because I wasn’t interested in the subject matter, I think they’re perfectly good representations of what it looked like and probably the second is more interesting and has more of the weight of the fabric about it. Then I went on to do 12 5 minute close up sketches – these were done in pencil over two A3 pages.
I particularly like how these look grouped together – they appear very sensuous and evocative in a way that wasn’t obvious until I stepped back at the end. The more tonal drawings give much more of the volume, depth and body of the fabric but I do quite like the simplified linear styles too – no good for showing subtle curves through fabric as I think this exercise may be aimed at but could make for interesting drawings all the same. I do like flattening our images and making them more print-like.
Flora OCA drawing 1 