Life Drawing of a Seated Woman

I went to life drawing in Kingston NY last night, as I haven't done any actual drawing from life (I've done portrait drawings for The Book of Souls from life, but that's a different matter). Here's one of the better images...I found I was a little rusty & it took a short while to get back into the flow of things.


Life Drawing of a Seated Woman, 2010, pencil on paper, 12" x 9".

Nude With Cellphone

Another new life drawing, from last night.



Graphite on paper, 24" x 19", 2007. The cell phone was there so the model could time her poses with the clock function. I don't usually put that kind of thing in, but it was small, so I let it get into the drawing. The tattoos were ignored, however.

Standing Female Nude Study

Back from vacation (Spain/England). Life drawing done under mild jetlag duress. Not too bad.



Graphite on paper, 18" x 12", 2007. Yes, that's an ant on the paper, lower left. I coulda Photoshopped it out, but I didn't.

Seated Female Nude study

New life drawing from last night:



Graphite on paper, 2007, 24" x 19". Came out quite nicely, I think. I like the unfinished versus finished nature of various parts of the drawing.

Seated Nude On Chair

Another quick-ish life drawing sketch:



Graphite on paper, 2007, 12" x 9". OK, back to business.

Reclining Female Nude

Here's a life drawing from Monday night's session in the studio:



Graphite on paper, 2007, 19" x 24". It came out quite nicely, I think. Makes a change from all this Hell stuff, for a moment. Click on the image for a bigger version.

Seated Nude

Another life drawing sketch from last night:



Graphite on paper, 2007, 24" x 19". Keeping it fairly loose.

Five-minute life drawing pose

This is a slightly longer pose from the same session as the drawings below:



Graphite on paper, 2007, 9" x 12". The extra four minutes or so opens up a luxury of detail. Relatively speaking.

One-minute life sketch II

Here's another one:



Same dimensions etc. as the one below. There are some interesting lines & suggested volumes in there. I was always fond of the way Matisse or Picasso, say, would do something that looked like it obviously only took seconds or minutes to execute (probably), but would contain the soul of the figure or object (do objects have souls? maybe they do) or whatever -- a piece that would be basically a throwaway, but what a throwaway. That's what I aspire to with this sort of thing. Not sure where I am on the scale of things. My philosophy is to aim high, so if you miss you're still doing quite well. Or look like an ass. Either way.

One-minute life sketch

Last night we had another life drawing session in the studio. Same model as last time. Previously, I missed the first part of the session due to babysitter concerns (I had to wait until she arrived from another gig). So, when we started with one-minute poses, I was taken aback & had to adapt to a very rapidly changing subject. It's a useful skill to adopt, as you have to try & capture the essence of the pose in 60 seconds. Less, if you're trying to put a new piece of drawing paper onto the drawing board via annoying & non-intuitive clips, as I was doing. So, the 60 second pose probably got cut down to 50 or even 45, what with the paper attachment thing, finding a pencil, minor adjustments to the angle of the easel & so forth. However...



Not too bad. 12" x 9", 2007, graphite on paper. Less than 60 seconds.

Large-scale sketch

From the same life drawing session:



Graphite on paper, 2007, 24" x 19". Extended drawing session with the model seated.

Another life drawing sketch

Another one from last night's drawing session, same size paper as below, same graphite, same model...



Clicking on the image will give you a somewhat larger view.