Life Model - Form

Today was interesting. We were asked to try and focus on the form of the figure as a whole rather than outlines. We were told to use a method where our pencil or charcoal never left the paper and it created form on the page starting from the center. I really quite liked what this produced and it reminded me a lot of an artist I'd studied before, can't quite remember his name but I will look into this more later and refresh my memory.

The results were interesting and quite free. It was fun to try and get the proportions of the pose and the sense of weight right as the charcoal never left the paper and you had to visualise it on the page. I liked playing around with the pressure too to get shading and depict the model better. I believe I improved as I went along but the central one looks the best to me.

We were given a 30 minute pose next. Here I decided to plan out and draw the outline and then really go into detail with charcoal. Unfortunately I ran out of time  once again which really bothered me because I think this would have made a good piece. The proportions are getting better and more accurate I feel the more I have practised; prehaps this is affecting the amount of time I'm taking with it to get the foundations right before adding the detail.

I really liked doing this piece as it was a challenge to get the figure looking right from this angle but also I really enjoyed the shading on this one. We used a light to create more contrast and I'm happy with the result. I only wish I had been able to also shade in the material he was lying on; however I guess it gives quite a stylised finish.