Figure Drawing, Long Pose.

4 Sessions long with the same model holding the same pose has come to an end last night. It has been an interesting experience in learning someones' body. Observing so closely the model so you can point out her beauty marks or wrinkles or special features is a strange thing. You become pretty intimate with this stranger as this person is still a stranger to me even though I know more of her body lines as I know my own. I might want to draw myself to better be visual acquainted with "me" but then again I might not want to know myself in that level... Anyway here is the progression that has happened in these four weeks.
Week one. Charcoal study. She has a very specific mouth that has a lighter line around and finish at each corner into a little fold from the cheek. I was determined to learn how to draw that and capture a very elegant neck line. Obviously it didn't happen here just quite yet... lots to learn. It is not a class by the way so you have to learn on your own as you go. Lots of fun, lots of errors. I do like her chest and her right shoulder, arm and hip.

Week two: Charcoal study again. the face, lips, head, neck are improving. She is more recognizable. She had gotten a hair cut so her neck and brow were more open.  I did not get her torso very well as there is too much distance between the bottom of breast to the navel. Her legs are more to proportion as she has long legs and I am always running out of space to fit them in the page so I cheat and shorten them.

 I didn't spend as much time with the shading as I should have but I made other sketches to familiarize with the pose in at different angles and draw some of her features.

Week three: I started to draw the model from the head and added more details before moving on down to the rest of the body. A very different approach and didn't know if she was going to look proportionate when arriving to her feet. Well I never made it to the feet and decided it was OK.

Week four: I still worked on the same drawing. I had upgraded to drawing paper instead of newsprint by the way and used 6HB pencil very very soft instead of charcoal and then added that week some lines and shading with an HB. I also used kneeded eraser to work on the small areas cutting small pieces of it and twisting it around a pencil blender so it have a fine point of eraser to work with . It worked really well . Her right arm now doesn't seem to belong to the same body. it is a bit weak in my opinion. I also got tired of working on it. I wanted to draw from scratch again but didn't feel I had enough time. So I just decided to draw her head once more.

I had fun with that. It was a bit challenging because our model is quite a talker and I had to work fast when she was quiet to draw her mouth. She was a delight though and liked much better her talks than being about to draw her mouth.

I do like that bird like head of hers, especially seen through my eyes as she is more human in reality.

Anyway,I had brought some fabric to see if I could do something very fast and with no pre-plan... Very much my style, just wing it and see what comes out of it.

Well to show you that I don't embarrass easily anymore here it is . Who knows if that is going to go on to anything. Here it is...

Well that was a lot of fun, that I hope will continue.