Part 4 Project 4 Ex 2 Three poses

In this exercise I have to draw my model in three different poses; standing, sitting and laying down.  I need to be looking for interesting poses that challenge me and encourage me to use the knowledge I have gained in the last few weeks work.

Standing pose

I have never drawn a figure from the back before but I think it might prove interesting especially if I try to imagine what is going on under the skin.  In this pose I need to consider where the weight is and how it impacts on the skeleton.  There is some foreshortening of the left leg and a lovely twist to the spine giving a very definite slant to the pelvis.  I used some copy paper and a soft pencil to quickly practise getting the flow of the shapes and from a slow start I managed to improve.   Each sketch was about a minute.

I was happiest with the second sketch on the right hand side of the page so I tried again a bit bigger but still on copy paper.  This time I took 10 minutes.

I think my earlier sketches paid off.  There is the  twist in her spine that lends weight to the figure and shows that she is just touching the ground with her left toes.

The light and shade provided a lot of contrast so in my drawing I'm going to use charcoal on Derwent A3 water colour paper which is wonderfully smooth.

I'm reasonably pleased with this but I would have liked to see a bit more life in my drawing.  Maybe I overworked it.  A lesson learned I hope.

Sitting pose

The model leaned against a table covered with a cloth.  She leaned backwards a little distributing her weight between the table and her bottom.  If the table were removed she would topple over.  I did preliminary sketches again.

I wanted to try pastels for the final drawing of this pose so I took my pastels and pastel paper to my art group.  It was a bit of a disaster - the paper (A3) just wasn't big enough for the chunky pastels and I tied myself in knots. I had no other paper with me but I did have my pencil crayons so I decided to experiment and see what crayons looked like on paper with plenty of tooth.

Once again I find this a bit lifeless.   Maybe a better face would have helped but I really think it's to do with movement.  I'm hoping that a bit more experience will help with this.

I've not used crayons often and never used them in this blending sort of way.  The paper defied cross hatching so I just made marks with the shape of the limbs in mind.  I will try crayons again but on my smooth water colour paper.

Laying pose

The challenge here was to accommodate the angle of the pose - the head looks nearly twice the size of the foot.

The final drawing was done in pencil again on the smooth water colour paper.  It is quite a different effect than the charcoal - much more subtle.

There is much more movement in this drawing.  It's a good job I'll soon be doing portraits - the faces are just awful!