Figure Drawing Session I (6 Sessions Starting 02/07/2012)

I had a very busy day today, but not actually painting. Instead I planned out for the current Daily Paintworks Challenge "White on White", and the Cook-Waller Painting Challenge for February, "Love Letter", and went out to purchase the flowers needed, set them up and photographed them. I have several good concepts, which I would like to explore, but probably none of them would get done within this week -- as you probably have already noticed, I am an extremely slow painter, and there are several deadlines coming up for shows...

I also worked on a potential commission piece of poppy flowers, did some colors sketches that I'd like to send to the potential customer before deciding a final format. I would probably show them in a later post, when the final painting is done...

In the evening my time was spent doing a long-pose figure drawing at the new studio of the amazing artist, Sadie Valeri. I just love and admire her work!... I started to study drawing, especially figure drawing with her in the summer of 2009, and her work -- both drawings and oil paintings -- are absolutely stunning! (Check it out if you haven't already -- it would not disappoint you, I promise!) The methodical planning and patient execution of her work is something I greatly admire, and try to learn from. 

The figure drawing session she set up in her studio is something that is not easy to find but absolutely useful -- it's one pose, six three-hour sessions or six six-hour sessions, for people to practice classical atelier method of figure drawing/painting. I worked on the first straight-line block-ins during the session this evening -- as you can see, only a few lines after a whole three-hour slot. It's extremely slow... 

Figure Drawing Session I 02/07/2012, Graphite on Strathmore 400 Series Drawing Paper

Sadie's method (which I am practicing here) basically starts from putting down a top and bottom line for a vertical format drawing, and ensure the figure would never exceed that top and bottom line, so that the figure can be composed on the paper without the worry that the feet is just going to grow out of the page as you adjust the drawing later. Then a middle point is drawn on the page and corresponding middle point is measured on the model, and a mental note is being kept for where that middle point locates on the model's body. This middle point on the page would never change from this point on, and corresponding measurements can be made against it. 

The next steps are estimating the width of the figure on the widest point comparing to its height, and make tentative left and right boundary lines. From there on, long, straight envelope lines are made to enclose the whole body of the model on paper by imaging these long, straight boards making tangent to the "high points" of the entire body shape, and smaller, more segmented lines are drawn to enclose more and more detailed shapes of the body outline. It is very important when drawing the shorter, more detailed lines, one should extend them and see where the extended lines intersect the figure on paper, and compare that against the place these imaginary extension lines intersect with the model's body, since it is extremely hard to measure the angle of a short line, but relatively easier when they are extended longer. It's also very helpful to compare various lines of similar angles to one another, since it is much easier for our eyes to differentiate relative angles than absolute slants. Contrary to the more traditional "sight-size" method, in this method only angles of lines are measured (against horizontal or vertical reference lines) and translated onto paper, not the absolute length of the line. 

It's an extremely slow process to draw using this method, but also a great training for observation, estimation and hand-eye coordination. I was just trying to get the big proportions and gestures of the body right on paper tonight, and it would need quite a bit of work in the next session, probably...