At our second life drawing session we paid close attention to the importance of size - paper size to be precise. It's hard to tell from the photograph above, but the two sheets of paper are each larger than A1. Drawing at this scale took me way out of my comfort zone and liberated me to engage with the process in a much more physical way than when I work in a sketchbook or on an easel.
All my drawings from this session are on 2 x A1 sheets.
This one is of a 15 minute pose:
These two are each 2 minute poses:
As you can tell from the last one, it's hard to judge scale and proportion when working this big. For one, your point of view of the model is constantly changing as you reach around the sheets, frantically trying to scribble some sense of the figure. You have a lot of ground to cover in a relatively short space of time. You also have to step way back to look at your drawing as a whole - and it's not like you can check it by looking back at the model, as clearly nothing is going to relate when you're stood in a completely different place to where you made the marks.
This may sound counter-productive but on the contrary it's a brilliant exercise for getting a real feel for what you're drawing. Because of the dimensions of your surface, you're pretty much on (and perhaps in) your drawing as you work on it.
I did this drawing in 30 seconds, and believe me when I say I felt the force of every line:
I love working that quick because I have to boil things down to the essence of what makes that pose.
We finished with a 45 minute pose:
I found drawing really big a fascinating exercise, and if I had the floor space in my home studio I'd do it more often. It's such an immersive drawing experience, kinda exhilirating at times.
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