Drawing Week: Day 4 part 1

Sorry about the crappy reproductions of my drawings here. This week has forced me to accept what I've known for some time - my scanner desperately needs replacing. Still, I hope there's enough intact in these scans to give you an idea of what I did today in life drawing class.

You may remember the final two drawings from yesterday's session dealt very directly with space in drawing, by placing dots on paper in response to items in the life room. The depiction of space really came alive for me in those drawings, to a level I'd never achieved before, so this morning I set out fully intending to begin our life drawing class with a firm grasp on spacial relationships and expected radical results in my drawing. Here's the first 15 minute study:


Easier said than done then. I was incredibly disappointed. Not only was I repeating the same habits I've been trying to shake for ages, I was failing to apply a single bit of this new found spacial awareness. I knew I understood the concept, but applying it to my drawing process was a whole other matter.

So I stopped and started again while I still had 15 minutes left to draw the same pose:



I know it's hard to see, because my scanner isn't picking up subtle tone any more, but hopefully there's enough there to compare the two drawings from a spacial awareness standpoint. Although a step in the right direction, I still felt this was pretty flat especially as I could vividly recall the results of the exercise from our previous session.

Here's a 30 minute memory drawing of the same pose:



There's more happening here, I'll admit.

Here's a drawing of a 30 minute pose of one model handing the other a cup:


after which the model's went out of sight and we were asked to invent a scenario by re-purposing our memory of the pose, and draw it in half the time. Here's mine:


A challenging variation on the "draw from memory" exercise.

Drawing the next two images was the hardest, because we only had one model to look at. We had to draw the first while imagining a model and draw them as though they were in conversation:


So, the model in the foreground is the only thing that was actually in front of me when I drew this

Likewise, the model on the right is invented.

I have to say this was a pretty intense session. I struggled to apply many of the concepts that I've picked up or developed an awareness of in the past four days. They're all swirling around inside my head, gathering momentum, so I'm keen to see where and when they spill out as I continue to draw and search and draw.