I’ve been doing life drawing for 13 weeks now, and I have to say it’s not a subject I’ve really enjoyed. I found that the methods being taught have slowed me down to a snail’s pace. That’s not the fault of the teacher or the methods, but simply because I am just learning. I realised that I should only employ these methods periodically during the process of drawing. My problem was that I had been using them for every single measurement, thereby slowing me to a crawl. Thankfully, today I decided I would use a paintbrush instead of a pencil, and what a difference! I’m much more comfortable with a paintbrush, and it is a lot more freeing. This allowed me to loosen up, and for the first time since I started this class I actually enjoyed life drawing. The time (just over 2 hours) usually drags through but today class was over before I knew it. A good sign I’d say. Also, my tutor said I should stick to this medium as it seems to really work for me. He said that in the early stages, he forces us to use different mediums to see what works best for us. I could have told him before I started! Oh well, at least it confirmed what I always knew.
So, we did some warm up exercises and then we did a 20 minute pose, followed by a 45 minute pose. The results are below. There are many things that need fixed in the paintings, but I like where they are going.
