Entry for Jan 25, 2013

On the Friday I made it out for much of the 3-hour long pose at Project:Art, near Queen & McCaul. Angela was working and this is a roughly 2-hour study done with hard Nobel charcoal on 22 x 30" 90 lb. Maidstione rag paper.
Something was in the end troubling me about the proportions, and this image has had the head reduced about10% - it just looked a little big on her body. Once again the shadow patterns on the white wall were interesting, and I liked the interplay of positive/negative spaces produced between her and the chair she was sitting on.
The Project:Art sessions are a continuation of some of the former TSA Thursday/Friday night life drawing groups. You can see more about that and get directions if you wish to go here.
There are short poses from 7-10 Thursday; a long pose Fridays, same time.

3rd entry for Mar 23, 2012

These are a 20-minute and an 18-minute study done with hard compressed charcoal on Maidstone paper with a thin graphite underlayer.
I was running out of gas, and wrestling with the paper surface on these two, after the more dramatic earlier studies.  The standing figure I have compressed vertically about 15% and enlarged the head, as I realised after the fact that the shading was okay, but the proportions were wildly off.

Photoshop is a handy tool that way, to try altering problematic images to see how they look without unintended distortions.

3rd Entry for Oct. 17, 2011

These are a 25-minute study above, and a 15-minute one below.  These are also hard charcoal on cartridge paper. I drew the legs a bit short on the upper one, so they have been stretched vertically about 20% here.  (It wasn't my best night, proportion-wise).

2nd Entry for Oct. 17, 2011

These are a couple of 15-minute studies. Both are done with hard compressed charcoal on 18 x 24" cartridge paper.
The lower one worked out okay, but my drawing of S-   's head was too tall, so I have vertically compressed that portion of the drawing about 15% from the original, to get a better likeness.

3rd Entry for Jan 2, 2011

I stayed for part of the afternoon, when there was a 3-hour pose.  The upper image is Prismacolor art stick on 20 x 30 cartridge paper, and was about 60 minutes.
The lower one is 4b and 8b graphite on Japanese paper.  The quality of drawing on the lower one is more in the realm I want to be in.  Proportionally, the scale did get away from me a bit, and Z- 's  torso was markedly larger than her head, where the drawing started. In the image here I have reduced the lower part of the drawing by about 10 %, to compensate for that.

2nd Entry for Sept. 28, 2010

In order, top to bottom, these were three 20-minute poses and a 15-minute one. I had drawn quite a bit more of D-    lying down in the 2nd-last one, but the foreshortened body was a poorly-executed add-on to the study of his head, so I've cropped that out.

2nd Entry for Sept. 7, 2010

These poses were all in the 20-minute range. I feel the top one is quite strong.
On the standing pose, I once again ran out of room for legs. Additionally, I have reduced the size of the back of S-   's head in the drawing one of the pitfalls of drawing flat, as I usually choose to, i=s that the top part of the page can get distorted because it is that much farther away from me while working (and being viewed at a much more oblique angle, too.)

2nd entry for October 25, 2009

These were 15-minute studies. It was the first time I've drawn J- , though I have seen her around the TSA. There was more of a torso below the portion of the had study I'm posting, but the proportions were way off (body too big for the head), so I've cropped it back to the effective part.

I was happy with the likeness in the head study - it looks far more like J than me, which is always a relief...

2nd entry for September 29, 2009

These were 20-minute poses. It wasn't my strongest drawing night. In the sitting pose D- looks a little too beefy to properly describe his build (I gave him something more like my bulk). I wasn't going to post the standing pose, but D- said later that he liked it a lot. I did lengthen the legs from the drawing, as I later realised I had made them too short.

2nd entry for September 2, 2009

These were two 20-minute studies. I realized after it was finished that I had inadvertantly given C- my bodily proportions, despite his being several inches/centimetres higher than myself, so I have stretched this image approx 10% from the neck down. Photoshop is great for testing out where one makes proportion errors...

In drawing the sitting pose C- took, I decided I wanted to convey more of the surroundings. The scene struck me as quintessentially `art studio': here is C-, sitting steadfast, looking into middle distance, arm propped on an interestingly engineered selection of stool, pillow and footrest. Behind him is a swath of fabric with a dubious floral pattern from the eighties.

This to me is a good example of one of the challenges in drawing from a model in a studio like this. Time limits the possibility of drawing the background, so usually I skip it. But the surrounding space is sufficiently random that either one has to find a way to depict it with love, or use something else as a background. My instinct suggests the latter route, as C- is a very interesting-looking and intense person, and in this case I don't think the environs underscore or heighten that.
I'm interesred in what others do about surrounding space. Commeents please- what strategies do you like to use in terms of seetings for figure studies?

1st entry for June 5th, 2009

There were more compelling things to do than life drawing on Thursday night - it was the cast & crew screening of "The Spine", which is a new animated film by Chris Landreth. Some ink drawings of mine (the `Handguy' series, from my "Unique Journal" drawing collection) were the starting point of one of his character designs. It is a remarkable and troubling work - what you might expect if Tolstoi or Chekhov and Dali had collaborated in CG animation.

On Friday, family stuff tied up my early evening, but I did arrive in time for the last hour of the Friday drawing session. D- was working, and this is one of the
15-minute poses she took. There was also a head study that was too awkward. The standing pose worked out better, but I have reduced her head in Photoshop about 10% from the original, owing to an obvious scale jump in the drawing from head to body.
A good argument for stepping back regularily from a drawing in process, to correct these irregularities in mid-process.