1st entry for July l2, 2012

(at last, on to July drawings...)
On the Monday I went over to the Drawing Room session, where A-  was working that night.  I hadn't drawn her before, and she threw some very gymnastic short poses at the assembled drawers. These are some 1-minute studies, using hard compressed Nobel charcoal on 18 x 24" sheets of bond paper.

2nd entry for June 28, 2012

(First, a digression on new figure drawing opportunities here in Toronto.) These days, figure drawing is blossoming in all sorts of different directions.  For those of you who want your drawing session with a dash of hipster,  the Drake Hotel is now offering a free figure drawing class on Tuesday evenings.  Called "Life-Like Drawing", it runs at 5 p.m. for an undisclosed length of time up on the Sky Tent outdoor deck at the Drake. 
There are instructors on hand, and their promo material says to bring a pencil and sketchbook, so big paper and messy materials might not be as welcome.  Free is free and hard to argue with, and it might be a nice entry point if you've never tried life drawing before.  Life drawing session completists may want to add this to their collection of places they've drawn. I fear there will be a fair number of self-congratulatory people present delighted by the utter amazingness of their just being there, but if that's the case, you can blot them out with drinks from the "Lemonade Stand cocktail bar".

 .. but then again, for the cost of one or two sips from the Lemonade Stand, you could go to room 617 at OCAD U at 6 p.m., and go to their Tuesday open drawing session - $10 for students, $15 for others. No instruction, but S-   (and maybe a guest now and then) deliver really challenging gesture and extended poses for four hours.  S-  's sessions run through August.
Also, come August, I'll be hosting a special Saturday afternoon all-gesture pose session at the TSA, from 1:30 to 4:30
If anyone goes to the Drake session, please let me know how it is - I teach that night, so I can't sample it first-hand.


Okay, enough digression. The studies posted here are, from the top, a 10-minute, three 15-minute and a 20-minute study of K-   .  The top three are on 18 x 24" sheets of Canson Recycled Sketch paper, while the lower two are on 23 x 34" sheets of Durotone Extra White paper. They are all done with hard Nobel charcoal. I was continuing to be a little looser, up 'til the last bit of the session, when I was trying to control things more. The second study from the bottom has an awkward face, but has a freedom of handling on the better-than-newsprint quality Durotone paper that I am aiming towards.

1st entry for June 28, 2012

(... and speaking of gesture drawing, in August, I'll be hosting a special all-gesture 3-hour Saturday open drawing session at the Toronto School of Art. Called `Gesture Drawing Boor Camp', it will run every Saturday in August, from 1:30 - 4:30.  $10- per session,pay as you go,  no poses over 5 minutes.  Shake yourself up - or get back in shape for school in the fall!)

Novelty has its pros and cons when it comes to figure drawing.  On the Friday night, K-    was working.  I have drawn her many times before (and enjoy that), and I had just recently drawn her, on the prior Friday (June 22).  In order to keep the the drawing experience from being too repetitive,  I was being more stylistically adventurous that evening. If it was a less familiar person and less familiar posing, I would have put my focus on the documentation of the whole person/pose.
(In that regard, I think I view full-figure drawings like the `establishing' long shots in movies; they provide the full context, and going straight to `close-ups' of a person without them seems like I'd be missing a necessary element of depicting them. Something to think about...)

Once in a while, as a playful way to shake things up I will do some `kid drawing' gesture sketches, and I started with a bunch of those for 1-minute poses, then shifted into more accustomed drawing.  After the first study, there is a 1-minute study, a 5-minute one, and two 10-minute ones.  With the gestures I was trying to be more `expressive', and less anatomical/diagammatic. The  1-minute ones and the 5-minute are done on 18 x 24" sheets of Bond paper, and the two 10's below are on 18 x 24" sheets of Canson Recycled Sketch paper. All are done with hard Nobel charcoal. The final one had background elements and reinforced shading done during a break.

2nd entry for June 24. 2012

When I try out materials, I often have a `Goldilocks syndrome' response: this one's too soft, that one's too hard; this one's too dusty' that one's too clumpy, etc.   There was a particular woodless-pencil style  charcoal, under the Nobel label (Deserres sells it,) that had the most `just right' feeling on better papers than most things I've tried. Unfortunately, about 2 weeks after I first encountered it, the next batch was made with an extra-hard casing and binder that changed how it behaved.  A new batch arrived that had the consistency I liked again, so I'm hoping the `glassy-hard' version was an anamoly, and not the future.

These are three 10-minute studies above, and two 15-minute ones below.  The 10's are on 18 x 24" sheets of Canson Recycled Sketch paper, done with the Nobel hard charcoal I like. The 15's use the same charcoal, but on 23 x 34" sheets of Durotone Extra White paper.

1st entry for June 24, 2012

On the Sunday night, D-   was working. These are 1-minute studies, done with hard compressed charcoal on 18 x 24" sheets of bond paper.

Most open drawing sessions include a few gesture poses. But on Saturday afternoons in August, I'll be hosting a 4-week special open drawing session. Called "Gesture Drawing Boot Camp", it will be three hours (from 1-4 pm) of all gesture poses.  Nothing over 5 minutes in length. So please, pass the word on to any animators, students, or other people who like their poses fast!  $10-  per session, pay-as-you -go, but only in August.

Entry for June 22, 2012

I was able to get out to a portion of the Friday evening drawing at the TSA.  K-  was working that evening. I had left behind the smaller sheets of bond and Canson Sketch paper I usually like, so I made do with whatever odds and ends of paper I had in my drawer at the school.
The top 4 studies are all done with hard Nobel compressed charcoal on 18 x 24" sheeets of various papers.  The bottom one is on a 23 x 34" sheet of Durotone Extra White paper, which is currently taking the lead for me for a medium-quality smooth near-newsprint paper.  
These are, from the top, a 10-minute study, three 15-minute ones and a 20-minute one.

4th entry for June 19, 2012

These are 25-minute studies of S-   .  Each is done with hard compressed Nobel charcoal on 22 x 30" sheets of Maidstone rag paper that had been  prepared with an underlayer of gtay-green chalk mixed with powdered charcoal.

It can be challenging for more novice life drawers to work out foreshortened volumes of a body in space.
AS I mentioned below, I teach a special summer  3-day workshop at the Toronto School of Art July 23-25 called Structural Bodies that runs 6 hours daily, and focuses on the `perspectival/volumetric'  aspect of figure drawing - and the surrounding space too, at times.
To make the most of this class, you should have a basic grasp of drawing simple volumes (tubes, eggs and blocks) in at least rough perspective from imagination. 
There is room. and you can contact the school and get more information via their website here.
If you want any other information, drop me a line, and I'll be happy to fill you in.