Learning to Quit While You’re Ahead
A post that could alternatively be titled ‘Before I F***ed It Up’, this little portrait experiment had something good going on, lost it, got it back, then was butchered beyond repair as I tried to add the merest hint of…
Tate Britain Inspiration
Finding myself in London one afternoon last week, I decided to visit Tate Britain for a quiet wander. With nothing specific to see, I decided to look around some of the ‘BP Walk through British Art’ galleries. When a particular…
Hands
Some quick sketches of hands made in this week’s class. I should really do much more practise of this kind as hands are so expressive and can add so much more to a figure or portrait study. I think the…
Back to Class
Here’s a few of the quick gesture sketches from the new term of life sessions at Pegasus. After a lot of drawing sight-size and long poses, I find working quickly, without measuring or the room to stand back from the…
Acrylic…
This week’s life class concentrated on painting. I used acrylic (a bargain set of miniature tubes from Lidl) for pretty much the first time. I tried using them in the same way that I use oil, and although I knew…
Watercolour Paint
This week’s class concentrated on paint alone – in my case, watercolours from Lidl(!) which I used quite thickly as if they were oil or acrylic. Anatomical accuracy has gone out of the window, but I enjoy the freedom of…
Graphite and Paint
Here are the drawings from today’s life class. I don’t particularly like these very much, although there are elements of mark-making within each one that capture an impression of energy or expression that, in isolation, work quite well. The materials…
Negative Space and Mass
Some more quick pose sketches, this time concentrating on the negative space around the model, and the larger shapes to describe mass through shadow. It’s difficult not to slip into a linear way of describing the form, and I had…
Gesture and Scale
Some more quick poses from my new life class. In this session we were considering changes of scale to fill ever smaller pieces of paper. For me, it was more opportunity to practise quick gesture drawing, which I’m not used…
