Life drawing

Moving to Geneva gave me a great opportunity to join a life class. It's a small group so we don't always manage to meet every week but the members get a say in how they like the model to pose. Also, as the regular members are working in pastels, the pose is held for the three hours (with breaks of course) and this suits me as I don't think I'd enjoy the pressure of 10 minute poses. I can move around the room to get different angles so in theory I could get quite a few drawings from the session but on average I get about three decent ones and a couple of sketches.




















Unusually, in this session, I got a quick line drawing done during a break and was quite pleased with it. I like the thinner models as they are more angular. I haven't seen any large, overweight models yet but I'm sure they would be interesting too!




















Quite often the model is lying down but I prefer the upright poses. This one was very natural.




















I usually work in B or 2B but the scans make the drawings look quite feint. This one was one I was very unhappy with at the time so I turned my pencil on it's side to do the shading quickly but after looking at it the next day decided I liked it, and the effect.





















I'm always amazed at how different the models look in their clothes! I enjoyed getting the lines and light here on the right side.





















One of those rare sessions when the pencil does what it's told!




















The last session, a couple of weeks ago.

I wouldn't say I've improved tremendously since I started these classes but I have become a lot more relaxed about drawing with others. Since I bought Anthony Ryder's book recently, The Artist's Complete Guide to Figure Drawing, it's inspired me to try and get more out of these sessions and to look more closely at how light plays on the body.