Life Drawing 28/01/10 Nos2

I liked the upper drawing very much as it has a fauvist feel about it.

The model is Marcia, and both use conte crayon and soft pastel on A3 smooth cream thin card.

The upper drawing makes greater use of the soft pastels and is therefore denser on the card, whereas the seated figure is mostly conte crayon resulting in a transparency, with the paper colour playing a role as a flesh tone itself.

Life Drawing 28/01/10 Nos3

Searching for colour harmony and contrast, and how this relates to tone.

I was particularly pleased with the middle drawing and will be building on the experience and the lessons learned.

The model is Marcia, and I used pastel on a light grey pastel paper. The upper two are A3 and the lower is A2.

Life Drawing 19/01/10

This is Penny doing three 5 minute gesture poses. I used a 2B pencil on a smooth cream A3 thin card. I'm not sure where I acquired it but the pencil moved easily on the surface.

Life Drawing 26/01/10

I spent most of the day working on an A1 pencil drawing of the above lying pose. I aim to complete this piece this week when the model, Sue, will assume the same pose. The one above in pencil/pastel/charcoal was done to get a feel for the pose and to engage with the issue of perspective. Although the model was on a table, my above average height gave me a viewpoint where I looked down upon the figure.

Sue seated is a 10 minute 'warm-up', using inks with brush and a pastel background.

Working from Life Class: Today's Nude [Channel 4, July 2009] Nos3

The model is Kirsten Varley who I believe is a 'commercial model'. She had a tendency to move the position of her head and hands during the programme which allowed me to freeze the picture at a suitable pose which appealed to me. As you see I again experimented, firstly with charcoal, smoothing with my finger or leaving a coarser texture on the paper, and secondly with colour. I had recently bought myself a set of soft pastels, which I used in the full pose. Also a set of conte sticks with which I explored the diversity of flesh colours and tones, which I searched for and believe I detected, in closer detail in the torso drawing.

Working with Life Class: Today's Nude [Channel 4, July 2009] Nos 2

This is the second of my series of experiments from the Channel4 programmes, this time with the dancer Maria Munoz as model. The artist in this programme was John Berger, art critic, novelist, author of 'Ways of Seeing'. The combination of a fabulous model with Berger's thoughts were truly inspiring, helping me to produce what I consider to be strong, confident and energetic drawings, which I completed in about 20 minutes each.

Working from Life Class: Today's Nude [Channel 4, July 2009] Nos1

The model is Ken Fahy. Here I wanted to explore the qualitative differences between charcoal and pastel. At this time I was beginning to become aware that when I looked at flesh there were many colours, some warm, some cold,

and asking the question

'How does colour relate to tone?