Over the past few, our class has been doing various types of life drawing to improve our skills. Even though I draw a lot and enjoy it, life drawing is something I've avoided for a long time. I prefer to draw from the imagination. But I decided that life drawing would be useful for all of us. Working from real life gives a sense of scale.
I'm not the best at working to a scale, as when I usually draw I change the scale as I go. It's also a lot harder to draw something if you can physically see it. Because I found that when I could see something, I would move my head to work things out . This wasn't a good idea, as it meant some parts of the sketches came back inaccurate.
However, doing life drawing sequentially over the past weeks, I've seen where my faults are, and have been overcoming them.
In the first session, we had a model from another course. I had fun with this page, albeit I was adjusting to drawing something in front of me instead of in my mind. I tried to draw out the spine and arms to give myself an idea of where everything should go, but the scales were all off when I did this.
Using the shape of the body in front of me was a bigger help, as putting a body in terms of simple shapes like triangles and squares made it easier to draw.
You can see in the lower left drawing that the lines I put in mess up the scale of the person, as his right arm is too long and his chest is too wide for his legs.
On the top and bottom right drawings, I took out the lines, and the drawings still lacked a bit of scale. Although they are closer to being accurate in my opinion.
This is where I realise I can use what I already know to draw a person. I normally draw in a cartoony style, but the main principle of drawing a person is about proportions and shapes. I started drawing circles and ovals for the model's torso, and saw that it really helped the shape.
All the drawings on the pages after that turned out a lot better, and looked a lot more 3 dimensional. I'm proud of this because whenever I draw, it's never for the purpose of looking realistic. The fact that some of the poses look realistic is an improvement for me.
The next two sessions is when we did some different things. The seconds session was when we had a different model each time, and we included props in the composition. The props definitely made it harder, as not only did I have to pay attention to the scale of the person, but also the object they were holding.
The third session was where we drew objects stacked in different ways. After drawing human models, who can move and shift positions, drawing objects was easy. I found it fun to try and get everything accurate and shade it in to show the dimensions. I'm extra proud of the top left drawing, with the teapot under the stool. It was hard to get the curve right.
In the final session, we did portraits. The focus on proportions for drawing in the last few weeks really helped me for this. When I draw, I don't put a lot of detail into drawing the bridge of the nose, or the lips of a person.
My use of proportions in my own drawings were useful, as all I had to do was adjust them upwards. This worked, but I kept in mind that proportions are different for each person being drawn.
It was hard to draw people's faces because of the proportions I usually use. I'm not overly good at drawing faces from a 45 degree angle, and I'm more comfortable drawing someone from the front. I even had a go at drawing someone's profile, which I'm proud of as well.
The last thing we did was draw a caricature of someone. My caricature idea came from the fact that the person had thick, swept back hair and was pale. So I drew him as a vampire using hypnosis out of his glasses. This style is a lot closer to the style I usually draw with, but I made it a bit more realistic to give more details that would be recognisable.
I'm very happy with how it turned out, and I had fun imagining what type of cartoon/anime this character would be in.