Back to Figure Drawing

Now that I'm attending the Illustration Master's Workshop in June, time to get working on my figure drawing skills. After reviewing the images that most people worked on for the week, it became pretty apparent that figurative work played a major role.

It's been about 3 years since I've done any figure drawing practice and it definitely shows. My first several attempts showed how rusty I was. However, after some perseverance and going back to the basics of simple value work, things started falling in place.

For these drawings (my best drawings for the 3 hour session), I tried out my new watercolor pencils. I must say that I really really like them. You draw as you normally would, but, then use water to spread out the color and create the various value levels. I still need to figure out how to not oversaturate the colors and produce darker areas, but that will come in time. Now, it's just a matter of practicing with them.

In terms of the figurative work, the seated pose was definitely my favorite. The model was excellent. She did some amazing contorted/foreshortened poses and held the poses for a long time. As I get more practice in, I'll have to break down the body into parts and focus on trouble areas. Right now, I think that my major trouble areas are 1) face, 2) hands, 3) calves and 4) feet. More trouble areas will appear as I draw/paint the figure more.

But, it was a good first start back into this arena.