I spent this past week doing an intensive art class as part of the Illustration Certificate at the SMFA. The class was "Drawing the Expressive Figure" and it was basically eight hours of art-making every day-- 9 AM to 6 PM. It was fantastic! It got me so jazzed about creating figurative work (since I have been doing so many landscapes lately). Focussing so closely on the nude models and doing observational work also made me really loopy and zoned-out at the end of each day, which has never happened to me before, so that was cool!
We experimented with different mediums including ink, chalk pastel, permanent marker, paint, and oil pastel on a variety of different surfaces. I am just going to go ahead and post all my best stuff (If you didn't want to look at nude figures, this is your last chance to turn back):
DAY 1: We did contour drawings with permanent marker and added chalk pastel over top!
This one is huge! It is 22" x 30"
DAY 2: Ink! I loved working with ink-- I had never attempted realistic figure drawing with it and it was great to work with. We talked a lot about the power of suggestion. With ink, you can suggest a whole face with just a few marks. Also, the model's hair lent itself well to being represented in ink.
We tried some silhouettes as well:
DAY 3: More ink! Yeah! I felt really good about almost everything I did that day. I was able to get pretty detailed renderings of faces.
We then created our own textured paper by putting down thin washes of acrylic paint and then placing the figures on top:
DAY 4: We tried out oil pastels on yupo, which is a plastic paper. I don't know how they make it, but it creates an interesting surface to work into. The materials really want to slide around on the yupo.
The model brought some really great wigs and when she put this long, pink wig on, it seemed like she was really building a character and a story, which I totally love! I asked what her super power would be if she could have any power and she chose time travel and the ability to solve unsolvable math problems. I imagine those two powers would be related, she could somehow use her knowledge of math to find her way through the time/space continuum. Thus The Naked Time Traveler was born!
This pose looked to me like she had just lost a battle of some kind and was down for the count, so is this the end for the Naked Time Traveler?!
DAY 5: Another morning of figure drawing from the model, then finishing touches and group critique.
The above figure and the head below are from the same painting and I am super proud of both of them, but unfortunately the head is super small in comparison to the body, which I am really embarrassed about. Alas!
One project that I didn't quite get the chance to finish up integrating pattern into the figure, or the figure into a pattern, so I created a pattern and then translated some of my sketches from the week on top of that pattern. Here is what I came up with:
My next steps are going to be definitely continuing to work with ink and also practicing drawing hands and feet. I didn't realize until my teacher pointed it out how much work I have left to do in terms of my hands and feet drawing skills.
It was productive, fun, and eye opening week. I was totally immersed in drawing and my classmates were fantastic and talented! I actually wish the class had been longer. There is so much more we could have done!!
