LIFE DRAWING

I have been attending life drawing sessions for years. Drawing the human figure is the best way to develop draftsmanship skills. I attended life drawing sessions at Allan Hancock Collage, Cal Poly University, and Morro Bay drawing group. I have found an excellent paper source for life drawing. Costco has rolls of light weight paper in huge 18 inch widths. This paper is intended for covering picnic tables or other such uses. I cut the paper in 24 inch length and clip it on to a drawing board. The paper works well with graphite or charcoal, and does not yellow or degrade with light exposure.
I know that some people are offended by nude images. I have carefully selected the following images and hope they do not offended.


Barbara is a terrific model. I like to do foreshortened posses with lots of overlaps. They are the most challenging to draw.


Frank was one of the regular models at Cal Poly.

Another foreshortened posse, I believe this was done at Morro Bay.

Virgil was a regular model at Hancock College. He had good muscle definition which makes him a good model. I did an oil painting of him which is hanging in my office.

Sometimes you get a strong light and dark patterns that are interesting to draw.

This was from one of the Hancock College sessions.

MORE PORTRAITS

The first group of images are from Marti Fasts life drawing class. Occasionally you have no model, but that has never held Marti back. She just has the students take turns being the model, and we have a great portrait drawing session. Those are some of my favorite sessions and the images bellow are from one of those evenings. Most of these posses are for 20 minute.

I like drawing glasses in portraits they cast interesting shadows, and are often best defined by values rather than line. Notice the lost edges of the lower left side of the glass in the image above. Your eye will see the complete lens.

Sketching musicians is always fun there is some movement, so you have to be prepared for changes.

I liked the hair and profile on this one, and use a really soft pencil to get the deep contrast.

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The next two drawings are from Kathy Yorba's portrait class at Allan Hancock College. They probably would not be classified as sketches but as finished drawings. I think these were done in three 20 minute sittings.

This drawing is framed and the photo was shot the glass.

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The last three drawing were done with art instructor Robert Densham at Cal Poly University.

He used to have Saturday morning life drawing sessions on campus open to the general public for a nominal fee to help pay for the model. Roberts was a terrific teacher and very giving of his time. I learned a lot form his drawing sessions which often had only 8 to 10 participants.

Again this one was photoed through the glass. I liked the hand gesture and the tattered cuff on the old leather jacket. This was done in several 20 minute posses. Both these matted drawings are hanging in my office.

This fellow is a member of the San Luis Obispo Symphony. It is fun to be entertained while drawing.

Robert had a model cancel one session so he sat for us. There were only two or three of us left in his drawing group and this was one of the last session I attended.