Waihi Life Drawing Class 27 5 09

Our class is held in the Waihi College drama room which is always interesting as you can see, theatre props, masks and costumes are under construction. A great atmosphere to work in...

Focused lighting and White chalk on Black paper

Above one of Shayni's drawings. She is the youngest member of the class and she is showing great promise

Jizzy's drawing, white on black paper and willow charcoal too. The first exercise was strictly white on black and these photos are of the second exercise, white and black on black.
The purpose of this exercise is to make people see the shape of an area of highlight on the body and also the shape of areas of shadow and to break all tones down to either white of black

Christine's

Forgotten who did this study!

Waihi Life Drawing Class 13/ 5/ 09: Maclean does it again

Maclean doesn't practice formal studies in contour and tone, her every effort is an exploration.
Her she models the figure with hot colours. The hottest colour, yellow, on a plane with the paper and describing the edges of the body closest to us. The red orange, slightly cooler, describing the forms curving away from us and the warm purple describing the steepening of the curve away from us.
Then Maclean binds it all in a purple contour line to create a design for a neon sign...
This one was promptly nick-named the stripper....

Waihi Life Drawing Class 13/ 5/ 09: Blind contour drawing,Christine

Blind contour drawing is contour drawing without looking at the paper. The eye stays always on the model and as the eye moves along an edge of the subject the hand with the pencil imitates the eye's movement. It is a very useful technique for describing a subtle curve or gesture when used with all the other drawing styles.
Here Christine is exploring the complete drawing of the model with the blind contour method with results that are strangely attractive and suggest the possibility of an intriquing painting.

Waihi Life Drawing Class 13/ 5/ 09: Saskia and Jelta

Here Jelta is using contour line and two tones to model the figure in willow charcoal. Earlier in the evening he was using pen with hatching to model the figure with tone. Pen is unforgiving and there is no possibility of smudging or erasing

Same pose, same time and Saskia is using ink and water for contour lines and two tones to model the figure and the effect is similar to Jelta's study in willow charcoal.

Waihi Life Drawing Class 13/ 5/ 09: Sandra

Sandra's been a staunch supporter of this class from the beginning and is one of the more adventurous artists. This nights effort from Sandra is practice, practice, like all of us, most of the time.

Waihi Life drawing class 13/ 5/ 09: Stewart

Stewart continues to develop his new style, vigorous hatching in coloured chalk pastels

Figure drawing, Highlights, life drawing class 6/ 5/ 09, Janice

White chalk highlights have been used by artists for hundreds and probably thousands of years.
The white highlights help both to model the figure or object with the illusion and depth of light and shade and add a sharp liveliness to a drawing.
Janice uses her work in class to make paintings from and all artists and sculptors and designers sketch out their preliminary ideas for a great work in drawing.
I feel that first drawings are the greater work of art for they embody the first vision and choices of the artist, show all the skill of the artist and their ability to handle limitations and are as fresh and unique and warm from the artist's touch as a signature.
Signature style is a phrase I use a lot in class. Just like opinions and bums and noses, everyone has got one...

A beginners breakthrough, life drawing class, Shayni 6/ 5/ 09

Shayni started her first class standing close to her easel and drawing small with careful scratchy movements of her pencil. I have to discourage this normal habit without being negative and encourage large and free flowing lines.
People always learn more from seeing other's work than from what I might say and here, the last drawing of the night, Shayni is drawing large and confident. We ran out of time for her to finish the hands of this drawing and she says hands are difficult to draw and they are but I can see Shayni has an eye for proportion in any scale and it will be nice to see her work progress.

Warm up drawings, life drawing class, Cameron 6/ 5/ 09

I am happy to have 3 new members of the class and can do more teaching. Most of our class are experienced and don't need me so much.
Here are warm up drawings from Cameron, one of the new beginners. He shows promise as straight away he is drawing large with free and bold contour lines.
Warm up drawings are from quick poses of only a minute or two and are to encourage speed and not allow time for the pesky left side of the brain to try getting too clever.
It's fascinating to hear the artists sigh or mutter to themselves as they shift into right brain mode, unconsciously audible....

Figure drawing, life drawing class 6/ 5/ 09 Stewart

Stewart continues with the colour hatching style he recently developed. I asked him why he did not smudge the hatch lines of his pastel drawings with his fingers or a stump to blend the tones and colours and he said he liked the freshness and energy of the lines as first drawn. I like it too.

Figure drawing, life drawing class 29/ 4/ 09, Stewart

Stewart has a gift for drawing and for many weeks at the life drawing class he was blowing us all away with classical life drawing studies in willow charcoal on newsprint or any old paper I had to give away. He used shading techniques to model the form, excellent, traditional life drawing studies.
Then one day he asked to borrow someone's coloured chalk pastels to have a go in colour and the next week turned up with prepared paper with abstract watercolour designs on on which to draw experimental coloured pastel studies.
He is here using coloured paper and hot and cool colours and vigorous hatching techniques.

Figure drawing, life drawing class 29/ 4/ 09, Jelta

The easels in the life drawing class are 6 foot high and fairly robust so an artist can work large and vigorous, even violently, attacking the paper or canvas.
I encourage the artists to move their life drawing easels to anywhere in the room from where they can get an interesting view of the model but Jelta usually sits on a chair in front of his easel and does not move it, content to work with whatever is offered in the way of pose or viewpoint.
Jelta practices, in pencil or charcoal on white paper, proportion and shading and gets better and better and his drawings are getting larger. The foreshortening on the right leg of this drawing is great, it works and the lower leg is not drawn in at all and he's done a great job on the shading of the soles of the feet.
One day we will see Jelta launch into colour. Something to look forward to.