Sometimes things go easily in figure drawing. Sometimes my hand-eye coordination is better, I am more focused, my mind is unstressed, and the drawings seem to just flow. This week the figure drawing session at Studio b. was like that.
Sessions like this, coupled with last Saturday’s super-fun encaustic workshop, make me think maybe I should follow my bliss, take the leap, and start producing art fulltime. I’m not prepared to sell anything from my website yet. But a woman found my website through a standard search for figure drawings, and she purchased and framed two of my gesture drawings for her dining room. She sent me a photograph of the decor — it looks great, and I am so pleased that she found joanvienot.com! My webmaster, Warren Tape, is going to set up a store for me on this website, to make it easy to purchase my art. I will have to start producing “more-finished” pieces. I know that landscapes are more likely to sell — not everyone is comfortable with nudes or partial nudes.
T
his week instructor Heather Clements set up a strong light source, which gave us deep shadows and brightly lit areas. The model wore a bright purple bathing suit bottom, and a bright red top. It was the perfect excuse to use some pure color in my drawings. I used washable graphite and watercolor pencil for my final 3 drawings, from 15-minute and 20-minute poses.
But I had fun with the warm-up drawings too. The immediacy of the gesture, the artist’s first impression of the forms or lighting in the figure, sometimes makes a more powerful statement than a finished drawing or painting. Following are some of my drawings from the first hour of the session.
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