Category: Figurative

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Professional Models in Figure Drawing

Modeling for figure drawing is a hard job.  Try sitting still in a posed body position for only 5 minutes, and then try it for 25 minutes, and you will see what I mean.  Even seemingly-relaxed poses, even reclining poses, can become torturous.  Our model at Studio b. this week is a an experienced professional.  His poses are rock solid, with no sinking, from beginning to end, from head to foot.  Fresh out of a boot for a repaired Achilles tendon, our model first performed 5 1-minute poses and then we graduated to longer poses and the final drawing was about 45 minutes.

The model challenged us later in the session, by posing with a picture frame as a prop.  Props hugely increase the challenge of figure drawing.  I drew the figure first, and then placed the picture frame.  Ideally, I would have drawn both at the same time, as a whole unit, because there were interesting negative shapes created by the frame.  But I was being cautious, having drawn this same model with this same frame but in a different pose, sometime last year, and having had trouble with the proportions at that time.  My drawing with the frame is more correct this time.

Our instructor, Heather Clements, has often suggested to me that I vary the direction of my pencil strokes to help convey the rounded form of the figure.  I rarely remember to use that technique.  I usually just draw the value patterns of light and shadow to express form, rather than changing  the direction of my pencil strokes.  But on the final drawing of the night, the model stood with one knee advancing towards me.  I varied the direction of my pencil strokes to show the rounded form of that thigh and knee, and I think it was successful.  As a result,the sense of mass in his left thigh is much stronger than for example, his upper right arm, which I drew as one mass, with pencil strokes all going the same direction.

Most of my images are available for purchase.  Contact me if you are interested. — Joan Vienot

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Two Steps Forward in Figure Drawing

Click to see much larger image.

I am a better artist.  I drew more like I want to draw, at the weekly figure drawing session at Studio b. last night.  It’s nice to have a night when drawing comes easily.  Well, it’s still work, I have to remember to breathe.  One of the other artists commented that she could hear me taking big breaths — I hope I am not too distracting to the others!

I am powerful.  I attended I Can Do It – Toronto 2011, last weekend.  The conference featured a number of authors published by HayHouse, including Louise Hay herself, Wayne Dyer, Marianne Williamson, and many others.  As is typical for me when I am going away even if for just a few days, I felt compelled to complete all the tasks I had been putting off for months.  So the morning I flew to Toronto, I had gotten only a couple of hours of sleep the night before, which probably made me particularly susceptible to suggestion.  That, in combination with the charismatic, perhaps even hypnotic speakers, left me supremely empowered upon my return.  I am drawing better, and I am guessing the conference is a factor.

We had uninstructed open studio at Studio b. this week, warming up with a number of 1-minute and 2-minute poses, and then some that were a little longer.  We finished with two 25-minute poses and then our last pose was 15 minutes.  My drawing of the last pose is at lower left.  Click on it to see much larger detail.

My drawings were successful not necessarily because of anatomical correctness or portraiture, but because they are believable, effectively communicating what I feel was the essence of the model in her pose at the time that I was drawing her.  In particular, the pose seated on a folding chair caught the complete relaxation of the figure, especially the slight paunch of relaxed stomach muscles.

In the drawing of the clothed model, the portraiture is not a likeness, but I like the textures of pencil strokes and I also like the play of the darks and lights leading the eye through the picture.

Most of my images are available for purchase.  Contact me if you are interested. — Joan Vienot

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Carving the Void: Negative Shapes

The model who posed for our figure drawing session at Studio b. last week returned this week.  For the past four months, we’ve had a different model nearly every session.  That has added to the challenge in that every week we have to become familiar with a different body type or different proportions.  Having the same model two weeks in a row was a luxury.

Our instructor, Heather Clements, provided a focus for us, suggesting that we run the drawing off the page, effectively cropping it in order to create negative shapes out of the negative space.  Often in the rush of trying to get the figure drawn as quickly as possible before the timed pose ends, the background, if treated at all, is merely an afterthought.  By drawing the figure so that parts of it intersect with the edge of the page, it no longer floats on the page, but instead becomes anchored.  The negative space, the space surrounding the figure, is then broken up so that it becomes negative shapes instead of just open space.  Negative shapes help the piece to read as a composition.  Art imitating life, carving the larger voids into smaller pieces makes it more manageable.

A good mat and frame can help with cropping, but it is better for the artist to have made those decisions instead of leaving it up to the framer.

The sketches included here are from this week’s session.

Most of my images are available for purchase.  Contact me if you are interested. — Joan Vienot

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Working With Other Artists

It is different when working in a studio setting with other artists, as opposed to working by myself in my own home studio.  There is no doubt that sometimes being alone is the best way to get work done.  But the comaraderie of being with other artists, all working under the same conditions, provides an energy and inspiration that helps me to go farther and do more in a shorter period of time than I ever would working alone.

That certainly was the case at the figure drawing session at Studio b. this week.  I was struggling, and would have quit halfway through the session if I was drawing alone.  Each pose presented new challenges for me, mostly because the model was standing or sitting on a swing by the pool, requiring each pose to fit within a geometric space bordered by the swing and the ropes.

I think that all of the drawings that I did have potential, but I don’t feel that I did justice to the model’s beauty and fitness.  Yet there is an expressive quality to each that I recognize as true.

I have decided that even though I love the texture, I don’t like charcoal paper because it wrinkles and dents very easily.  So I intend to use my stock of charcoal paper for warm-up drawings and gestures.  The first drawing is on black charcoal paper.  The rest are on Stonehenge paper, which is heavy enough that it can take quite a bit of handling without wrinkling.

Most of my images are available for purchase.  Contact me if you are interested. — Joan Vienot

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Thinking about Composition in Figure Drawing

Having spent nearly two years improving my skills at figure drawing, I think I would like to spend more time thinking about how the figure is presented on the paper, which begins to determine whether the piece can stand alone as a composition.  When I look back at the bulk of my work, the pieces that appeal the most to me have an unfinished quality, in that perhaps I did not try to capture the figure in its entirety.  I’d like to preserve that quality.

This week at Studio b.’s figure drawing session, we had an exquisitely beautiful model, and I found that I still need a lot of work on portraiture, as I think I failed miserably to get a likeness let alone to show how pretty she is.  However, I like the pieces I turned out, since they have just a little more “atmosphere” than much of my previous work.  Something seemed different about this night at Studio b., perhaps the bad weather, it being the night of the terrible Tuscaloosa tornado.

At left I also am posting the drawing, now more developed, that I had started on the last day of the portrait workshop that I was taking from Charlotte Arnold last month.  When I last posted it, it was primarily a head study.  I used a photograph of that model and her pose,  for reference.

Most of my images are available for purchase.  Contact me if you are interested. — Joan Vienot

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Figure Drawing with a Live Model

To a figure drawing artist, the title of this post is redundant, but the non-artist may not know that we use live models in figure drawing.  To this point, I have been a bit of a fanatic about it, allowing errors and inaccuracies to be a part of the final drawing.

But I am thinking that I would like to take a photograph for reference for correcting and finishing a live-model drawing outside of the studio, away from the live model.  My hesitancy to use a camera comes from my concern that I may lose some of the immediacy of expression if I work on my drawings very much outside of the studio.  But I would like the accomplishnent of a more complete, or perhaps I should say, more technically accurate drawing, which can more easily be done, I think, with a less hurried pose or with a photograph for reference.

Next week I’m bringing a camera to the Wednesday night figure drawing session at Studio b., if the model doesn’t mind me taking a photo.

Following are a few warm-up gestures from this week’s session, followed by a drawing from a longer pose.
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The Joy of Drawing

When I am figure drawing, I am an artist without a message.  I’m not trying to tell you anything.  I just draw because I enjoy drawing.  Well, maybe it’s a compulsion, because sometimes I have to admit, it’s a little uncomfortable, frustrating, and at times perhaps even painful.  But for the most part, the challenge of figure drawing is in the mastery, being able to portray what I see, or what I think I see.  By practicing every week, I am becoming more confident.

The drawing I am posting here was difficult because the facial features look very different when a figure is reclining than they do when the figure is upright.  I think that the portrait class I finished taking last week helped me a lot.  I will need to continue to practice heads and faces in different positions and attitudes.  I still feel hesitant with faces, and I still spend a lot of time guessing, but my guesses seem more accurate now.

This drawing was made with a graphite pencil on Stonehenge paper.  I drew it at the regular Wednesday night session of Figure Drawing at Studio b., in Alys Beach, FL.  Heather Clements is the instructor.

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Figure Drawing: Tension vs. Relaxation

Sometimes I am bone tired when I get to my regular weekly figure drawing session after a full day of work.  Last night was like that.  But it never fails, after the first half hour of drawing, I am energized again.  Is it me?  Is it being in the good company of other like-minded artists, like Betty Cork and Steve Wagner and Heather Clements?  Is it the amazing creative atmosphere of Colleen Duffley‘s  Studio b.?  All of the above, I suppose, plus a model who is invested in the process, who works hard for us, as all of our models do.

After the usual series of warm-up gestures from 30-seconds to a few minutes, figure drawing instructor Heather Clements suggested that we focus on where the figure was showing tension, and where it was showing relaxation, and to draw the two aspects differently, perhaps exaggerating the contrast between the two.  She suggested that the parts of the figure under tension might be drawn with straighter, shorter lines and more angular shapes, with more abrupt changes in quality and direction, while the more relaxed parts would be smoother, with longer lines and less angular shapes.  I can’t say that my drawings actually show that intention, but I was trying to be conscious of it as I drew.  As always when I am learning something new, I will have to sit down and do some practice drawings, thinking about it non-stop, in order for it to become habit.

I have posted some of my gestures and drawings from throughout the evening.  Nupastel and graphite are still my favorite media.  A close floodlight, positioned low, put strong highlights and dark cast-shadows on the model.
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I forgot how to draw.

A couple of months ago at Studio b., we drew a model who was 8½ months pregnant.  If you read my blog post about it, you know that I was thrilled.  I didn’t think anything could top it.  But this week, the young mother brought her baby to model with her.  It was an unbelievable experience, and I forgot how to draw.  The poses were determined by the mother and her sense of the baby’s composure.  Some of the poses were 5 minutes, some were 10, and some were 20 minutes.  Our instructor, Heather Clements, did not forget how to draw, and in fact completed a number of beautiful captures of the mother and child bond, which she posted at the end of her blog last week.  The best one showed the mother sitting cross-legged, holding the baby close.  Heather was on fire.  I think she had that one completed while I was still trying to choose something to draw with.   I am posting a couple of mine, but you can see that I was overwhelmed and didn’t get very far.

The day before that, was the fourth session of the Charlotte Arnold portrait and head studies workshop I have been taking.  Charlotte suggested that we try to draw the portrait life-size or smaller, but mine ended up being sized at 150% again.  I drew and redrew several of the model’s features, and decided that I probably need new eyeglasses.  I re-drew some of the same lines wrong 6 or 7 times.  Many years ago, I taught drawing and painting in a high school in Colorado for 3 years before I moved to Florida.  I would tell my students not to erase the wrong line until after they had drawn it right, or they would draw the wrong line over and over again.  I proved that in this drawing.  Nevertheless, there are parts of it that actually resemble the model, if you don’t count her left eye which looks black-and-blue and swollen.

Today was the last day of the portrait workshop.  I decided the way to make the drawing life-size or smaller, was to plan to put some of the figure in as well.  I didn’t get very far into the figure, but I am pleased with the progress so far.  I expect that the figure will be fairly sketchy so that the focus is entirely on the head.  Maybe the hands should be developed, as long as they don’t compete with the face.

After the portrait class was over, we did a little show-and-tell of our drawings throughout the class.  Everyone showed remarkable improvement.

Charlotte gave us hand-outs at every single class, which demonstrated tips and techniques for proportioning and drawing different parts of the face.  She showed us examples in books that she had found helpful in her own drawing.   I have enough homework to last me another 6 months!  One of the books Charlotte showed us was The Intimate Eye – The Drawings of Burton Silverman. I had not seen Silverman’s work before, but I appreciate his style and have been trying for a long time to learn to draw in that same style.  Burton Silverman is my new favorite artist.

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The Luxury of A Longer Pose

We had a live model posing for the portrait workshop I am taking from  Charlotte Arnold, and for our final drawing this week we had the luxury of a longer pose.  When I am figure drawing, I need to try to get the whole figure drawn, or at least much of it as I can, which doesn’t allow much time on any one part of the body.  So getting more than 30 minutes to draw just a face in the portrait workshop was extraordinary.  The drawing is still unfinished because I spent the whole time on the face.

At our figure drawing session at Studio b. this week, we returned to the shorter poses and a familiar model.  I was able to capture bits and pieces of a likeness of her face, but only in a rough and hurried fashion, nothing worth showing.  But that showed me I am making progress with the portrait workshop I am taking.  I have posted only one drawing from the session, a simple one, just lines, one that captured the essence of that particular pose.

Click on the images for a larger view.