Tag: graphite

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Drawing a Clothed Model

Figure drawing artists usually work exclusively from nude models.  But this week at Studio b., I had the good fortune of being the only artist.  So I had my choice.  Interestingly, the model had brought tennis gear, and was planning to use it in during the warm-up drawings — he thought we might like the added purposeful action.  So I asked him to wear the tennis clothes and keep the racket nearby for the entire session.

It’s so much easier drawing a clothed model.  I can draw the clothing with an extra wrinkle here or there and no one is the wiser.  You can’t do that with a nude figure without it becoming grotesque.

The model sat for me for 30 minutes for the drawing at left, and we took a short break, and then he sat for me for another 15 minutes.  I like this drawing.  I drew the white with Nupastel and the dark values with graphite, on gray Stonehenge.

The drawings below are two of the warm-up gestures, the second one obviously a longer pose than the first, and the third is the top part of the last drawing of the evening.

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

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Simplifying in Figure Drawing

Soft pastel on manilla

We drew a female model at Studio b. this week at the regular weekly figure drawing session.  She’s been there before.  She is challenging to draw well because she is so fit and toned.

Depending on the pose, sometimes it seems like the model has 6 or 7 legs and arms and at least 40 fingers.  Drawn wrong, they become grotesque victims of some horrible farming accident.  But drawn correctly, they of course help to convey the totality of the expression of the pose.

Some artists never draw the hands or feet, thereby avoiding the issue altogether.

I know how to draw fingers and toes, but I don’t know how to draw them quickly.  So I couldn’t believe my good fortune when the model presented me with a pose that from my vantage point, barely showed just two fingers underneath her hair, and no toes, or even feet, for that matter.  What luxury, to spend the entire half hour on the stretch of the figure!  I have posted it below at right.  Click here for very large view.

Graphite and nupastel on Stonehenge

Our warm-up drawings were 1-minute and 5-minute poses.  For all the craftsmanship in a finished drawing, the hurried execution of a warm-up gesture can have more appeal because it captures the artist’s immediate impression without a lot of correction.  Simplification is  requisite — there is no time for details.  Above left is one of my warm-up gestures from this session.

The problem with warm-up gestures is that they are usually drawn on inexpensive paper that will fade or yellow or even fall apart over time, so they are not collectible unless you spend a little money on archival framing, with ultraviolet resistant glass.  I have redrawn gesture drawings on better quality paper, but it is difficult to duplicate because the rushed immediacy is impossible to recreate.  Since we often draw 15 or 20 warm-up drawings before settling into longer poses, the use of cheap paper is a matter of economics.  The manilla paper and the gray bogus paper I use for gesture drawings are less than 15¢ a sheet, while  Canson Edition paper is $2.19 a sheet, and Canson Rives is closer to $4.07 a sheet.  Even Stonehenge is $1.65 a sheet, so you can see that it could quickly take the artist to the poorhouse to use quality paper for warm-up drawings.

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

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Figure Drawing with Graphite-Wash

This past Wednesday during the figure drawing session at Studio b.,  I used conte and nupastel for my warm-up gestures, and graphite, CarbOthello pastels, watercolor pencils, and a graphite wash for my drawings.  I suppose if I stuck to one medium, I would develop more expertise in handling it, but I love making different kinds of marks using different media.

If I am purposefully drawing, then I will slow down and try to be a better craftsman, being more meticulous with whatever medium I have chosen, perhaps even making a few practice drawings of the subject or pose.  But figure drawing almost always demands a hurried pace.

June is the busiest month of the year for my pool service business, so this week I was just using the figure drawing session as a meditative exercise resulting in wonderful stress release.  For 2½ hours, I had no emergencies to respond to, no anxious customers, no mechanical failures to deal with.  Even as difficult as figure drawing is, the process brings on an exhilaration, a euphoria, a feeling of power and connectedness.  I am sure the challenge of the difficulty helps make it  so satisfying, the requirement of absolute concentration and focus.  But mostly it is the sheer joy of expression that I love, the creation of form and feeling through marks on a paper.

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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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: 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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Making Mistakes Drawing a Clothed Model

We drew a clothed model at figure drawing at Studio b. this week.  It was challenging.  The striped shirt she wore created contours that helped describe her form, so the stripes had to be believable.  We had quick poses, none exceeding 30 minutes, and several were just 15 minutes.  I have posted a few of them.

The pose at left shows what happens when I fail to correctly proportion the figure in the initial gesture.  With the foreshortening I have shown by making the hips so much larger than the shoulders, the lower legs and feet should be positively huge.  Instead, I drew the lower legs and feet as if they belonged to Tinkerbell.  Mistakes in the initial gesture will remain for the entire drawing and ruin the finished piece.

Below are a couple of other drawings done the same night.  I like how they turned out, even though the distortions and inaccuracies are obvious.  The stool gave me some trouble.  I really don’t like stools — they are hard to draw.  I drew it without really looking at it, and the resulting mistakes can especially be seen in the conflicting and incorrect angles of the cross-bars between the stool legs.  So, either I can try to correct the errors, or just leave them and call them “artistic license”, ha ha!
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Slowing Down

Sometimes the art of drawing seems very out of place with our high-speed, instant-messaged, texted, digitized, and “shared” world.  After all, since the invention of the camera, and then with the advances of the computer, drawing probably seems archaic to some.

So why do I draw?  The primary reason I draw, is for the exhilaration of the capture of a form, a texture, a light pattern, or even a single line.  It takes time, and time often stops in the process.  The exhilaration can last from the beginning of the drawing to the very end, and then afterwards too, when I look at the work.

The day after the figure drawing session at Studio b. this week, I went to my first group meditation meeting, where again, time stopped.  I found similarities in the two experiences, both bringing me solidly into the present moment, both resulting in a sort of euphoria, and having the effect of energizing me.  There was a difference though, in that the drawing session as usual brought me peace with myself, a very powerful self, but group meditation brought me peace with everyone else in a powerful, unified oneness.  Both resulted in incredible power.

There are other results from the experience of drawing.  I find that I know so much more about something I have drawn, and I have a much richer experience of it.  My memories of most experiences become foggy over time, but when I look at a drawing I made, even some from college days, snippets of details of my life or the experience come to mind that I would never recall otherwise.

I think it’s all about slowing down and intensely focusing.  Except there is more to it than that, because slowing down and intensely focusing on a mathematics examination does not give me the same empowerment as drawing or painting.  I guess that’s why we call it Art.

I have posted the final piece I made in figure drawing this week.  I drew it with washable graphite on Stonehenge paper, with the intention of applying a loose wash over it to draw out some subtle tones, and instead I decided I wanted to keep the textures of the lines.  But I may yet apply a wash.  There is still plenty of opportunity to make a mess of it!

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Figure Drawing with Graphite Wash

Preliminary drawing using water-soluble graphite, prior to washing

Water-soluble graphite drawing after washing (Click for larger detailed image)
Both the process and the product of drawing are immensely appealing to me.  One of the reasons it is always a challenge is because there are so many variables between the nature of the drawing surface and the drawing implement itself.  I have started learning to use a water soluble graphite pencil, which makes marks that look the same as a regular soft graphite pencil, but will bleed and run when it is wet with plain water.  Above is a new drawing on the left, that I made this week, and on the right is how it looks after it has been brushed with a wet paintbrush.  I have allowed the grainy texture of many of the pencil strokes to show through, so that it still retains some of the quality of a drawing instead becoming a monochromatic painting.  (Ignore the blue tint in the drawing on the left — that’s just my impatience with my camera.)

Below are some other drawings I made at the regular weekly figure drawing session at Studio b. this week.  The first one is one of my favorites from this year.  I wish I could draw like this all the time.  I think I was inspired by the difficulty of the pose.  Our model was amazing.

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Strong Light in Figure Drawing

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.

This 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.