life drawing

There's a life drawing class once a week at the Hot Shops in Omaha. As I have been sort of a hermit for a while, and as I need some incentive (always!) to keep drawing, I signed up for it. The first night was last night; luckily the snow let up for a bit so the drive was more or less okay. I had only done life drawing once before (hey, 4.102) so I sorta kinda knew what to expect but not really. It was quite a big room (the Hot Shops are in repurposed warehouses close to the river in Omaha); the model posed on a platform in the center of the room, with theater-ish lighting. The teacher provided chairs and easels. I, sadly, left most of my paper in Fenway House (pain in the butt to mail home), so I took the largest sketchbook I had, which is about 10" x 8". Hopefully this weekend brings a trip to Blick (as well as a swing by the Joslyn.) Luckily I did keep most of my drawing supplies, so I've got enough charcoal, china marker, soft lead pencil, etc. to last me for at least a few sessions.

We did five two-minute poses to warm up (didn't upload any of those, they sucked), two ten-minute poses, two twenty-five minute poses, and one forty-minute pose. I think I did reasonably well, but I'm looking forward to what improvement the next few sessions might bring.

So, without further ado, the "best of."

One of the twenty=five minute poses; I did the pose okay but screwed up her face, so I did another drawing of only that. It doesn't look like the model but it does look human, which is a good start.

One of the ten-minute poses. . . I think I did pretty good with the foreshortening on her leg.

During the next 25-minute pose, I was facing the model's back head-on. . . which is not very exciting, and which does not take twenty-five minutes to draw. So I drew the guys across the circle from me.

Same twenty-five minute period, different guy.

This is the forty-minute pose. Other than the butchering of her right hand, I thought it came out well; the face I drew does actually resemble the model's.

Had some time left over, so I tried to re-draw her hand separately. . . not sure I was successful.

More time left over. Portrait! I screwed up her eye.

Other stuff: I used brown China marker and a soft lead (5B-ish) pencil for this session. I'm waiting to pull out the charcoal until I get a good-sized drawing pad.