Part Three - Portrait and Figure

Finding a model

This part is easy; I don’t have one!!  Was hoping there would be a life drawing class through the local LLC but there is nothing this year.  A local art group have run a couple of sessions through the summer but I was unable to attend due to other commitments – hopefully they will run some more so I can get some practice in.

So, I will have to paint myself for each exercise, and will deal with the practical problems of self-portraits as I come to each exercise.

Drawing Practice

When I completed Drawing 1, the one thing which was commented upon by the assessors was accuracy in life drawing, so I decided to do a number of studies on the areas I find most challenging, namely hands, feet and facial features.

The anatomical drawings were completed using a book I have on anatomy for artists, and the other drawings were completed using a mixture of instructional drawings and photographs.

I began with hands drawing the skeletal structure both from the side angle and straight on, followed by the muscle structure of the hand and forearm.  A number of drawings of hand gestures followed, trying a number of methods to simplify the overall structure and to achieve accuracy of scale.  The next two sheets of gestural movement were studied in a range of media; biro, graphite, charcoal pencil and willow charcoal sticks.  I found the willow charcoal easiest to work with for depicting skin and the underlying structures – because it is so soft, it is very easy to blend to achieve the soft, malleable forms of the hand, as well as being very easy to erase and restate marks.

I followed the same format with the feet – basic bone structure from differing angles, muscles of the underside of the foot, and those of the foot and lower leg, followed by the foot from different angles with a range of media.  One I found particularly effective was using mixed media – ink and dip pen, charcoal and charcoal pencil.  This achieved the hard edges and dark tones of nails and underlying bones while allowing for soft, dark shading.  I found feet harder to draw than hands while they should be simpler because the form is not as complicated.  However, I found it much harder to judge accurate proportion with feet – I think with hands, because of all the joints, these are more measuring points which I found helpful.

I progressed to basic structure of the skull (side on) and then a split drawing of the skull (face on) with the overlying muscle structures opposite.  I think, although very time consuming, completing anatomical studies do give a very good grounding in how the body works, which in turn informs the artist in accurately portraying the human form (ie on the face, you can see the layers of muscles around the mouth and jaw, which explains why folds and wrinkles appear where they do).

Using photos from a magazine, I sketched a couple of heads to gauge angles, and then remembered how bad I was at simplifying facial features so decided to study individual figures, again using different techniques to achieve the correct proportions.  One technique I found helpful (but really obvious when you think about it), is to imagine the lips on a cylinder, and to use this to get the right angle and foreshortened effects you get when a head is rotated or tilted.

I next attempted noses, which I think have to be the most awkward thing to get right – the form is so different depending on your viewpoint, and because the nose is (literally!) central to the face, if you get that wrong, an accurate likeness will not be achieved. 

I decided to try a full face and so used a small photo from Artists & Illustrators (appropriately of an artist!) which I choose because she was smiling broadly, creating more range of highlight/shadow and creases than are normally seen on portraits.  I am quite pleased with this drawing, although I feel the right side is much better than the left – it has more life and detail than the left – which I think is due to the detail in the right eye.  Again, I used charcoal here for depth of tone and easy ability to rub out!

The last sketch I tried here was of Jessica Ennis - as the Olympics was on, there were plenty of figures to draw!