Tuesday life drawing

 
Shortish poses at this session.

From Life - Royal Academy

Thomas Rowlandson and Augustus Charles Pugin,Drawing from Life at the Royal Academy,
(Somerset House), 1 January 1808

There were some good things in this exhibition but overall, a bit disappointing. Not enough variety of work, not enough history etc. The film of Chinese students drawing a huge head of David was good, as were some of the 19th Century paintings of life classes at the RA. Amusing in a Giles cartoon sort of way; some of the students didn't seem to be paying attention or looked decidedly bored. Also wearing hats indoors. You have to feel for the models who must have been pretty cold.

Exhibition continues until 11 March.
https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/from-life



Zoffany



Unidentified artist, A Life Class, Early 19th century?

Oil on canvas, 987 X 1347 X 25 mm

Formerly attributed to William Hogarth.

Unidentified artist, A Life Class, Early 19th century?

Oil on canvas, 987 X 1347 X 25 mm

Formerly attributed to William Hogarth.

Tuesday life drawing

Tuesday life drawing

Worked on an etching plate (soft ground) last week, this time graphite stick on newsprint, but for some reason, it didn't etch very well. Hmm. I have theories. Back to the drawing board.

A new year of life drawing

Had a day of life drawing on Saturday and our Tuesday evening sessions started up again this week so drawing for 2018 is off to a good start. A friend has decided to set me a weekly drawing challenge too so news of that coming soon.

Tuesday life drawing

Saturday life drawing

 We had our monthly life drawing day at the art gallery yesterday. No painting for me this time; spent the whole day drawing. The drawing I made from the long pose was pretty much complete which is very unusual for me - and the figure has a head! It was such a great pose - loads of foreshortening.

This may be one of the most successful life drawings I've made. Pity the cat lay on it when I got it home and carried off a lot of the charcoal on her coat! Ah well...

 

Here's the drawing before and after it had been 'improved' by the cat.

Tuesday life drawing

Drawings made on four A4 etching plates this week. Three of the plates have already been etched, one not, so we'll see what happens...

Progress

Two more images in my Palimpsest series are underway. These are all prepped with a soft ground for life drawing tomorrow evening. I have no idea where this is going at the moment. Wheee...!!

Tuesday life drawing

 Didn't have time to prep etching plates for this week's session so it was literally back to the drawing board. Drawing smaller this week, charcoal in an A2 sketch pad. Not too happy with these. Hopefully back to the etching plates next week.

Tuesday life drawing is back

 This term's life drawing started up this week. Made three A4 drawings on tissue over a soft ground so that should give me something to work with for a while. Three plates on the go at once! Four if you count my Small Faces. New way of working for me.

Definitely feeling rusty after the Christmas break but one of the good things about this way of working is that it doesn't matter if the drawings aren't any good - I can just remove the bits I don't want.

Palimpsest continued

 





















Here is the first print in my Palimpsest series; three drawings, two of which were the same, the final one made directly on the plate last Saturday at life drawing.

And here's the second plate etched and printed. This is the first stage of the next Palimpsest print. Printed a small edition of four of these, even though this isn't the final image. 

Palimpsest

Following on from my post on 7 December where I'd started to burnish back the image and etch over it again, I found that burnishing alone was too laborious and not effective enough, so I had at the plates with a scraper and then a drill with various grinding and polishing attachments. Much fun and some interesting effects.

I drew another figure over this image at life drawing on Saturday so watch this space for a scan when the print is dry.
 

December life drawing

Charcoal drawing - 3 x 5 minute poses

It was our monthly Saturday life drawing session at the art gallery at the weekend. This month I took along some etching plates to draw directly onto them to capture the full energy of the drawing on the plate. This gets lost when transferring a drawing from paper to plate as you stiffen up and lose a lot of the extraneous marks made when searching for the image. 

The images below show the drawing as made on tissue paper laid over a soft grounded plate (left). The images on the right are the tissue paper taken off the plate and scanned to see the drawing more clearly. 

The first pair of images were made on the plate shown in my previous post so when etched, there will be fragments of the previous drawing. The second pair are on a new plate which will gradually become layered with images; a palimpsest of figure studies.

Saturday life drawing - November

 Had a good session at the art gallery yesterday. My tutor suggested I use a limited palette of four colours: blue black, white, burnt sienna and yellow ochre. I was a bit sceptical of my ability to do anything useful with just those four colours but actually, I was really pleased with the result. It's not a good photograph - doesnt show the colours as they actually are. I also tried to work from dark to light as I tend to make my paintings very pale to start with. I faff for ages with too subtle a range of tones, then have to wallop in a load of dark tones just before time's up. not a good way to work.

The Naked Muse

I actually sat down and read a book this weekend. And an excellent book it is too. Kelley Swain is a writer and life model and talks about her experiences of the latter. Well-wriiten and thought-provoking - I thoroughly recommend it to all life drawing enthusiasts. And people who aren't.