PART FOUR: DRAWING FIGURES: Project: Form

For the Essential Elements exercise I was asked to do 6 drawings of 10 minute poses. I started off with reclining poses, of which I did 3. I tend to focus so much on getting the outline and shape right that I often don't leave myself much time to add enough tone to establish the form of the body. I made sure that I had directional light coming in from one side to help me see the form more easily.

The second of the reclining drawings is probably the best because the proportions were difficult (lots of foreshortening and slightly weird angles of the legs) but it looks OK considering. A little more background information would improve it massively as at the moment Paul looks as though he's doing some sort of bizarre breakdancing move! His body/torso was leaning in towards the bed (away from his central axis) and I tried to emphasize this with the darker shading on his arm and the small part of his chest that you can see.

The third drawing was not too bad either in terms of achieving a sense of the model's pose. His back is flat to the bed but his head is facing away and legs are leaning away from me, one lying almost flat. One hand is squashed under him so looks a bit odd.

I did a few seated poses, one upright on a bench, one sitting up in bed and one on a sofa. The best of these in my opinion is probably the second one because although his face looks hideous and not at all like my long suffering boyfriend, I know what his body looks like and this is quite a common position for him to sit so the familiarity of the pose made it a little easier on me.

The one on the sofa looks as though he has no bottom which unfortunately makes the pose look a little odd, however our sofas are very squidgy and sinkable.... That's a terrible excuse but honest nonetheless! The biggest struggle with all these drawings was the time limit. 10 minutes is not a great deal of time to get the shapes, proportions and form all in and correct. But I found it a really useful exercise in focusing less on outline (one of my many problems) and more on the 3D form of the model.