Archive for November, 2009

An unusually narrow viewpoint

A head and shoulders portrait drawn from life. After a few quick 3-5 minute poses the model takes a pose for the rest of the session, often an hour and a half. That gives a lot of time for erasing and correcting the drawing but also a lot of time to overwork the thing. I basically knew when I started this that I wanted to focus on the model’s head. Specifically the shape of the head interested me. The model has a military background and the bearing and  close cropped hair that goes with that. But he also is an devotee of yoga, which I thought gives him a sense of peaceful strength. I saw this long narrow paper in pads at the art supply store. It forces you to think a little different about the figure because so much of it will be cropped off. But in some ways it is easier. Anything you do on it is going to be interesting.

Frederick Figure Drawing

One of the areas I am focusing more on recently is figure drawing. On Tuesday nights I join a group of artists in downtown Frederick while my wife attends classes at nearby Hood College. It is a great atmosphere in a large, classic unfinished attic in a turn-of-the-century building. I feel somewhat that I have been transported a century ago to Paris and that we are all wild bohemians; Picasso or Matisse could be joining us at any minute. Figure drawing is challenging because once you try for a likeness your have to keep your proportions somewhat accurate throughout the entire drawing. I taped two pieces of paper together for this drawing. It is much easier to get the feel of the entire figure when you can freely move you hand around in large gestures.