Figure Drawing with the Right Elements

Wow! Where do I begin: good model, good old blues music, good drawings, and good vibes at last nights Geiger Studios open figure drawing session. I think all these elements helped me produce a lot of nice drawings last night. I had a tough time picking a piece to share on this blog, I was in the zone, it's a great feeling.

Another element that helped me draw with lots of confidence and ease last night is practice. I've been drawing a lot lately, 2-3 hours daily, still lifes during the week, and Saturday morning portrait drawings. And before I went to last night's figure drawing session, I sat down to draw a still life for 2 hours, so I had a good warm up before the evening figure drawing session.

I strongly believe practicing my drawing daily will continue to improve my skill. It takes time to train the brain to translate what it sees to a hand drawing created on paper.

CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE, GRAPHITE ON PAPER 14" x 17"

Figure Drawing the Female Nude Back

This past Wednesday, I attended the open figure drawing session at Paul Geiger Studios in Toledo, Ohio. Paul had Andrea modeling, I like when Andrea models, she creates nice challenging poses and she always looks relaxed. I created a lot of nice pieces Wednesday night of Andrea, the one I share above was one of my favorites. I like it because the pose looks so simple but trust me, it had its challenges. Sometimes the simplest poses are the most difficult. This drawing is mostly of the model's back, an arm, hand, a little of her leg, foot and profile; it's a very simple pose. The challenge here was making this sketch work with just a few figure elements.

For me the secret to making this drawing successful was including the surface Andrea was sitting on. When Andrea took off her robe, she placed it on the raised platform to sit on. I'm glad she did this because it was like placing a picnic blanket down on the floor, it helped create depth and perspective. The blanket helped in making her look seated, a viewer could understand that her leg and foot was going away from us just beyond the edge of the blanket.

I remember thinking of moving to another chair when Andrea created this pose with her back to me. Sometimes I get caught up in thinking that figure drawing is always viewed from the front or side, and that the models back is too simple or boring or not challenging enough to draw, but I'm glad I stuck with this pose. I learned a lot from this one and the end result was rewarding.