Drawing school update: week 3

03 Feb

Pencil and charcoal
76 x 55 cm

This week we drew from the model. The focus was on the issue of creating a convincing sense of space in the image, both in front of and behind the model. Apart from a few short poses at the start, most of the day was spent on one long pose. I resisted the temptation to do several shorter drawings, opting instead to try to pull together a single image that felt coherent in terms of structure and mark making. 

Perhaps this sense of ambition meant that I tried to exert some control over the process, but I struggled to maintain a degree of looseness throughout the entire image. The model feels rigid and stayed in comparison with the way the foreground objects and figures in the background are rendered. I think I became lost in my efforts to get the contours of the model correctly articulated and failed to connect the entire picture together through the mark-making. In hindsight I was far too conscious of my drawing process throughout and wasn't able to release enough of my desire to be in control to allow the image to tell me what to do. I was in charge too much, and the result is a competent, but rather dull drawing.

Detail

Warm-up sketch