drawings from life
this isn't my thing, really
but if you can’t draw, you can’t illustrate.
Drawing from life, much more than drawing from photos teaches you to look and see the world. It’s a very enjoyable exercise.
I used to do life drawing every week back in the 90’s then there was a 20-year gap and I picked it up again. Here are a very few examples from both phases.
this isnt my thing, really
but if you can’t draw, you can’t illustrate.
Drawing from life, much more than drawing from photos teaches you to look and see the world. It’s a very enjoyable exercise.
I used to do life drawing every week back in the 90’s then there was a 20-year gap and I picked it up again. Here are a very few examples from both phases.
this was one
of my latest life drawings from the first stage, I see it’s dated 2002
one of my favourite
drawings ever.
This tiny scribble was of a dancer in rehearsal at the NSCD in Leeds, UK.
I was working for the architects who were designing new dance studios at the School in the 90’s and the School let me sit in on rehearsals to sketch.
another
from the same series
20 or more
years later, I was living in Oman.
Models in life classes in the Middle East don’t take their clothes off – but I found an evening class where we could draw things other than naked people.
this is still life eh?
(joke)
my wife
from a photo.
I love this pic.
She doesn’t
me
I actually bought an easel to draw this picture. I used it twice.
Pencil on cartridge paper Spring 2017
oops, me again
a lighting and expression exercise from my bathroom mirror
Procreate on iPad – August 2018
and another one
The nice thing about me is that I stay still and do what I’m told while I’m posing.
little bits
of bodies can make for useful study exercises
especially
hands.
I like drawing hands, there are some more here.
just found
another one from long ago.
This was ink wash done without a pencil under drawing from life. I have pictures of this guy’s front view too, but probably the two of his back posted here and at the top of this page are the best.
in fact
I quite like backs.
This is more recent stuff, done at Dave Bissit’s life classes at the Hive . . .
March 2019
. . .
. . . and . . .
a male model!
5B pencil on watercolour paper.
March 2019
. . .
the other side of the same.
it always
. . same
model, different pose.
I realised
after drawing this that she was the same model I had drawn in April 2019 (above)
Summer 2021
She
really is a great model – tons of life in her poses even when she’s relaxing.
She’s also one of the few who shows an interest in what we are drawing. Here’s her link.
the story
here was – “If you’ll stop practicing that bloody guitar riff for twenty minutes, I’ll let you draw me”
Winter 2021
. . same
twenty minutes!
the “return to home” icon in the right margin of this page is by xkcd and appears here as my tribute to John Conway who died in april 2020.
And to misquote Louis Armstrong – if you have to ask why I put it here:
. . . you’ll never know.
