About half way through my Graphic Design BTEC I had to do a short life drawing course. We were told this would help us with our designing throughout the course and in later life. I found life drawing quite difficult to begin with but with time and practice I did start to notice a definite improvement in my work. Since doing the short course I think that it has definitely helped me in the other work that I have done, not only did it give me more confidence in my drawing skills, but it gave me a better knowledge of simple drawing skills such as proportions and perspectives. I think that it is very important that anyone doing any kind of arts or design course should do life drawing even if the work is computer based as I know that it been really useful for me and I think I have transferred the skills I learned to other elements of design work as well.
Below are all of the life drawings I did throughout the short course in order.
Above is my first ever life drawing. I is completely out of proportion but I still am quite fond of it because I think she has character. I am awful at drawing faces especially in a short amount of time (I think we were given around 15 minutes to complete these) and I have added far to much shading. Also her legs are much too short.
The second one is a slight improvement. Again I think I was given 15 minutes to compete it. Working in such a short space of time and not being able to use a rubber means that you end you end up with lines where you have gone wrong before. I think I am creating much too dark lines here which are harder to rub out, it would be better to start with soft lines and go over them if I wanted to create the darker effect later.
This one is a big improvement on the other two, the proportions and the shading are both much better, as long as you ignore the arm coming out of her chest which is a complete disaster but body wise i am much happier.
I eventually gave up on trying to draw the head as I find it so hard and I was spending too much time over it when I could be spending more time over the body and getting that right. I do think this one is the best one so far, but the shading on the last one is better than this.
The next few are all done with sticks, twigs and ink. When we were first told that this is the medium that we would be drawing in I didn't know how it would be possible but once we had collected our materials and started having a go I realised it wasn't as hard as I first thought. The main problem is the ink as there is no way of rubbing out your mistakes. At least with charcoal you can smudge it away with your finger. As you can see I have made quite a few mistakes in the one above.
This one is my best yet, and maybe my favourite out of the collection. The front leg is a little bit thin but I like the effect that sticks and ink have when trying to shade and I think this one has worked really well. I think I also like this one because of the position she is standing in, there are more curves and it made her more interesting to draw.
I think technically this one is the best one out of all the ones I did over the time of the course. It is defiantly the best proportionally and the shading is good. I have also included the lines of the body making it look much more 3D. One thing I do think about this one though is her bum looks like a mans bum. But that is not really a problem.
Adding another object to the picture made things slightly harder, although we were given double the time (half and hour) to do this one. Also the fact that the model wanted to sit on a blanket on the chair made it hard because it was hard to make the blanket look realistic and include all the right shadows, folds and creases. I am quite happy with my attempt although the knee that is up on the chair should come out more than it does.
Now you can really see what a big improvement I have made since those first drawings at the top. This one still isnt perfect but its a million times better than those ones. Again this one is in stick and ink which I actually think, after my initial fear, I find easier to use than charcoal. The foot ruins this one slightly though, there are still details I find very hard to draw.
Our teacher wanted us to start using different materials as well. Random abstract objects made up from different bits of paper that we could find. I went for newspaper, brown paper and white and blue tissue paper. I didnt want to use a colour that was too bright as it would distract from the drawing too much. The effects i was very pleased with. I didn't really know what I was doing with the paper so I just ripped it up and chose the parts I thought looked best (not that easy as how do you define 'good' ripped paper), but I was happy with the results. Looking at this image now I can see that the leg tucked under the other one is positioned wrong and looks slightly like her leg isn't actually attached, but that is a sign of bigger improvement and understanding since I did this part of my course, so that can only be a good thing.
This time we went back to using normal chalk. I am happy with this drawing, but it feels a little bit boring after looking at the one above.
For our final task we had to draw our model, four times, on the same sheet, using different shading styles to see what we thought worked best for us. The last two use a much heavier shading technique, which I think kind of gives the illusion of movement. This style isn't the one that I usually go for but I do think it is effective looking at it now.
