First Life Drawing
This is my portfolio containing all the work that I did inside the life drawing class throughout the semester.
The first week that we had life drawing I was really excited because I was hoping to learn more about the shape of the body and how to portray that onto the page. Sarah has introduced us to life drawing today and I honestly couldn’t wait for Friday because I was really excited to just go in and try it out. Before I went into the class I have decided to do some research on life drawing and watch a couple of videos that might make it easier for me in class.
While I was doing the research on the anatomy of the body for the life drawing before the class on Friday I have looked at different references and designs on the internet that were drawn from life.
When I was researching different styles of life drawing and how people tend to approach drawing the body. I found out that its important to just focus on the shapes and first structuring out the body instead of trying to add the details because they don’t really matter when it comes to life drawing. This was really hard for me to achieve because I still kept focusing on the details on my sketches which I didn’t like because I would often run out of time given.
I kept looking at the references and images a couple of times to just try and see what shapes they use for the actual body and how they connect them as well. While I was doing this I came upon this amazing youtube channel Proko. I looked at his youtube channel and I have noticed that he has some amazing art tutorials and even some on life drawing. I really liked how he would narrate his video and how he would explain every single step.
When the class has started Sarah has talked to us again and told us to not worry about any of the details and focus more on just the anatomy of the body, movement and try to find the weight distribution. I listened to the advice for my first week, and honestly I didn’t use that advice on paper because all I would try to do was show off and try to seem cool by showing everyone that I knew what I was doing. So, all I did was just focused on the details and tried to make the shapes of the body as detailed as possible…and that is just a wrong way of doing it for people who start life drawing. So researching some of the life drawing sketches and watching Proko’s videos made it a little more comfortable for me to sketch out. These are the first sketches that I had from my first class.
As you can see in these couple first sketches that my shapes look really smooth and straight and thats because I focused way too much on the trying to get the details right. You can see me loosen up a bit in the couple next pictures and try to get the anatomy right. Sarah has came over and told me that I should watch out for the proportions and don’t make the things bigger then they should be, which I thought was amazing feedback.
Shapes and Dimensions
Also when I was drawing the laying down posses Sarah came up and gave me some really good advice that has stuck with me since she said it. When she said that rule I was really surprised of how much sense it made because I would always just look and draw how ever I want to draw it, instead I should try to draw it as it is. From that point on I focused on the laying down body and tried my best to look at the objects around it and under the body to try to get the right direction and space for the sketch. I saw that there was a couple of object that I could maybe use to break down the scene and make it easier for myself to place the body. I saw the bed under the body and I decided to sketch under the body. This helped me a lot because it gave me a sense of dimension and it helped me draw out things like hands like they are laying down and not going up. Without the advice from Sarah I was having a difficult time making sure that the hand looks like its laying down.
Sarah said: Draw what you see, not what you want it to be.
This was definitely a great start to the life drawing lessons and I really enjoyed the class as well. After the sessions I was looking forward to the next Friday because I wanted to learn and try different methods of sketching out the anatomy of the human body.
This was another week where we did life drawing and I was just excited to learn more about the human anatomy and just sketching shapes. As you can see in the first picture you are able to see that the first nude model is a female and that I am sketching her from the back. I am actually so proud of that first image because it actually turned out just like in real life (apart from the feet). I really liked how i gave the body the right proportions and then added in little details, but not too much because I didn’t want to focus on details and instead I focused on getting the shapes right.
This life drawing lesson we have discussed about the poses and how you might have to change the way you sketch out the body depending on your style as well. We looked at the models doing different kind of poses this time, both of them have had some kind of object beside them, which I always like because it helps you out by giving you a medium. This means that you can use it in order to place the body properly and get the proportions right because you are able to see the difference in sizes between the medium and the model as well.
I am using every medium that I can see because Sarah told us that by drawing out some of the medium it makes it ay easier for you to then sketch out the shapes and body proportions. The stick that the male model was holding also helped sketching out the proportions because if you start with the stick you are able to see the size that you might want the model to be. I don’t really like the sketches of the male model in the picture because I tried different shapes and them kept sketching over one sot which made the sketch look messy. I love the advice and the guidance I get in this class because I can always take it to my others sketches and drawings like my compositions and sketches for the design world group work.
Short Scenes
This is all of the work I have done through the week when it came to really short scenes. This was probably the most challenging part of the life drawing because we would barely have any time to sketch anything so we would have to make the best we had in the amount of the time we would be given. Sarah told us not to worry about quick sketches like this because this is just all for the practise and getting to know your ability and how you can do when it comes to fast sketches. She also mentioned that these exercises and short time drawings are also just to warm up your hand and prepare you for the longer sketches. On the other hand, I really liked these quick sketches without any limitations because I would have to sketch really fast and just try to get the pose and the formation of the model right.
The problem for me was that I would always have a problem which was going into the detail, and even when it comes to really short sketches I would still try to add some sort of detail into the image. This is something I need to work on for sure because I keep on thinking about details no matter what. So I have decided to research more about the life drawing and maybe how to hold the pencil different to see if it would help me.
When I watched this video I was able to see that even Proko doesn’t focus on the detail first, he gets the shape and the proportion right first. I was also really fascinated. by the way he was holding the pencil and the wonders that it did for him. I was really surprised because he was holding it at the tip of the pencil and then he would just draw smooth long lines to make up the shape of the body. Every time I watch his videos I learn something new, which is I really like his Youtube channel.
The next time I will have class I really want to try holding the pencil in different positions and see if maybe it would work out for me to shape out the proportions.
Weight Distribution
Inside couple of the classes we have have talked about the weight of the body and how can it rest on some of the mediums in the room or around the models. Sarah would tell us to first look at the body and try to get a good image of it and then try to find the gesture line which helps us to capture the essential gesture of the models. This was really hard to do, especially for me because I didn’t really did well when it came finding where the weight on the body is and how you put that inside the sketch.
The first image was another short amount sketches that we didn’t have much time on so I had to quickly try to get the shapes right. You can see I have definitely improved when it comes to fast sketches because I am able to get the right shapes fast and not needing to focus on details is always great.
In these sketches in the last few classes i tried just focusing on finding out the right line that I would use in order to help me find the the body of the shape and then allow me to find the right proportions and shapes. I have learned this from Proko videos. This is because he just draws a line and then he joins it with the lines and the shapes of the body and it just looks right. As you can see in the first Image I have been drawing a few poses from a male model this time. The first pose was interesting because he was facing forward and while doing so, he was holding a stick as well. The stick itself helped me find the proportions of the body. The other sketches in the image are the male model sitting in the chair, this made is some what simpler to look at because he was sitting on a medium. Since I had the medium very visible i was able to properly sketch out the proportions of the body. You can see that I have used the line of action for one of the poses because it allowed me to then make the body looks like its bending. This distributed the weight of body on the back and the backside. The other sketch didn’t work out as well as I thought it would because I just tried to detail it.
Then we had to draw the female model while she is sitting down with one leg up and then laying down on the ground. I really like the one where she is laying down because of how well I got the proportions (except the legs). I could of definitely used the medium below here to make the sketch look more believable, but I still think It worked out very well on it.
Weird and Heavy poses
For the past couple weeks we have focused on shapes that would have some weight in them and then some of the shapes would have some of the emotion. And I think we are trying to convey that emotion onto the page. in this first image you can see that the first female poses didn’t really have much emotion. It was just her laying her weight on the medium and we had to capture that. I think I did pretty okay when it came to capturing her medium since she was using the box and it was pretty easy to capture that.
When it came to the male model, he was showing way more expressions and emotion in his poses which I really liked. You can see that he is grabbing onto something in the first sketch and I think I captured the pressure in the hand, but next time I would also add some expression to the face to show more aggression in the sketch.
This was me trying to sketch out the some of the models that have used cloth and other equipment for me to sketch out. I think it was definitely a challenge because I never had to focus more on the clothing of the characters.
For the last class we did a really fun activity where we just drew a couple of model sketches and Sarah said she would then get home and animate it, which I thought was pretty cool. The ones that attended the class got the copy of this video and I am going to be sharing the link here because I think Sarah did an amazing job.
Mantas Macidulskas 