Since I got back from Italy I've started going to a 4h long life drawing session each week down in Leith here in Edinburgh. It's really great because they have two models, one that stays in one pose for the whole session, except for some short poses in the beginning, and the other model does short poses throughout the whole session. Here are two of my drawings I've done the last couple of weeks, one in charcoal and one smaller pencil drawing.

First drawing back in the UK

So I'm back in the UK again....actually I'm up in lovely Edinburgh and this is my first drawing since I came home from the Florence Academy of Art. It's a smaller and shorter figure study than the monster drawings we did at the FAA, but all the same it was a lot of fun. I managed to find a really nice quality paper up here in Edinburgh made in Someset. It's smoother than the Fabriano Roma paper that I'm used to and therefore more suitable for this kind of smaller drawings with a smaller portrait. It's supposedly grey....that was it said on the label but it looks more yellow to me. Since I really like drawing with both chalk and charcoal I might try to dye some paper for my next drawing to get a darker shade of grey.
I used a photo as reference for this drawing since I don't really have the funding yet to hire a model 8) But I have actually managed to find a life drawing class up here in Edinburgh that have 4h poses, so I'm really looking forward to going to that!

Last drawing of the year at the FAA

This is the second drawing of my third trimester at the FAA and my last in Florence. It's on toned Archers paper and drawn with chalk and charcoal as a change from my previous charcoal drawings that have all been on white Roma paper. It's been so much fun to draw with both light and dark.

Charcoal drawing - Claudia

On Friday I finished another 5 week charcoal figure study....and here it is. Sometimes you get models that move a lot and sometimes you get models like Claudia who doesn't move at all even in a difficult position. I mean you have to allow for some twisting and similar, but in general Claudia has been so good. If anyone's wondering how she managed to hold her hands like that for 75h, she had them resting in loops of fishing line hanging from the ceiling.

This drawing, similar to my last one of Alberto, has a lot of direct light and not many shadow shapes. I found this incredibly challenging, since the shapes of the halftones are so diffuse and they change a lot depending on lighting conditions, movement of the model etc. If you have a lot of dark shadow shapes you tend to be able to see the forms faster and then you simply soften edges or leave them harder to distinguish what form you want. When you only deal with halftones though, it's basically like just dealing with the outlines and the transitions and therefore it's so much slower and more difficult to see the forms. I apprached this drawing in a different way to my last though and I think it worked a lot better for me. I found that if I applied a light layer of charcoal everywhere and then erased out the absolute lightest parts, instead of trying to leave the lightest parts by simply drawing around them, I managed to wrap my head around the shapes much easier. I don't know why this worked so much better for me, since it's pretty much the same thing but it just did.

Portrait Study

Last trimester I joined a little portrait group of four people where we all take turns to sit for each other for portraits on the weekends. I was the first one to sit for 15h. So somewhere out there, there are 3 portraits of me circulating. Chris was the second to sit and this is the result. 15h isn't really that much so I'm quite happy with the result, since I think it looks quite like Chris. I still think sculpting portraits are such a humbling experience though....solely since it's rock hard :)

Sculpting with a piece of sand paper

On friday we finished our 3 weeks pose in sculpture with Alessio as our model. He's been such a great model and such a change in body type from our last long pose. He also had really different proportions, like a rib cage narrower than the pelvis but still with wide shoulders. Just shows how you can't completely rely on standard proportions. Really interesting stuff :)

For this pose I started using a technique they teach here at the FAA about unifying the surface with a piece of sand paper. I haven't really used this before, but it works great. I do it by using a small strip of sandpaper (maybe 3 x 7cm), laying it on the surface and pressing with a wooden tool from high point to high point across the form rather than along it. If you use a thick kind of sand paper it acts like a tool this way, but doesn't leave any lines from the edges of the tool. You only really use this technique at the end of a pose. It works great to highlight if you need to fill in an area or take away, since you can't hide any flaws under rough modelling.

Pencil drawings - 2nd trimester

Twice a week we have evening drawing sessions here at the FAA, where we draw for 2h in pencil. These are the best of my pencil drawings from my second trimester and the poses were 2 nights each:

Third trimester!

I still have a few pencil drawings from my second trimester that I want to post...but I'll have to get them properly scanned first, so they will have to come later.

Anyway....I've started my 3rd and last trimester here at the Florence Academy of Art! The curriculum for this trimester is: Two 5 week poses in the drawing program and one 3 week, one 5 week pose with two 1 week quick poses as warm up in the beginning in the sculpture program.

Our first model for the 5 week charcoal drawing is called Claudia and she is a very good and experienced model. She happened to be away for a few days of the first "warm up" week before we actually set the long pose though, so we got the opportunity to do a short and smaller charcoal drawing of a male model. I haven't done a charcoal study this size before (it's about 40cm high) and it was so much fun. The point of these smaller and shorter drawings is to treat it as a pencil drawing in charcoal, rather than a proper charcoal drawing. This means that you don't put any background in and you keep to one shadow value without half tones, but with transitions and accents. I really hope we will be able to do another one of these this term since it was so much fun.(3days - 9h)

Charcoal drawings - second trimester

In my second trimester here at the FAA we started drawing 5 week poses (approx 75h) in charcoal instead of the previous 3 weeks. This allowed me to get further with the values of these drawings which has been great fun.

For my first drawing of Laura I had a spot in the drawing room with a lot of clearly defined shadow and light shapes which I find allows you to make a dramatic light effect in your drawing. For my second drawing of Alberto however I was having a much more difficult spot in the room. I had a lot of flat light, almost no shadow shapes, because of the dynamic pose the balancing leg and the arm were moving a lot and I had a 3/4 portrait which I find very difficult. So basically....I found this second drawing to be rock hard, but I was still enjoying it.

Second Trimester at the FAA - Full figure sculptures

In my second trimester here at the FAA sculpture program we started sculpting full figure sculptures in half life size from life models. We started with five one week poses to get used to setting up the pose and starting to touch the overall proportions, body type and gesture. In a one week pose the goal was to establish where the pit of the neck was situated in relation to the pelvis, the rib cage and the ankle bony points.

(1 week poses)
We were taught how to set up the pose by following Rob Bodem's (the director of the FAA sculpture program) manual for figurative sculpture; "Drawing in Space".

After these initial one week "clay sketches" we did a long pose of 5 weeks.

(5 weeks pose)

First trimester drawings

Here are some of the drawings I did during my first trimester. I apologise for the poor picture quality. I'm finding it really difficult getting a decent digital copy of these drawings, since they are so light and one here is even on a grey paper.

The FAA teaches you to draw really light handed with a hard pencil. I haven't been used to this before and used to prefer really soft pencils like 3 or 4B. Now I'm only using H and 2H and this is why I now get these really soft and light drawings.


When we draw with charcoal here at the academy we use long sticks of B, HB or H charcoal. We then sharpen the sticks to needle points or sharp blades with use of sandpaper blocks. Since we draw on quite large sheets of paper (the drawings here are approx 1-1.1m tall) we can get quite a lot of precision. Before coming here I was used to charcoal being the medium where you draw quite quickly and roughly. I used to think that drawing on one drawing with charcoal for longer than an hour would be impossible, since it would just be too saturated and messy after that. Now when we spend maybe 75h on the same charcoal drawing I find that quite funny.

This drawing I spent 3 weeks on, so approx 45h and it was my last drawing of my first trimester.





This is my second charcoal drawing of the trimester and it's showing the progress day by day.

My first trimester at the FAA

When I first started at the sculpture program, there were a lot of new things for me. Coming from a life of sitting down in front of a computer to standing up for 8 hours a day getting your hands messy, is quite a big difference. But apart from actually using clay when modelling I also got thrown into trying to learn how to draw in sight-size. It might sound very logical, but when I first tried it, it felt more like drawing star signs with "connect the dots" sort of mentality. Measure a hight, put a little indication dot, measure another hight and a width, put a dot.....and link up.

After getting used to it though, it's not actually like "connect the dots" and you can draw pretty freely and just "check yourself" with all these mirrors and plumb lines and all other methods that they teach you to use here.

A normal week day here at the sculpture program would be 3h sculpting in the morning, 1h break for lunch, 3h drawing in the afternoon and then either 2h anatomy lecture (once a week), 2h evening drawing (twice a week) or about an hour of art history lecture (once a week).

In my first trimester we did a lot of short sculpture projects. We started with sculpting a pepper for a couple of days, introducing us to seeing abstract shapes. Then we made a copy of a cow femur 1.5 times the size in plaster, to get used to the material that we later on would use to cast most of our sculptures. After this we started copying four plaster casts of features from Michelangelo's David. We did the mouth, the nose, the ear and the eye. When we finished the features we copied a human skull. This introduced us to how to set up and sculpt a portrait, but with the benefit of it being completely still. Our final sculpture project of the trimester was then a life size portrait of a live model.

And so I begin....

In September last year I started studying at the Florence Academy of Art at the sculpture program. I am intending to post my progress on this blog, but also my art projects outside of the FAA.

But first things first....a little over a year ago now, I took part in a digital painting course run by Don Seegmiller. I then used these paintings as part of my application to the FAA.