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: