Life Drawing: Week 9
This was my last life drawing class of the semester. Somehow it made each drawing and each exercise more precious. I will likely take future life drawing classes, but it might be another year or more before I do. I’ve learned a lot this semester, and it was a great refresher. I took a lot of life drawing in college, and I found that over the course of this class a lot of the things I learned back in college came back to me with ease. All in all it was a great experience.
Abe was back this week, for another round of excellent poses. We started with gesture drawings, and then moved on to another visual memory drawing. Here is my drawing. The figure on the left is from memory, and the figure on the right is from the model.
Visual Memory Week 9
Chris (our teacher) had us do a motion study. Our model took two poses, but kept his feet in the same position for each pose, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. For twenty minuets Abe switched back and forth from one pose to other, holding each for about one minute at a time. I decided to work in watercolor this week, something I’d wanted to try for a while. I figured it would be best to warm up a bit before the long drawing, so I did the motion study in watercolor, and then refined it with pen towards the end of the exercise.
Motion Study
For the final drawing Abe took the same pose as last week. This allowed the members of the class working in oil paint, to have a longer period to finish their paintings. Inspired by there paintings I decided to try one of my own, but instead of oil I chose watercolor. I built the painting up over several different layers, working as quickly as I could while the paint was still wet. I then let the paint dry a little and worked a few more layers. With ten minutes left I broke out my pen and refined the painting. All in all I enjoyed the process.
Watercolor Figure Drawing
And with that my life drawing class was complete. I’ve been working on a few other projects and have a number of sketches and doodles to share with you in coming weeks. Thanks for tuning in!
An Artist's Journey 
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