Tuesday, January 16, 2007

LIFE DRAWING CLASSES started yesterday - I was late, as usual. The entire Exeter City Centre is being rebuilt, or so it seems, and all the carparks I usually use were closed. I tried following signs to another (all the time, getting further and further away from the Phoenix, my destination) and then the signs disappeared. Eventually I managed to park in Dix's field and then didn't have time to get change for the ticket - paid for an hour and trusted to the gods that I wouldn't get clamped.

The class had started half an hour before... loads of people.

The excercises that our teacher, Nicci Wonnacott, gave us were fascinating - amongst other things, we were given just a minute to make a quick charcoal sketch, we were given rapidly changing poses which we would overlap and we were told to look for an minute then draw what we remembered with our eyes closed. We were told to draw with the opposite hand to the one we normally used - that was wierd.

Here's an example of the 6x2 minute sketches I did:


I've got four more sessions - we'll see how I develop.

OH, and I didn't get clamped or get a ticket. Phew.

5 comments:

whimsical brainpan said...

Nice work!

Seahorse said...

Wow, all that knitting and art classes as well! That sketch looks pretty good to me!

Judy said...

A good friend in college took a concentrated (3 week) course in life drawing. She made perhaps 80 sketches of the female nude model and had to choose eight to submit for her grade. The fascinating thing to me was how she cropped them. It was a wonderful lesson in removing the superfluous to create beauty out of "parts" of a drawing.

The other noteworthy memory of that class was how diligent the [male] custodians were... They would come in to empty the waste basket several times an hour! And the groundspeople would mow the lawn outside the window every day! LOL!

I am looking forward to seeing/hearing how your class progresses.

I hope the studio is warm enough so you don't feel compelled to knit something warm for the model!

TutleyMutley said...

1Ha! apparently we get to draw 'Neville' some time over next 4 weeks: 6ft4 and a slightly different proposition...
Wonder if the caretakers of the building would be quite so diligent at emptying the wastebins and mowing lawns?
I'm pretty good at cropping too - we haven't touched on perspective yet - I did bring my knitting, but only got it out in the coffee break.

Ta for the compliments, whimsical and seahorse.

Rain said...

Wow, that looks fantastic.