Figure Drawing, Pt.18

Above:~6.5x3.5" 10 min. each, pencil

For whatever reason, I wasn't feeling it too much on this particular evening. For the two-minute warm-up poses, after a number of drawing sessions I eventually began doing one sheet on which all 10 poses are arranged on-the-fly. I don't typically like super-short poses, so I needed to find some other way of making them interesting to do, and page arrangement solved the issue.

R: 11x14" 2 min. each, ink

What's a shame is that while it wasn't the case on this night, the 2 minute poses are often some of the best, since the models are able to do more contorted or energetic poses that would be difficult if not impossible to hold for longer periods of time. But with 2 minutes, you're hardly able to study those poses. Another reason why I find short poses to be unhelpful. They can be useful just in shaking out the wrists, and "warming up" your brain for what's to follow. But 20 minutes worth of 2 minute poses is still more than is required for that, it seems.


In any case, after a day of work and a one-hour commute to go draw, you can't always expect to be totally into it. I considered just splitting an hour in and going home, that's how out of it I felt. But I plowed on.

One thing that seemed to get in the way was where I was sitting in relation to the model. Basically, I sat at the bottom of a "U" shaped configuration of chairs, where the models see that point as being straight-ahead. Usually I sit off to one side or other. There is a lamp above them, and for most poses it cast shadows all down their torsos, so there wasn't a lot of good light and shadow interplay as there seems to be from other angles. In those cases, it may have been smarter to either use a mass-shading medium like charcoal, or to just do a tight contour drawing, paying little mind to light and shadow at all. But as I said, I wasn't in a proper thinking mood.

L: 4.5x7" pencil, 20 min.