Bethnal Green April 2014

Here are some of my last drawings from Adrian Dutton's great life drawing class in Bethnal Green.

Until very recently I didn't really care about my art material and used pretty much anything but having reached a plateau at the beginning of the year, I had decided to do a bit more research and was seduced by Proko's art material video I posted a while back.

Following his advice I stuck with graphite and bought a set of Mars Staedler Lumograph and a pad of soft newsprint paper. The lead on the lumograph is stronger than the regular ones so you can expose the lead more without fearing it will break. It does break though so don't go too crazy on it ;-)

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My favourite pencils used to be the 7b and 8B as they provide with richer blacks but the marks are very difficult to erase. As a matter of fact, someone just confirmed something that wasn't obvious to me. The 7b and 8b are not actually pure graphite so this is why they don't respond like regular graphite pencils when erased. I love those for gestural drawings or background however, due to their composition, they don't shine like graphite when the drawing is seen at an angle which is good but not when mixed with real graphite.

In the drawing below I had started blocking the surrounding area of the hand with the 6b then carried on with the 7b, the result is far from satisfactory. I guess this is why I should skip graphite and eventually use charcoal pencils like some of the best artists in the class.

I can't be bothered for now as I just want to focus on the anatomy and get faster without adding a new variable in the equation.

The following drawings are one month older and done between 20/25 minutes. The one above was 1 hour so... I guess I wasn't as efficient... ah yes I remember. The model above was actually with her new born so she moved her right arm dramatically towards the end of the pose. I had to draw her chest by memory which explains why the navel seems out of place ;-)

 Ah, one more tip. You are not supposed to sharpen your pencils so badly when using a blade!!! Yeah I am just being lazy and don't want to also bring sanding paper when coming to the class. This is not too much of a problem when drawing the figure but it is when you want to shade the background. This is why most of my drawings have really nasty backgrounds.