For this task, I drew a friend. It was the first model – nude or clothed – that I have drawn other than myself and my partner so it was a little daunting, but a really interesting task and one that I thoroughly enjoyed.

I began by creating some quick sketches of the model in different positions, gauging the measurements of her body parts and the distance between one and another part. I only created a few of these, because after a while I felt that I was ready and, also, I just wanted to get stuck in.

I found creating these preliminary drawings a little tedious. They’re rubbish, in my opinion.
I know that they are used to help me create the bigger picture, however, I found that 2-minutes wasn’t enough time to truly depict what I was seeing in front of me. I had to fight an overwhelming urge to just ignore the 2-minute rule and continue adapting and building upon these. In the end I wanted to just get stuck into the main part of the task, and I felt that the preliminary sketches weren’t benefiting me, but just irritating me. It was good to be able to quickly gauge the general length of her body parts and to quickly slot them together, but after just one or two, I felt that I was done and able to move on.

So, after creating a few sketches I decided to move on to the main part of the task:
Creating three sketches of the model in different positions – standing, seated, lounging.

I chose to use charcoal for this task because 1) I am yet to use this particular medium to draw the human body, and 2) I wanted to experiment with the movability and density of the charcoal.

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I am suuuuuuuper proud of these sketch.
I admit, there are areas that need improvement and areas that I don’t love, but I am so pleased with my progress.

My favourite of the three pieces is the middle one. I love the casual, candid positioning of the model, and I think I made managed to capture her really well. She looks relaxed, at ease, and comfortable with her appearance. When drawing a human being I think it’s important to capture their feeling and emotion within a piece, and this can be tricky when we’re focusing on so many features at once. In this piece, I think I’ve managed it.

One thing that I think I’ve done really well is depicting the texture and tone of the body. You’re able to see the dips and twists and folds of the body through my use of shading, especially in the second piece. The model is sitting on a chair, but is twisted towards me, and you can see this by the positioning and the direction/depth of charcoal on her body. She looks 3-dimensional, which is another thing I’m really chuffed with. Before, I struggled to lift many of my drawings out of the page, however, I’m developing real skill in bringing my sketches to life through the use of tone. Hallelujah!

I’ll be honest, I think I still have a way to go with nailing the proportion of a model/object when drawing it. There are some, if only slight, areas of these drawings that don’t look quite right and would look much better if worked upon. For example, the first sketch of the standing model: I believe that her legs are ever so slightly too short. I’m not sure if this is due to my viewpoint, but it doesn’t look quite right on paper. It’s not a great tragedy and I’m still confident in my work, but it’s just something to be mindful of in the future. Also, facial features, hands, and feet. These are all areas that I find really challenging. They always seem to come out a bit weird. I’ve noticed that when I focus on them on a large scale, I am able to depict them accurately and I surprised myself in a previous exercise where we were asked to focus on individual body parts and I created some really effective sketches of hands and feet, however, when it comes to adding them to a sketch of the full body, they’re very tricky.

I think I went a little overboard with the final sketch. I returned to a previous experiment that we focused on within this piece, as I had to practice the technique of foreshortening. Her feet were the closest part of her to me, and, whilst I think I’ve done a fairly good job of portraying this accurately, it still looks a little odd. I also think I went a little too far with the shading. Much more of her body was shaded due to her folded up position, however, I think I could have eased back just a little, especially around her breasts and her feet.

Imagining the skeleton and muscles of the body didn’t help me much. If anything, I found it a bit confusing. I have opted for combining a few of the previous techniques when creating the human form now, and I find it so useful. Instead of drawing the general shapes of the body parts and the central axis separately, I’ve began drawing lines in the areas and of the general length of the part that I will be drawing the parts: a loosely drawn circle for a head, neck, torso, upper and lower arms, hands, upper and lower legs, feet. This helps greatly as a guideline for a sketch and with the proportion of my piece.

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