Due to my camera being at work, I’ve been unable to photograph my life drawing for a week or two, so here’s a double dose of dubious daubing.
Lady with green glass globe.
Even though there are anatomical mistakes in the structure (the arm should be raised, the torso flattened, the hand – though hands could always be better) the image holds together: The colours of background and foreground box the image in, the skin tones are fun and the pose is redolent of Michaelangelo’s work on the Medici tomb.
As you can see, I’ve bought some new paint (a near turquoise green and a light ochre).
1 hour pose. About a metre wide paper. Acrylics and conté pastel.
Blue lady
The hands and feet are not as elegant as the model’s were. The brown colour was an inspired mistake; some old brown paint was on the sponge used to fill in the background in the last seconds of the painting.
A 45 minute pose. About a metre high paper. Acrylics and conté pastel.
A close up of the above.
The stretch
This model had a mission to get in striking positions that may well have caused him pain. Looking at the whole classes work at the end of the lesson everyone had made a good image of this pose. As I knew we were working in colour the next week, the decision was made just to use charcoal. Smudged using the knuckles. Back to mono.
45 minutes.
Kerelan pink
This 30 minute pose was a real fight. The leg positions in and out of the stool were tough to make sense of. The breakthrough came with the use of a Kerelan pink. The background was painted in at home, using up some blue paint from a kids painting session.
45 minutes.
3 magnificent poses
There were 4 images on this piece of paper; the one blanked out looks like a bad bronze sculpture. I’m have trouble painting in a small scale while standing…
Again the poses were magnificent. Also again the backgrounds were painted at home (which covered up a host of mistakes on the amazing one legged pose).
10 minutes each.
Tall blue on pink square
The warm up drawing, salvaged later by blasts of colour.
15 minutes.
Fan brush lady
This warm up pose was made using the fan shaped blending brush. The myriad thin, long marks add to the form and the colour below shows through. Brush strokes that have a meaning in their direction. A slightly impressionist effect?
15 minutes.
Trevor Mill Graphic Designer Ltd 
beautiful drawings, I really like the color and atmosphere you develop here 🙂
Great to see “real” drawing. Do you use some of these studies for more finished work later?
Thank you, I’ve worked on some pieces later, there’s an interesting question about what you can add to make it better, rather than just simplifying or imposing a style. Real drawing to finished composition…
I suppose what I was really meaning was – Do you use any of your quicker drawings as studies for worked-up paintings? It’s a thing I do a lot because I can’t often afford to hire a model for long painting sessions. Perhaps you regard the studies as an end in themselves.
I sometimes work over the life drawings, but no I haven’t put them together into new works, though this should happen. Especially as a lot of them have the same perspective. There is a loss of information each time you copy a work which stops this, Simplifying works but brings in a feeling of style that isn’t so obvious in the quickness of putting down marks infront of another human. Hiring a model would be a dream – I used to have a flatmate who would pose for 30 minutes a day every lunch, that was great.