ONLINE ART COURSE – FIGURES MODULE – NUDE FIGURE
Moving rapidly on in this current module, with only two further modules remaining in the course. How time flies…
For this project, Phil chose a tasteful nude for us to work on. He said it was actually very difficult to find one on his usual royalty-free image sites, but this is a very interesting one. He instructed us to use an A3 sheet of drawing paper, and to work with a sanguine pastel pencil and charcoal. However, I departed from the brief, because I do not have any drawing paper of that size and didn’t want to buy a whole pad just for one project. Also, I have had more than enough of working with charcoal! I therefore decided to do my entire drawing with pastel pencils, choosing black to go with Phil’s recommended sanguine colour.
I do not feel bad about this. The purpose of this module is less about the medium than the subject. We have covered the various media in earlier modules of the course, and learnt how to handle them. This module is concentrating on proportion and observation in figure drawing, and from that point of view it doesn’t matter what medium one uses.
The initial drawing
Phil recommended printing out the reference photo when drawing figures, as it is very difficult managing on a tablet. I printed the black and white version, and used a strip of mounting board as a measuring stick – Phil uses a coffee stirrer.
The first part of this project was to get the basic proportions correct with the help of the measuring stick, and to follow a line of action running through the whole figure.
It’s a bit difficult to see what I’ve done in this first photo, as I was working with the nearest to sanguine from my pastel pencil set and it doesn’t show up that well against the white paper.
Stage 2 – Outline
It’s now a lot easier to see what is going on. We continued to work with the sanguine pencil for now. Having first mapped out the proportions, it was relatively easy to get the basic form of the figure, and add some background elements.
Stage 3 – Shading
This was where we really gave the figure some form. Phil instructed us to use a charcoal pencil and a piece of charcoal for this but I used the black pastel pencil from my set. It was pretty messy, even so, and I had to clean up as I went, and I also rested my hand on a piece of scrap paper to try to prevent too much smudging.
With a combination of the pastel pencil, a blending stump and a kneaded eraser, I was able to get quite smooth shading.
Stage 4 – Completing the drawing with the background
Going back with a little more of the sanguine gave the drawing added warmth. In real life, my shading looks a lot smoother than this – not sure what the camera was playing at! I added some texture with the black pastel pencil in the bottom of the rug, and kept most of the background darker than the figure in order to make it stand out.
Originally I wasn’t keen to get started on this. I was toying between following the brief to the letter (which I didn’t want to do), and wondering what alternative media to use. I also felt a slight lack of enthusiasm about the whole thing because drawing figures doesn’t really appeal to me. So far in this module, though, I have enjoyed figures far more than I expected, especially this particular one. I am actually very pleased with how it turned out. Maybe there is something for figure drawing after all!
