I decided this week’s focus would be on figure drawing and, occasionally, painting.

Most of my experience of this has been gained from local life drawing classes run over the past year by the excellent Livvy Stainer, a successful Petersfield portrait painter. Accordingly nearly all the subjects are wearing what my grandmother would have once referred to as “not enough clothes”, in fact usually none. I will however put up one oil sketch of a clothed model.

In some cases there will be drawings made very quickly during a class, in others they will have been worked up and yet others will be based on other artists’ work or illustrations in books. Working from life is, as anyone who has ever done it knows, infinitely harder, particularly when the poses are very short. It is also, however lacking the results may be in finish and execution, the best way to improve. One has to think, VERY HARD, that it’s about process not product.

Today’s image, made with charcoal and smudging out, was taken from life as the result of three consecutive 60 second poses by one of our regular models, Cathryn. She took considerable amusement in removing her clothes at one frame a minute while we scrawled away trying to keep up. There wasn’t time to get much more than a basic outline and some sense of energy and the fall of light.

Chris