Often, when given lot's of time to make a drawing we get focused on the detail and lose our way. Short poses ranging from 30 seconds to 5 minutes are helpful in getting us to see the model as a unity. In the given time we should aim to get on paper that which is essential about the pose. This approach is sometimes known as 'gesture' drawing.
The drawings below were made with longer poses of half an hour or more. |
We used various natural objects in session 7 to explore tone and took things forward in the final session to focus on using tone in conjuntion with line to create volume and space.
Drawing from life should not be concerned only with outlines and using tone should not be about filling in outlined shapes. Rather, a visual understanding of the shape itself can be arrived at in a more satisfactory way through using a combination of line and tone. In approaching this still life subject, students were encouraged to use line as little as possible in building up the forms. Playing tones off against each other helps us to arrive at the three dimensional quality of the shape (if an object) which is essential to our understanding of it's true character. |