Pastel Life Drawing

This is from last Friday with our smaller group for "Long  Pose". It works out to around 2 hours drawing (or painting) time - allowing for breaks for the model and time to set up the pose and lighting. This piece is done with mostly soft pastels or grey pastel paper- no mixed media this time as we were in a smaller room and there wasn't comfortable space to get up, apply paint, pastel gel etc. We have a sturdy step stool now and with sufficient padding on it, it makes something a bit different for the model to perch on. So, we get away from the flatter "girl in chair" type pose. My position meant that I had a nice angular view - and a bit of challenging  foreshortening. "Foreshortening" just means perspective as applied to the human form. If we had  more storage space, we could have a chaise lounge or other things that would give an interesting set of options for poses - but we don't. The step-stool has the virtue of folding flat for storage. Some people call pastels "paintings"but I think of it as more of a completed drawing since there is paper left uncovered. Some fast painters can complete a painting in this time, but I don't paint that fast so I was happy to be using pastels for this .