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 .

Life Drawing

For the recent "DoorsOpen", I made a display on one wall that had drawings from one life-drawing session- Iva in her ballet outfit- and then I posted the following explanation. Life drawing is called "life drawing" because it is drawing from life - from a live model. The model is often "undraped" (nude) in order that the artists can better understand anatomy. Sometimes the model is "draped" (clothed)- which can actually be harder as besides needing an awareness of how the body is moving under the clothing, the artist has to draw the clothing itself, with all its folds and drapery. Each life drawing group has its own format as to how the poses are set up and the timing planned. One person is the timer and, usually, another sets the lighting. Some groups are silent but it is more usual to have music playing. Again, the music will vary with the group. In the group in which these drawings were done, the format is five one-minute poses, five two-minutes poses - for warm-up - then four five-minute poses which are actually the same pose but the model rotates 360 degrees. This rotation pose is excellent practice in anatomy and drawing from different angles - along with the problems of "foreshortening", the term used to describe perspective relating to the human form. Then, in this group, we do a "long pose" - half an hour, then a coffee break followed by a return to the same pose for a further hour. The last hour is in two half-hours to give the model a break between.