Adventures in Life Drawing: 001

Aah, no sooner have we moved into our new house than I have found a life drawing class to disappear to every Monday night! It's run by some old school friends of ours here in Louth, right in the shadow of St James' Church - it's a regular rural idyll here, I tells ya!

St James Church - Photo by Derek Roberts
(no relation)

Anyway, they're a really nice bunch of people of all levels and it's a fairly informal excuse to break out my art tools once in a while - there's no using the Cintiq there, *gulps*

I started this week with a few warm-up sketches using tools I'm familiar with, Blue/ Red pencils, Brush pen, WhiteOut pen and some Letraset ProMarkers:

(Above)
Blue pencils to define the overall form, Red Pencils to tighten the anatomy,
Black brush pen to define the shapes and Black KarismaColor pencils and WhiteOut Pens to add shading.

(Above)
Letraset ProMarker pens to block the shapes and shadows, Faber Castell Pitt and Pentel Fountain Pens to add the line details.
Again, WhiteOut pens substitute for the lack of an undo button!

Then I broke out my secret weapon - something I've been threatening myself with all these years... Charcoal!

(Above)
Charcoal: For The Win!

Using a totally different medium from my normal set was verrrry exciting, the potential use of 'sfumato', 'chiaruscuro' and 'tenebrism' (artsy- fartsy terms, I know - but they do apply here) to the sheer muckiness of it all - I loved getting my hands dirty! It felt like sculpting the picture as opposed to just delineating it. I know it doesn't look like much now, but hopefully this will inform my work and start pushing my artistic side upwards and onwards.

Anyway, I'm stiill buzzing from the thought of doing more charcoal drawing - I'll go and calm down and get on with some work, maybe a Johnny Alpha or two...?