Figure Drawing Week 1- Homework (2 drawings looking at proportion and forshortening)

Drawing from family members was quite difficult as I often took a long time and they ended up getting impatient. However I should get used to it because on location people will always be moving and I need to practice getting information down quickly.

In the picture above I started by drawing the chair and felt that this really helped me to figure out the proportions of the person. Although they are still not perfect, I was able to line up points of the chair with different points on the body, allowing me to know when to stop drawing something like the shoulder or the head for instance. I wish I would have spent more time on this drawing to add shading and texture or maybe I should just become quicker at recording the information so I have time to do that at the end.

I liked the angle that this person was positioned as it meant that I could practice my forshortening. The foot is the nearest thing to the viewer and therefore it needed to be bigger than curtain other parts of the body such as the head which it normally wouldn't be. As her leg was bent and I was viewing her straight on I couldn't see all of her legs. Getting this in mind was difficult as I kept on having to remind myself to draw what I see rather than what I know is actually there. The fact that the object she was sitting on was soft made the drawing increasingly difficult as the context then became an assortment of strange shapes, however this was quite fun to practice drawing.

This model posed for longer so I was able to add shading and texture to the figure and the chair. I liked being able to do this as again it allowed me to experiment with my style and put my own stamp on it.

Figure Drawing Week 1- The Proportion of the figure, Forshortening

I haven't really had much experience in drawing people hence the reason I took this module, to learn and develop skills that might help me draw figures or characters in the future.

I had difficulty in working out the different proportions and therefore was very slow and often didn't finish my drawing by the time we had to move onto the next one. However I think these quick exercises were good as they forced us to take down information quickly and I learnt that the drawing doesn't have to be perfect right away, but that you can change it as you go in order to get everything in the right place.

For a lot of these initial drawings I think I was focusing more on getting the outline of the figure down and didn't really pay attention to mapping out the drawing first. A lot of these seem to just be single lines and if I were to do it again I would make sure to put little lines and marks over the page to get the proportions better.

In my opinion the drawing above is a little better than the first drawings. This is probably because the figure was sitting on a chair giving it a context and enabling me to line up the different parts of the body with the areas and angles of the chair. I also think that the geometry of her clothing helped me to get the shoulders and the upper body in the right proportions as I started to look at the figure in terms of shapes, instead of just an outline. Having said this, I probably could have added a bit more context like the walls or windows in the rest of the room to provide myself with more information later on.

I feel like the quicker 10 minute drawing exercises throughout the day which then built up to become progressively longer helped me to get my eye in and by the end of the day when it came to the longer pose (pictured above) I felt I was able to incorporate everything I learnt, contributing to a better outcome. I liked having longer to draw as it made me more relaxed as I felt I didn't have to get everything in the right proportions right away. I was also able to add shading, allowing me to finish the drawing off in my own style. The proportions are not perfect though and perhaps further drawing of the wider context would have helped me to get this right.