I can't believe the Summer term has arrived, it doesn't feel like long ago that I was hoovering up the last traces of the Christmas tree scattered all over the living room floor. Seems to be the way life rolls these days, the transition from one season to another seems to blur seamlessly. Although, I have to say that the arrival of Spring did not gone unnoticed this year as it arrived so suddenly and resplendently.
This term will be an exciting one as I am about to embark on a new phase in the atelier training at LARA which is the move to painting. The long and arduous hours of drawing from the model and casts will hopefully pay dividends as I attempt to learn and get to grips with oils. I am going to try and be very disciplined about keeping my blog up to date and record the many stages and new insights that I uncover along the way. I am continuing to explore the figure through charcoal and chalk and am hoping that there will be improvement in my handling as I practise painting in parallel. One should complement the other and effectively enable you to see and build your drawings as masses as you would when painting.
POSE 1 (2 week pose) - 'Ruta'
THE BLOCK-IN
I really liked the contrapposto in this pose and Ruta is such a brilliant model to draw from, she has an exquisite combination of elegance and strength. Her body type and proportions are hard to pin down as it is almost inconceivable that someone can have the long and slender legs that she has been blessed with. Although my block-in gained some idea of the pose and gesture, it was only when the drawing progressed as masses that I noticed my widths were way off. I struggled to capture her likeness in the portrait on the first attempts which meant I didn't really have enough time in the 2 weeks to bring the entire drawing up to the same level of finish. I wasn't particularly bothered by this as you can't fight time and I regard the 2 week poses as a warm up to the longer ones anyway.
FINAL DRAWING
