Figures from last weekend

Last week's model in the life drawing drop-in session created some graceful poses. The painting above was from one of the longer poses. I enjoyed developing the negative space and also pulling a little color into the figure itself. Tomorrow I attend another session. The constant practice at drawing the figure keeps me from getting rusty in my approach. It's somewhat like practicing scales on the piano. It's also very satisfying.

Here I was experimenting with placing a dark space only on one side of the figure. Most of the time I work both sides behind the model, in order to create dimension. For me, the negative tone makes the figure sculptural.

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One of the longer poses, also. The model was leaning across a pillow in front of her. I like the square-ish shape of her shoulders and hips as they situated themselves on  the page. When I'm working, I'm never sure how the picture will decide to create itself.

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Degas kept many sketchbooks in which he mad repeated studies of feet, legs, stance of the body. This is one of his beautiful pastel pieces of a model, after the bath. You can look up his sketchbooks online to see how hard he worked to master the figure.

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