Life Drawing with Illuminated Figures.

As part of our Professional Design Practice module, we were asked to attend at least two creative courses outwith the degree to improve our skills and challenge ourselves as artists and designers. My first course I picked was a life drawing class with Illuminated Figures, hosted in McChuills Bar in Glasgow City Centre.

15 minute pose from first session.

I have previous experience in life drawing from my time in HNC Applied Arts, so I wanted to revisit a style of drawing I missed dearly and wanted to improve. The sessions ranged from quick 1 minute poses to extended 15 minutes, and everyone involved could choose their desired medium. I chose to practice with soft pastels and occasionally opting for the sketching pencils. Mainly because I love the expressionist feeling of using pastels and their vivid colours truly accentuate any vocal points. Originally when I started I was restricting myself to a neutral palette of skin tones, but as I practiced I decided to just let my own style find its way, which in turn created sketches im very proud of.

15 minute pose from third session.

As you can see from the first to third session, I have improved alot in shading and depth, and in general anatomy.Drawing back poses used to be a big challenge for me - I could never get the proportions correct. But I really surprised myself by both accurately proportioning the model as well as using a palette similar to the models skintones.