Figure Drawing Tutorial Demo with Steve Huston

One of my Life Drawing classmates recommended me to check New Masters Academy and I must admit those videos are great.

Here is an other excellent Life drawing demo by Steve Huston where he shares his thought process when approaching life drawing

Charcoal pencil sharpening tutorial

Lavender Hill studios

  Karl Gnass. He gives a good explanation on how to sand the lead at the end


Proko (Watts atelier) Bradwynn

Jones (Watts atelier)

New masters academy - Charcoal workflow

Thanks to that great video I finally understood how to erase when working with charcoal pencils!

Great introduction to charcoal pencil drawing and excellent free walkthrough.

"Elegance in Motion" exhibition at The Strand gallery

I haven't had much time to post here lately but some interesting posts are coming very soon I promise, fresh from the London's Notting Hill carnival and a Drawing on Location meetup I attended this Saturday with a bunch of friends.

In the meantime, I would like to talk about "Elegance in Motion", a friend's exhibition coming up very soon in Central London. 

My friend Poppy Waddilove is a young talented artist and fellow life drawing attendee whose work will be on show at the Strand Gallery on the first week of London's Fashion week, from the 9th to the 14th of Septembre.

Before disturbing Adrian Dutton's Life drawing class with the smell of Turpentine and the sound of aggressive brush strokes, Poppy studied Fashion illustration at the London College of Fashion after which she decided to dedicate her time to work on Fashion Illustration and Paintings in her Bethnal Green atelier.

Poppy has already exhibited at different galleries in London: Salon Sixteen, Artica gallery to name a few, but this will be her first solo exhibition so make sure you visit the Strand Gallery, 32 John Adam Street, London, WC2N 6BP to admire her work and maybe buy a piece or two before the beginning of Fashion week! 

I already know which piece I want!

Something different

Tonight I was part of a pretty unique monthly Life Drawing event. Here is a tease, more to come.

My process

This is definitely not the kind of technique I would recommend to beginners but if you are interested, here is my process when using Carré Conté.

Now that I have a bit of experience and several month of intense practice, I tend to start from one part of the body, usually the head when the model is standing up, and make my way down to the feet. This way the most important part of the drawing is usually done, before the minor ones.

Beginners should probobably not work like this and instead use the "Encajar" method which involves starting from a blocky overall shape which is gradually redefined. Check out that great Lavender Hill Studio video where the method is explained.

For that specific pose and because I am using a Carré Conté charcoal which can't really be erased, I had to start from the left just to make sure I don't smudge the drawing. I am right handed by the way.

As you will notice, I didn't finish the foot this time again. Face, feet and hands usually take an awful lot of time, probably around 10 minutes each so I tend to skip the feet when pressed by time.

I hope you will find this interesting..

Comparison

For obvious reason, we are not allowed to take pictures of the models but Adrian posted that one on the public Meetup website so I thought I could post this here.

It is particularly interesting as the picture was taken from pretty much my angle.

In that pose, the model's face wasn't visible so I decided to change the pose slightly so we could see an eye and the noze. I ran out of time unfortunately and had to quickly finish the legs so they are much skinnier than the actual model and I wasn't able to address that really long elbow. The hand was also a placeholder as I didn't have time to draw the fingers. Shading was done afterwards.

Toby Mulligan - one minute demos with two hands

Dear readers, sorry I failed you. It appears that I didn't respect my promises!!!

In my last post about Instagram, I said I would keep posting in here but instead, for the past few weeks, I spent most of my time posting on ... Instagram!

What Instagram lacks in traffic tracking or flicking ability, it makes it up with the rewarding experience of having random users from all sort of background/industry liking your work. Ok it is still the honey moon period and I might end up hating Instagram in few month but for now, I am really enjoying it.

Having said that, Blogger remains the best place to post interesting links so here is a great video and article I just found in the CassArt newsletter few days ago.

Check out that really cool video where 2012 BP Award selected artist, Toby Mulligan, shares with us his process when drawing 1 minute poses using all sorts of medium with both, left and right hands!!!

Great Toby Mulligan demo and interview:
http://www.cassart.co.uk/blog/beware_toby_mulligan.htm

Instagram

Since most of the cool kids use Instagram those days, I have decided to also create a profile page which I will mostly use as some sort of Porfolio showcasing my best work and occasional pictures.

I will keep Blogger and Painting with a Moustache to discuss techniques and findings and post even my crappiest drawings just so people starting in Life Drawing don't feel bad and stay motivated while gaining experience.

As I am implying on the Instagram headline, I am indeed spending the next 2 weeks in Paris to immerse myself in French culture and do a lot of sketching.... provided the weather gets a bit better ;-)

Life Drawing will therefore be on hold for the moment. It probably wasn't the best timing as I felt my life drawing had reached a new level last week thanks to the discovery of a new tool called the Carré Conté which I will talk about more in my next post.

#oliveuktoon

Matt Jones, one minute poses

Matt Jones just posted a great video showing how he goes about drawing one minute poses. This seems so effortless and he even seems to be taking his time!!!

Right, I think I need to train a bit harder on those short poses and maybe do a whole hour of one minute poses.

Via Matt Jones

Life drawing June 2014

So..... I have been pretty busy this month. One big change was the switch from Mars Staedler Graphite to Conté Pierre Noire charcoal. The Conté gives some really dark blacks but similarly to the Staedler Mars 7and 8B you can't really erase it so you need to be really confident in your work.

It is great on Newsprint paper though especially to quickly darken backgrounds which I might have overdone.

The three following drawings were done at the Candid Art drop in class in Angel at lunch. Since I have some time off, I have decided to attend as many life drawing classes as possible.

This was a friday long pose class. I still can't pick the right colours but I still feel I am progressing.

I keep practicing sketching once in a while and always have a sketchbook handy.

Starbucks patrons

Discussion on charcoal Lavender hill studio

Discussion on charcoal at my new favourite portraiture school

Learning how to paint Alla Prima

I have been trying to learn how to paint Alla Prima (in one sitting) for the past few month and even if the result is pretty bad, I feel I am discovering new things every week and gradually progressing.

It is all rubbish but hopefully you can learn something from it.

First painting was so bad I eventually used it as a palette to mix my colours ;-)

Second painting I had no clue how to mix my colours or even match the skin of the model, let alone the facial features ;-) This painting was probably my first one actually.

Third one got a bit better but I wanted to be a bit too fancy and stylise the colours to have cold hues in the shadows and warm ones in the light..... way too advanced concepts for me ;-)
.

Fourth one is getting better with colours matching, model is still a bit too pink

Fifth one. Now we are finally getting somewhere. The colours were still really hard to match but I was finally having a bit of fun. Notice the underdrawing . This is the way I work at the moment. Working in that manner allows for a semi finished drawing, even if not all the areas are finished. Pros don't do it but I am no pro ;-)

Week 6. Unfortunately it wasn't one model but two we have had this week so things got a lot more complicated. I should have stuck with just one model but I loved the design of the scene. This time was an eye opener. It is common sense but it had never occured to me that I should use white as my main paint and only add a tiny bit of colours to it. Underdrawing done in 30 minutes, painting in 1h

Life drawing week 22

That's it, this week I switched from graphite to charcoal pencils. I admit I am going a bit overboard with the blacks but it is so pleasant to have so many values to play with.

Wednesday class, the model posed with her baby which was really good but it made me realize I have no clue how to draw babies and eventually stuck to drawing the model instead.

Friday class was really good. The model was great and he came with his own props!!!!

This time, instead of speeding up to finish the overal body for the quick poses, I decided I would start with one part of the body, do as much details as possible and make my way down until I ran out of time. It worked out really well for me. It is a lot of fun as you need to keep paying attention to negative space, angles and distances.

One downside to the pencils I use is the fact that they are really difficult to erase. Maybe I should use the HB version rather than the 2b.. If it happens it is less greasy.