musical trio

I had a fantabulous time sketching a musical trio at life drawing today. They practised, we sketched. It was a great experience, mostly because musicians take 'poses' that life models never do, so it was all new to us. 

There were three of them with five instruments. Violin, viola, flute, bassoon and piccolo. They switched seats every 20 minutes (playing musical chairs literally!) so we all had a good experience. I used charcoal pencil and watercolour, oh... and I had a blast! ; )

Horse Anatomy

Thanks to my two favourite animal drawing books, I've got my horse anatomy figured out. It's been a few weeks of hard work, filling sketchbooks with horse drawings while studying bones and muscles and thinking about how they move. I'm now confident I've got a handle on it. So, moving onto horse paintings. : )

horse gestures

Having a blast with pencil, drawing these horse gestures! I spent some time reviewing horse anatomy, from one of my favourite animal drawing books by Jack Hamm called "How to Draw Animals". Then, with the help of free images from pixabay, I drew as many as I could, as fast as I could. : )

life drawing session

A few pages from my last life drawing session. Short poses in pencil and one long pose in watercolour. 

life drawing studies

Last night's life drawing class. I worked with a 6B pencil and then added cadmium red and mineral purple to these 5 minute poses. I think I prefer them with a little bit of wild splatter (top one), it compliments the gesture aspect.

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juice box and a cupcake

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I've been going through the drawing exercises in an amazing book called Drawing Projects: an exploration of the language of drawing. Today's sketch is one of the results.

$60 - 8x10 drawing

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This is life drawing!

My set up for life drawing with watercolours. You can see the model's platform in the middle of the room, with a heater to the right.

Across the room, fellow artist Mark Thurman's set up for gouache.

The talented Canadian children's book illustrator Mark Thurman up close! You can see his quick gesture paintings drying on the back table.

Fellow artist James, sitting at a drawing horse doing beautiful conte drawings.

The artists during break time.

You can check out Mark's website at markthurman.ca.  Lots of life drawing in watercolour, gouache, pastel, coloured pencil... Awesome!

I hope these pictures answer the many questions I've been getting about life drawing (click on them to enlarge). It's $9 for a 2.5 hour class of short poses which consists of 1, 5, 10 and 20 minute poses, with breaks every 20 minutes. Bring your own supplies. Tables, easels, boards and horses are there for us and set up by a monitor who hires the model and collects our money at break. No talking during poses. No photos of the model.

Check out your local art school for sessions. It's a blast!

Happy Painting!!
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gestures

Today I used just 2 colours for my 3 minute sketches, Cadmium Orange and Ultramarine Violet.

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Good Sport!

The model was late today, so Adrianna (a fellow artist) got up there and did some 3 minute poses for us. She was awesome!

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