Life drawing

I've been having a pretty...frustrating...time lately drawing. There are a lot of excuses/reasons, but the bottom line is that I'm finding it easier and easier to put things off. And that means that I need to fucking snap myself out of things before they get too much worse. Now, while I enjoy beveraging for most problem solving solutions, for this the best thing for me to do is some life drawing(at the Aetlier at Flowerfield). Which is what I did this past Friday.

Usually it takes me a few warm up drawings to get going, but I felt like I knew what I was doing almost right away with these 10min poses(sheesh guys, no 5min to get loose?). The first two started with ebony pencil, with charcoal added next. The third one had me feeling ready to go with straight up compressed charcoal handling the line work. And my hands are a mess already.

After some serious aggravation in my inability to get a decent face going, something finally clicked and I cruised to what is my favorite drawing of the night. I feel like the gesture, shadow, line work, and yes the face all came together. And no, the model is not in fact spitting blood. That's what happens when your hands get extra dry and start to crack and I don't give a fuck because this drawing is worth it.

Now, I haven't done a reclining pose in a loooong fucking time. Because the only person that it's easy for is the sleepy model(it's kept very warm in the room for nude modeling). Starting off with her right shoulder blade, I worked vine charcoal to make the body take shape. When I was finally cool with that, the big charcoal stick came out and added the mid tone. That's because I had some Sumi ink to go for the serious shadow. And after allowing that to mostly dry(on purpose), I combined the charcoal and ink by smearing a clear oil bar over it, with some razor blade scraping to show some light. This is now a close second favorite for me for the night's drawing.

Even with this being a small class, I had a blast. And it's succeeded in my wanting to get going on some new work(comic pages, an art book piece) that means less football and more drawing(and the brilliant new Tribe album) for Ken today.