Sunday, May 25, 2008

Figure Drawing Workshop - Sessions 1 & 2


The Figure Drawing Workshop (FDW) is an amazing continuing arts service, which I believe is ran by Georgios Allpokorites. The studio has been around for 36 some years and has offered open figure drawing that long. I'm amazingly lucky to have moved 2 miles from it.

More info can be found at their website: The Drawing Workshop

Part of their services is two open figure drawing sessions twice a week on Wednesdays and Sundays. 15 dollars per session. His structure goes as fallowed:

The first fifteen minutes are divided with 20 sec. and 40 sec. poses • 10 min of ONE min poses
15 mins of 3 min poses • FIVE 5 MIN POSES • two ten min poses • One 15, 20 and 25 min poses and with appropriate breaks for the models. total 3 hrs

Session 1 Picks




For better or worse. I'll provide ones I do and don't like. The speed sketch I like because I felt I captured the major motion or arcs to the pose she held. This particular model was very good. She did many classical poses and even held facial expressions! The next piece with no facial detail I like aesthetically, though there are many glaring issues. Her proportions were very long and slender, I don't feel I exaggerated them much either. The final selection was just horrible to me. It was an attempt to understand the "shade with the form, not against it" theory. Which I agree with completely and find those that I admire fallowing.

Session 2 Picks






A friend from work (Mandy) let me borrow one of her "ink" pens. I was really hesitant to take it thinking it was more of a felt-tipped type device which I'm not too fond of (they drag too much for my liking.) I was surprised to find out that it had a nice soft brush tip and has a mechanism that allows you to squeeze the body to refill the ink into the brush! I really loved how this pen worked and I felt the quick sketch portion of the FDW look alive and have great movement. I'm able to hide my mistakes with sloppiness. I'm not sure if thats good or bad but I like the results though I know they could be more accurate and confident.

The last two were done with a Black Prisma color pencil which Loomis used a lot for his life drawings. I do like the feel of it and I could get use to it easily. I just need to really grasp drawing with the form and not against it concept. I'll be doing some exercises and posting the results in the coming week.

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