Things

[bunn]

Last week I went to a life drawing session.  The model was a large round very naked gentleman, and I must say, it took me a little while to adjust to drawing someone so very naked.  But I think I did learn some things from it. You just have to keep drawing and drawing and hope that eventually you've made all the mistakes. 

Its quite hard to draw all of a person.  So easy for feet and things to end up off the edge of the paper.  The guy in charge of the life drawing thing reckoned I should be painting on very large canvases, but this is both expensive and hard to store, so I think really I would prefer to learn how to get everything more successfully into the page.

I also trialled some varifocal contact lenses, since I noticed recently that sometimes it's hard to read the very small print on the back of a tube of paint in poor light.  The varifocals were awful.  I would rather have to turn on the light to read a tube of paint than put up with a vast deterioration in my distance vision!  But it made me realise how fortunate I am that my eyesight with contact lenses is really pretty good, and apparently when my eyesight does get worse, there are several other kinds of varifocals I can try.  It doesn't seem worth trying more of them yet though, since I learned that with my usual lenses in decent light I can happily read the bottom line of text on the test card thingy.



 

Comments

[heartofoshun.livejournal.com]

The model was a large round very naked gentleman, and I must say, it took me a little while to adjust to drawing someone so very naked.

I died reading this! I would probably have taken a minute (or several) to adjust also. Good experience though.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

It was good practice. I think if I'd known he was going to be nude it would have been easier not to feel the instinctive urge to giggle! But I think one was supposed to read between the lines on that :-D

[ningloreth.livejournal.com]

I've been wanting to suggest for ages that you try life drawing, but I wasn't sure how you'd feel about it! Your art is mainly about people, and I don't think there's a better way to practise drawing them. Did you find that, once you started drawing, you stopped thinking of him as a naked person and started thinking of him as a nude? I used to find that even the most strangely shaped person looked beautiful once I concentrated on drawing them.

I need varifocals too, these days, but I don't get on with any of the options I've tried so far.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm not against it, but I didn't honestly feel that the nudity added much! It was easy enough once I started drawing though, as you say. I would go to another, though I feel that I'd also go to a session where the model was clothed...

I suppose I have been drawing a lot of people. I was a little surprised you said that my art was mainly about them, as I think of myself as much better at animals and landscapes, I've always struggled with faces and people, but I suppose I've been working on trying to improve those... and if you want to draw fanart or art of RPG events, it has to be people-y! Well, unless you turn them all into dogs or something.

[timetiger.livejournal.com]

You've inspired me to consider taking a drawing or painting class this summer. I haven't painted since I was in my early twenties. Somewhere I got the idea it Wasn't Allowed until I became expert at drawing first.

I'm glad you can still use your contact lenses. I do okay with varifocals, only I tend to take them off to read, which means many an exasperated scavenger hunt through the house. Once they were in the dishpan under a bowl -- no idea how that happened. Another time they were on the sofa under a cat.

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

I got laser surgery done on my eyes in 2004, and only recently have had to start wearing glasses again at all, but my eyes are definitely ageing. I have one pair of bifocals which I care for like a holy relic, and otherwise have begun to stockpile cheap reading glasses like some sort of optics-obsessed chipmunk.

[timetiger.livejournal.com]

I like the idea of an optics-obsessed chipmunk.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Do it! I don't think it's very different, drawing and painting, and Colin the Art is very firm on 'drawing with paint' and hates pencils!

[timetiger.livejournal.com]

I may just do it. Yes, why not?

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Also, there are lots of things where I've found that just knowing the technique and the common things that look wrong is at least 80% of the battle!