Brain dump.

So I've still been helping out with a life drawing class and during that time I've been able to do some more life drawing of my own. Did I ever mention my love of using pastels in life drawing? I love it.

I love it, I love it, I love it!

I hate using inks, pencil lines bore me to do, charcoal is iffy at best, but pastels and I just clicked one day and it's been like a beautiful love affair ever since! 

I've really missed being able to do life drawing, the lack of readily available (and willing) naked people is an obvious hinderance, but also being in an environment where you feel inspired to experiment and stretch yourself is hard to come by as well. 

Here are some of my sketches done in the past couple of sessions.

The colours on this sketch surprised me - this was the first pastel drawing I had done in around 5 years and I was a little worried I had forgotten how to even use pastels, let alone what I had learnt in university, so I'm really impressed with the colour range I had used in this drawing.

I had a nice tip from a lovely lady I work with to include the chin in the colouring, and then it doesn't look like I've avoided doing the face so much (she totally cottoned onto my master plan!)

I've never really liked using dark pastels... I didn't like how harsh the shadows looked and I didn't like how murky the colours were when they were blended together but during this session I just threw caution to the wind (more specifically said, fuck it...) and this was the result!

I'm quite pleased with the result, not overly over-joyed with it but quite pleased. The shadows on the model were rather harsh and I tried to capture it as best as I could. I chose three different shades of blue pastel and couldn't decide which one I got on with better which made me hate this image just a little bit, but I persevered.  

This image took around 20 minutes of fiddling with bloody blue pastels. 

This was the second attempt at darker shadowing and I am so so so so happy with the result. I found the perfect blue pastel to work with as well which might have made me a little biased. 

Although the shadows were softer on the model this time around, I think I captured the blending of light into dark quite well, especially around the stomach and groin area.  I tend to avoid using red as much as I probably should (I use it to make the skin tone and usually blend it into other colours), and the warm red on his shin stands out quite nicely, which has made me realise I need to stop being so anal about colours and just experiment more.

This took around 10-15 minutes to complete.

The slight shadowing on the leg is my favourite bit of the drawing, it just makes me happy. 

Simple things.

This was a quick  rush job pastel sketch, it took around 10 minutes. The colour detail is very soft, you can tell I was on a time limit (!) but the highlights came out nicely and if I can produce that in a rush, I can do something a lot better with more time. 

This was my second sketch with the female model and I love it so much, my makes my little heart swell with pride whenever I look at it (sad I know).

The shadowing and highlight on the rib areas are nice and subtle but pop at the same time, the shadow of the muscle on the buttock and thigh is defined and the heavy shadow from the lighting blends in well with the rest of the shadowing.

Favourite life drawing image so far!