Corsets & Clockwork

11/14/13 Platinum Carbon and Diamine Grey inks, watercolor, Canson
mixed-media drawing pad (20-min. pose)

Last night’s Pinup Figure life drawing session at Artist & Craftsman had a steampunk theme called “Corsets and Clockwork.” Our model Lisa was excellent, and the ruffles and billowy fabric of her bloomers proved challenging. But my biggest difficulty last night was her impossibly long legs! I used the classic head-count method to gauge proportions, but I still don’t think I drew her legs long enough. In fact, I ran out of space on my page several times.

If I count all of my sketches from the one-minute poses, I’d be done with NaNoDrawMo now. But where’s the fun in that? I’m counting only the sketches from four five-minute poses and three 20-minute poses. Instead of different poses for the 20-minute sessions, the group decided on a single pose (broken into 20-minute sessions), so I decided to do three separate sketches using different media. (See the rest in my Flickr photostream.)

Technical notes: The five-minutes poses were done with an Akashiya brush pen (no longer stocked by JetPens.com), which I’d completely forgotten was in my life drawing pencil case until I was digging for something else and found it there. It turned out to be ideal for loose yet expressive five-minute sketches. I also tried using watercolor on my last 20-minute sketch of the evening. When I’m focused on sketching people in the field (such as at Zoka Coffee yesterday), I tend to reach for pen and ink, both for simplicity and because I love the subtle shading I can get on faces with water-soluble ink. But I’d like to start using watercolor more often on people, so this life drawing session was a good opportunity to practice.

11/14/13 Akashiya brush pen, Canson drawing pad
(5-min. pose)

11/14/13 Diamine Chocolate ink, Sailor pen, Canson
mixed-media drawing pad (20-min. pose)

11/14/13 Akashiya brush pen, Canson drawing pad
(5-min. pose)

11/14/13 Akashiya brush pen, Canson drawing pad
(5-min. pose)