Going with the flow

Today marked the final day of our intensive life drawing component, which has been running one full-day per week over the past 5 weeks. It has been exhilarating, exhausting and occasionally down-right frustrating, but I have loved every second of it and will miss this time spent studying the human form, it's movement and rhythm, as well as the stories it has to tell.

We spent the day recapping some of the exercises we had covered over the past 4 weeks, paying close attention to how we are telling the story through framing, viewpoint, lighting, texture and gesture. The main emphasis was to 'go with the flow' and focus on the details later.

It might be the end of the life drawing classes, however Mary-Clare Foa urged us to forge on with our sketchbooks in hand and continue to find inspiration in the world around us, proclaiming that everything has a story, context and value, it is our jobs to explore recognise these things and explore them in our drawings.

This perspective thrusts the viewer in a position of power and tells a story of subversion.

 Transforming the life model's pose into a scene of loneliness, despair and desolation.

  Creating more scenes and stories utilising the model's pose as a starting point.

Exercises in getting a hat to sit well on a head and exploring characterisation in gesture.

A venture into a deep dark scary place, inspired by the model's pose and expression.

This scene was developed from the life model continuously moving into different poses and wearing different expressions. Behind her was a dvd projection of filmed images, which inspired the background and gave context.

This is the same exercise as above. I found it a really useful way of coming up with interesting narratives and characters, and might have to rope my friends into doing some performing for me in the future!

Another fairly scary/depressive scene as inspired by the model. I probably haven't included enough of the happier ones, but be assured there were plenty of those as well, so it's not all doom and gloom!