figures & nudes

New sketches from life (nudes, NSFW)

Emma sketched from life.

Emma, sketched from life.

Warning, the sketches below (the “read more” button) are nudes!

Doris, head and chest. Drawn from life.
Doris with no feet, drawn from life. (Doris actually does have feet; I just neglected to draw them! Ran out of room on the page!)

Finally, some time with figure and life drawing! The portrait (first drawing) is a month or two ago, of Emma. Emma is a beautiful young lady with a retro look. We’ve drawn her many times and she has a particular luminous glow about her.

The girl in profile is “Doris.” The portrait is not a good likeness of her (and I don’t mind that and neither does Doris)!

The third drawing is also of “Doris,” a full-length figure, except I cut off her feet and the top of her head! Oops!

Doris is a first-time model; before tonight, when she posed, she’d never worked as an artist’s model before, nude or clothed. She was perfect in every way. Beautiful, graceful, with a figure that was reminiscent of those figures in Maxfield Parrish paintings. I’ve taken some photos of Doris (mostly portraits) which I think will be used as reference for paintings.

We had a good time visiting, chatting, bickering (hey, we’re a close-knit drawing group) and of course drawing at our life session tonight.

One thing we agree upon is that drawing from life is paramount. There’s nothing like it. It’s a way to see the person as they really are, not a flat image on a piece of paper (or on an iPad screen) but flesh-and-blood, dimensional. Your mind also filters out needless details of the person when you draw them from life. Little nit-picky details, unimportant things, all are left out, because you don’t see them when you draw from life. The camera sees everything, without making any priorities as to what is important and what isn’t.

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