Expressive Figure Drawing.

Earlier this year I took an expressive figure drawing course at Wyndham Art Supplies (March 28th - April 18th). The focus was on getting moods and the media was gesso and ink. It was quite neat, we started out with a clear acrylic sheet and then painted the outline and 'mass' of the model. When we were ready, we painted in the shading onto the gesso. As usual, I was a bit slow getting started because my proportions were a bit off. Nonetheless it was quite fun. Below are some of my better ones.

*Disclaimer, there's gonna be nudity.*

This was from the first session. The mood here was something like surrender. This was my favorite

from that day. For this, we used strong coffee to make a sepia shade.

The next session, we focused on vulnerability, in a child-like sort of way. One of the problems I faced was that if I started with the ink too early, it got mixed in with the gesso, which wasn't inherently bad, but it made it difficult to get a really intense color. Here I used a mix of sepia and black ink.

The next three paintings are from the final day. The emotion we were trying to capture was something like triumph and feeling powerful. I really liked this day, I think it was a combination of actually sitting in a good spot, so I don't get poses with massive for-shortening and also having loosened up and gotten the hang of it. I think the model was also quite good at capturing the mood in the poses.

Now, for these last two I decided to experiment with (mua-na-na) black gesso. I had some lying around from another project and thought I'd take a crack at starting with the shadows and pulling the highlights out with white acrylic paint. I quite like the effect.

Fortunately, we didn't need to worry about faces, because otherwise I would have never finished :S.

There was a third model between child-like and triumph. It was a man. I didn't post any of those paintings because I didn't like how they turned out. I always seem to have trouble drawing men. I'm not sure why. Something to do with the proportions and something to do with landmarks on the torso perhaps. It's something I would like to work on.

Nevertheless, I will end with triumph!!