How to make the most of life drawing class?

[Hiddles]

I have looked at my new timetable for this semester and it seems I will be having life drawing once a week apposed to once in a blue moon. The life drawing class I had last year there was only one female model, but it looks like they'll be variety this year. I have done life drawing before but it usually is one a month as there aren't many classes around. So I'm excited about the possibilities of having classes once a week.

My question is how can I make the most of this that will help me improve more?

Thanks

[[email protected]]

My question is how can I make the most of this that will help me improve more?

Follow your teacher, or find yourself a different life drawing course...

[TinyBird]

Concentrate on learning the construction and form of the body, don't just draw the pose without thinking.
I might suggest this books, it's a nice addition to life drawing as it even gives things to do for practice: http://conceptart.org/forums/showthr...-now-available!
And like mentioned, follow your teacher.

[OmenSpirits]

Always repeat this to yourself when you are looking at the model and are about to make a mark, "Draw what you see. Draw what you see. Draw what you see. Draw what you see. Draw what you see. Draw what you see. Draw what you see."

Do not add anything that you DON'T see in front of you. Do NOT make corrections to what you see by an anatomy book you've studied. Just draw what you see, and analyze what you see and ask yourself why the area you are looking at looks that way.

[vineris]

Looks like you still have issues with observation so yeah, draw what you see. And don't wait for life-drawing class to do it. It's not like there's anything magic about naked people that improves your observation skills, you should be drawing apples and cars and trees and buildings outside of class. Concentrate on getting proportions and values right.

Lack of observation skills makes everything more difficult, so get those up to speed as soon as you can.

[awsnif]

Adding onto what TinyBird/OmenSpirits said, not only draw but analyze what you're drawing. I've had this problem before where I would mindlessly copy the figure, but didn't think/learn about what I just put down on paper.

Also check out your library for figure books, here are my recommendations:

Figure Drawing: Design and Invention - Michael Hampton
Force: Dynamic Life Drawing for Animators - Mike Matessi

Keep pushing yourself and keep drawing! Don't let yourself slide with anything.

Best of luck

[[email protected]]

Always repeat this to yourself when you are looking at the model and are about to make a mark, "Draw what you see. Draw what you see. Draw what you see. Draw what you see. Draw what you see. Draw what you see. Draw what you see."

That is an excellent starting point. However, some approaches do not just focus on observation. For instance, Nicolaides emphasises using all of the senses, specifically blind contours and gestures, while constructive approaches work with conceived basic shapes and lines. Now, in no way I am suggesting that Nicolaides' approach is superior. Just understand that some teachers will not appreciate if you draw what you see.

[OmenSpirits]

IMO what the end result is, is the most important thing. How you get there is only revelant to the quality of the product and your (not you) ability to reproduce and gain from it.

If a teacher chastises a student for the technique they use, but doesn't consider the final product, and the product is of the necessary standards to be considered complete, then that teacher may need to re-examine what they want the student to understand.

Is it all about the process, or is it about the final produce. (This does not condone shortcuts, but it does consider that there are more ways to skin a cat).

During the process of learning, the student should be encouraged to explore all techniques, so they can find the one that helps them learn the best.

A teacher that hinders growth and exploration, is no teacher, IMO.

[DormierDesign]

Just to camelback off everyone else, draw what you see. Get your understanding of proportions to a higher level. Like someone else said don't just mindlessly draw the model understand how the body twists and turns imagine pouring water over the model. How is it going to flow over all the surfaces on the model? Build your visual library. Play with line weight and find figure drawing sessions outside of school. Communicate with other artists and students in your sessions, some of the best learning happens that way.

[LordLouis]

I find it so difficult to communicate with my "teacher". I take life drawing classes at the local community college; it is beginners only and more about "come, try some art". Which I don't mind. But today my teacher kept on about that I am complicating everything by constructing the head- he drew a really bad egg with two arcs that represented the eyebrows and said "just do that. and then you shade one half".
He just says everything 100% different from what I learn here- I want to get the proportions right, and he keeps saying "draw the background. don't bother with her face" - I just don't understand it anymore. It is absolutely not straight-forward to me. I want to enhance my observation, he wants me to somehow 'represent' the Manet painting that was discussed earlier in the class.

[sone_one]

in general i agree that its important to learn to see accurately, but i doubt figure drawing is the place to accomplish that. as vineris mentioned there are other options to train your eye, simple still lifes e.g. the main problem i see with the advice to draw what you see, how would you attempt a gesture then? its a thought-construct, a visualisation where feeling is as important as seeing, a matter of design.

in figure drawing from the model youre confronted with a vast amount of visual information, and without a way to organize these, you can end up (like i did back in school) drawing details all day, learning nothing in the end other than perfecting your handling of the medium.

id like to add these to the great books already mentioned...

Reilly-Method by Doug Higgins

Reily-Method by Ron Lemen (ImagineFX)

[OmenSpirits]

Drawing what you see, giving my re-examination of what I said, assumed that the artist had learned a basic level of figure drawing, where they had already an understanding of how to establish a gesture by visualizing the gesture line present in the model before them.

The gesture is there in the model, it's the training of how to see it beforehand that had to take place before sitting in front of the model.

An analytical process has to take place to establish the gesture of a live model, which is why I also said to "Just draw what you see, and analyze what you see and ask yourself why the area you are looking at looks that way."

Drawing details is the desire to finish, without the understanding that you (not you) are trying to learn to finish, not actually produce a finished product. That happens in the finally day of life drawing class (or how it was in the class I took recently at the Art Student's League).

[Chris Bennett]

Everything we look at, we relate to our body: weighless like a cloud, reaching up like a pine tree, breathing in like a sail, hungry as a bucket, complient like a cushion, a hat like your father's hand upon your head...

So we draw stuff as it relates to our bodies, whether we realise it or not. It's written into the deep, primal wiring of our brains. We understand, we have knosis of things, in terms of our body.

So what should we do when drawing from life, when drawing another body?

Become that body, empathise with the pose, be the pose as you draw it. Drawing is a gesture diagram of understanding. Drawing the body is a test of your empathy. From that, empathy with all the rest of creation follows.