Structure: Three figure drawing

I did the exercise on different days during my life drawing class

On the first day I did sketches of about 20 minutes in soft pastel on A2 cartridge paper, firstly with the model standing facing away from me,

secondly with her sitting on the floor facing me,

and thirdly in same pose but facing diagonally away from me.

I think I captured the proportions accurately, and did reasonably well imagining the skeleton and muscles of the body, but I found that I got better results when I based my drawings on the forms and shapes I could identify, rather than measuring, or applying theories. My results were not always accurate however, so I need to practice more using the theory.

On the second day the model was lying on a mattress and I used soft pastel on blue pastel paper 36x48cm.

I found this a difficult pose to depict because of the angle and also because I was looking down – I didn’t plot her position on the paper well so I didn’t have room to draw her feet, and nor are the proportions accurate - the legs are too short. I do however like the colours on the blue paper, which I think look quite dramatic.

Experimental work

I did this also in my life drawing class, using blue ballpoint pen and soft pastel on A3 cartridge paper, and wanted to experiment with marks instead of crosshatching – using the kind of marks Frank Auerbach uses in some of his portrait drawings.

The idea of the three bodies came about by accident – in the first 5 minutes I drew the middle head and half body, then drew the one on the right which gave me the idea of combining them, and luckily the third pose completed the picture. I'm very happy with the results and I would like to explore this composition idea further in the future.