More Figure Drawing Practice
In 2003 I purchased a set of postcards of Leonardo DaVinci's portrait drawings during a visit to Vinci, Italy and his museum there. One of the drawing exercises from a book I'm working through was to use a grid to reproduce a drawing and I decided to try it with a Leonardo portrait. It was great fun - and I decided to leave my grid marks in place so I could remember the utility of the exercise and method.
More figure sketches from my Yoga "How-To-Book" - purchased only to use for figure drawing practice. These are definitely challenging because of the extreme body positions and work very well for my daily sketches when I'm too tired to compose a more complicated daily sketch page in my journals.
This year I hope to draw many more figures to develop some basic skills - but still don't have time for organized life drawing sessions. I bought John Raynes' book The Figure Drawing Workbook at Green and Stone in London and I'm working through the lessons and exercises slowly. These are a few of the first sketches completed. I'm doing them in my recycled book of Michaelangelo sonnets, so you'll see one very yellowed page that I rebound from the original book. The figure sketched on the sonnet page is actually inspired by Posemaniacs.com - the Japanese site that Cully recommended in one of his EDM messages. I'm trying to use regular pencils, colored pencils, Conte pencils, and watercolor so I can also explore different media and papers.
Comments
Great job Shirley....the figures are lovely...love the simplicity of the wc ones! and the sketchier ones are great too!
Posted by: Margaret Hunt | April 28, 2007 8:21 AM
WOWZA, Shirley!!! These are coming along gorgeously!!!!!! You're doing so so wonderfully with the figures!!
Posted by: lin | April 28, 2007 11:19 AM
These are wonderful figures. I really love the portrait from the grid. Great work!
Posted by: Sherie | April 28, 2007 7:35 PM
These are really cool, I especially like the first one. :)
Posted by: laserone | April 29, 2007 2:06 AM
Very nice work,Shirley. I'm interested in the book you're using - do you work from photographs? As I look at these, I'm thinking I really should be doing some yoga!
Posted by: Casey | April 29, 2007 3:32 AM
Shirley I love these! Your yoga drawings are wonderful--I can almost feel the benefits of the great stretches just be looking at them. And the idea of using an old book to draw figures in is fabulous. I was just in a musty old bookstore yesterday browsing through piles of old books and wish I'd bought a couple to use in that fashion. I was thinking it would be fun to take them to figure drawing group and just use them as a sketchbook, drawing with thick ink lines right over the text. What fun!
Posted by: Jana Bouc | April 29, 2007 11:11 AM
These are really wonderful! I did that with a DaVinci once and surprised myself! I really needa a figure drawing class! Keep showing us your progress!
Posted by: mARTa | April 29, 2007 11:27 AM
Hi shirley, your work is lovely I work for a yoga studio in Dublin Ireland, I was wondering if I could share one of your drawings and a link to your website?
Keep the great work
Posted by: Aniz Duran | June 17, 2020 5:19 PM
Hi shirley, your work is lovely I work for a yoga studio in Dublin Ireland, I was wondering if I could share one of your drawings and a link to your website?
Keep the great work
Posted by: Aniz Duran | June 17, 2020 5:19 PM