Lesson 11: Art Class or... "What's Nude With You?"

So Xty and I decided to take (well, I talked her into it) a life drawing art class at Pasadena City College. Eight Saturdays until mid-March we devote to drawing 5 to 15 minute sketches of nude models.


It has definitely been educational. There are about 10 of us in the class with the model standing or sitting in the middle of a perimeter of student tables. We do a few warm-up drawings of 2 minute poses and then start on some longer ones. Every time the timer dings, the model faces a different direction and holds a different pose. We are forced to act quickly and draw strong confident lines. From a guy who's first caricatures were clocked in hours, this is good practice on committing to what you see and transferring it to your hand.


The first thing we do when we step into the classroom is to pin our homework to the wall and get a critique. This week's homework assignment was to draw our foot including our leg so I hammed it up by wearing a holey sock. Once the critique is over, we do our warm up drawings, get a few lessons on perspective or technique and start on our longer 10-15 minute sketches.

We have had three classes so far with alternating female and male models. Since the body types are always different and the poses are always different every sketch is unique and each has it's own challenges. Sometimes you get to draw the classic "Titanic" pose and sometimes all you see is the top of the model's head. 

The instructor keeps telling me my proportions are often way out of whack but I am still capturing the subject well and have a natural cartoonish style. Lucky for me... that's what I was going for.