Earlier this year I did a workshop through school with the Royal Academy, where we spent a day doing life drawing with a live model. We had a professional art teacher/lecturer come in and help us throughout the day and she helped us to get straight into the drawing and not to be scared of using bold strokes and harsh lines. It was interesting to have to draw the model that was in front of us, especially as most of my previous art work had been from copying an image. It was nice to be able to see all the shadows and the muscle definition in the flesh and not just seeing a photographic version of the object.
I felt that with my work I improved a lot throughout the day, the first drawing that I attempted did not look anything like the model but by the time I had come to the 4th and 5th attempts I had pretty much got the hang of what I was doing, I was then able to express myself through the charcoal and use bold and harsh strokes and then compliment the strokes with the softer smudges.
Overall I was very impressed with my work and I would definitely do it again and I would love to carry on with this style of drawing as I felt that it suited me as an artist.
Charcoal on A1 paper.
Charcoal on A0 (two sheets of A1 taped together).
