Art Dump! Return to Bristol Life Drawing!

Hey. I didn't realize it's been just over 2 weeks since I've updated the blog, I have been a little busy marking student work recently so I haven't had a lot of time available.

This is just a quick update showing some things I have been up to. In my last post I mentioned that I want to improve my art skills, so that is what I have been working on!

I have been pretty hardcore in trying to force myself to do practise, so I have signed back up to my old life drawing classes that I attended before the start of uni. Bristol Figure Drawing Group takes place at the Bristol Grammar School on Thursdays, and it's packed full of artists! When I last attended around 4 years ago we were in a smaller venue and there was only about 20 people and a couple of models. In my first session this time there must have been upwards of 80 people all doodling away!

A sample of some old life drawings I created at this class before I went off to uni.

This class was great for me before as I used it to learn my way around the basics and get a good amount of practise in to ease me into a routine of creating a lot of art. (Without doing the class before uni I would have sucked even more than I did.) Attending the class this time was a really nice experience, I got to meet my old art instructor again Will Stevens and I even got some nice feedback about my work, just like I did all those years ago!

It's creatively refreshing to return to a class which has helped me in the past, as the positive association is already there from when I attended before uni, now I can use it prove how much I have learnt in the past 4 years or so.

Another sample of old, rubbish life drawings. I wasn't very good at proportion back then.

New Life Drawing

I have been for two weeks now and have produced a range of work in different mediums. 

The first session I saw as a bit of warmup to get me back into things, so I just did what I thought felt best as opposed to actively picking techniques to practise with. I started off with something comfortable that I was using a lot of at the time: The Promarkers. These were great for just warming up with some value-based sketching.

I did a sketch using a 7b pencil I found at the bottom of my pencil case and sharpened it all nice using my craft knife so I had a wide tip.

Then I wanted to do something a bit more experimental, so I decided to dive into my little art box and found a little pot of black ink. I had some old brushes on me so I had some fun, they weren't the most accurate of sketches but it's nice to do something a little bit out of my comfort zone.

Ink drawings, I didn't like these as much as some of the proportions are truly fucked, it was nice being able to try something different though. I will come back to inks at some point.

During this first session I realised how out of practise I actually am. Proportions and anatomy just sort of blipped out of my head and it resulted in some drawings that are a little out of whack, also my confidence has went down a little as evident by some of the chicken stepping with my lines. This is one key area I want to focus on; improving the quality of my mark making as well as making sure the accuracy of my drawings are on point.

OH. And colour, I would very much love to get a lot better at painting in colour, this would free me up to design stuff better when it comes to concepting 3d scenes. (Another longer term goal that stems from improving my art skill.)

I will cover next sessions life drawings in another post. Just so I can section it up more neatly and give an excuse to add more to my post count. ;)

Sorry about the image quality, it's unfortunately the best I can do at the moment with my little iPhone cam and lack of good quality lighting (or lack of a scanner) I will try to remedy this when I get my new place. :)

Next time people.
-James

ADD IMAGES OF LIFE DRAWING - OLD AND NEW IMAGES-TAKEN IN DINING ROOM