Part 4 Project 3 Exercise 3 Stance

I started out this exercise with very tentative sketches of random models I found on the internet. After watching Michelle Whiting's commentary on the work of Averil Wootton in WeAreOCA, 17 May, 2016, I felt inspired by her gestural rendering of the woods. Her work has a vitality and freshness about it. I love the descriptive power of her charcoal and paint sketches. This motivates me to continue to push against the super tight style that often locks me in.

For this exercise, I decided to draw myself in varying poses in front of a full-length mirror. As it is the middle of winter in Cape Town and the house is freezing cold, I was not prepared to strip down, so drew myself fully clothed. I found it hard to understand what was meant about the axis line, as the description in the course materials does not go with the illustration. I discussed this with my daughter who has also completed life-drawing lessons and we could not really figure it out. I eventually interpreted it as a plumb line running from the centre of the head. However, as I progressed with the sketches I eventually found it more helpful to work out the main direction of movement of the varying sections of my body in comparison to the perpendicular.

 

My initial sketches were awkward with my tending to draw my head and torso too big in comparison to my legs. What made it a little complex is that a full-length mirror does cause a degree of distortion. My fourth sketch was particularly difficult to execute. You can see how many times I tried to rework the legs, and yet they still do not look right. I then tried a similar pose. This time, I focused on first sketching in lines to show the direction of the main movement within my pose. I then tried to figure out the relative proportions, and then used this as the framework around which I sketched in the gestural drawing. I copied this technique in the final pose, and I feel that I have been able to capture the slouched pose and the elongation of my legs stretched in front of me. I feel that I am finally getting the stance and the angles of the varying axes right.