Sunday, August 12, 2012

5th entry for July 22, 2012





(You don't need to know anatomy to draw people, but a knowledge of it can be useful, especially with people like B-  . Anatomy is also invaluable in drawing naturalistic figures from imagination. Coming up in a week, I'm teaching a 5-day Anatomy and Figure Drawing course at the Toronto School of Art. It runs 9-4 every day. We'll use skeletons, reference books, lectures and lots of drawing time with live models to provide an overview of the major muscle groups and bone forms of the human body. If you have some figure drawing experience it is a really good way to bring body structure into better focus.
You can get more information on the TSA website here.)


From above, these are a 15-minute and a 20-minute study, both done with Nobel hard compressed charcoal on 23 x 34" Durotone papers. The top one is on Extra White and the lower one is on White Newsprint colour.  Durotone is an acid-free recycled machine-made paper . Like many machine-made papers, one side has a subtle `web pattern' to it.  I try to use the smoother side, but sometimes I choose wrong. In the lower image you can see a faint diagonal pattern a bit like halftone dots.

That `web pattern'  only shows up while drawing, and there's no watermark to help distinguish which side is which. If you draw and aren't keen on that texture, the best strategy is to buy a stack of the paper, test-draw on the first sheet, and then flip the stack over if necessary to have the preferred side up. Smartest practice is to then make some light mark/s in pencil on an edge or corner of the preferred side, so 6 months later you can still ID which side you like after the pile has been moved around.


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