At my last OCAD class, we had a clothed live model. The instructor walked around as we made our drawings to make some suggestions. During my previous sessions, there would be instructions to make quick 10 second poses or 1-3 minute drawings and you could really only get down the very basics of the person. These were supposed to be warm up drawings.

But at this session, we were instructed to make 20 minute sketches immediately.

I had seen the work of another student, David, who had put in brown and black conté in his sketches from one week, and thought I would try it for my first sketch as well.

I rather appreciated the instructor comments. One of the ones that stood out to me was that it was important to get down the shape of the back. We were told to draw the main figure, then the forms of the body, and then add on the clothes so that was new to me. Having to imagine someone underneath their clothes was a lot of work but ultimately I think it helped in the final drawing.

My favourite one is the one with his back to me hunched over (the cover image). I kept drawing the right shoulder too high and so the instructor came to comment on this which was very helpful.

The figure lying down was probably the most difficult pose I’ve ever drawn which had a significant amount of foreshortening. I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out. I had to take a lot of time to measure out things. One of the tricks is to see the size of the head and then measure out other parts of the body to be the same size.

This particular model was a very tall and slim man, and so I wanted to ensure to capture that underneath his clothes. There were parts where you could see his shoulders, and the bagginess of his clothes.

I also wanted to preserve his swollen feet since he had a medical condition and thought it would be strange to redraw over what was reality and as his feet would be without the condition.