Figuredrawing.net

Red Cricket Col­lec­tion of Quin Swetman

Con­grat­u­la­tions to William, this month’s win­ner of a free 5″ x 7″ print just for sign­ing up to our mail­ing list! Join now to be in the run­ning for February’s free print.

Back Study by Daniel Liam Gill

Open Fig­ure Draw­ing Ses­sion at the Riv­oli Art Mill

Join the artists at the Riv­oli Art Mill on Sun­day after­noons from 2pm-5pm for an Open, Unin­structed Fig­ure Draw­ing Session.

Live model will be pos­ing in 15 one minute ges­tures, 3 five minute sketches and 1 fif­teen minute pose. 3 thirty minute poses will fol­low with breaks in between for the model.

Cost: $10.00 per per­son.
Sun­day After­noons: 2pm-5pm Ongo­ing
The Riv­oli Art Mill 2301 East 28th St.
Chattanooga,Tennessee 37407
Please pro­vide your own mate­ri­als and easel. The space can hold 10–12 peo­ple com­fort­ably. Please arrive 15–20 min­utes early to reserve your spot.

For ques­tions
con­tact 
Daniel Liam Gill
423 653‑6565

I have always loved work­ing on Newsprint, it one of my favorite papers. It’s a shame it’s so frag­ile, I wish I could find the same tone and tooth in an acid free paper. This is a sketch of a model named Ann that I did in a ses­sion at the Pacific North­west Col­lege of Art. I taught illus­tra­tion there for a few years. This is a 30 minute study done with Nupas­tels for Pris­ma­color.

I’ve worked with a lot of mod­els over the years, all shapes and sizes, many pro­fes­sional and many more ama­teur. I heard quite a few sto­ries in that time, anec­dotes about other artists, plenty of sto­ries about boyfriends and lovers and lots of things that I can’t repeat to the gen­eral pub­lic. I’ll have to write a book someday.

There’s a story behind this draw­ing as well. I was work­ing with a model the day before this young lady sat for me. She was telling me about her artist friend who loved to work with heavy peo­ple. “She imag­ines them as ice cream cones” That visual stuck in my head and I as thought about it, I indeed imag­ined ice cream. Zestos is a place in Atlanta that still does the soft serves, magic in it’s cush­iony lay­ers.  I drew this piece in 45 min­utes, straight from the time the model set down to the fin­ished piece. I guess there’s really some­thing to the power of suggestion.

Nude pas­tel draw­ing done with Schminke pas­tels on Rives BFK paper.

Con­grat­u­la­tions to Vic­to­ria for win­ning the Decem­ber 2009 free print draw­ing, a  5″ x 7″ print is on it way to her. Be sure to enter the draw­ing for this month’s free print. Sign up in the box to your right.

I’d been work­ing with my friend Brid­hid for quite some time when a lady answered my ad on Craigslist. She’d lost quite a bit of weight and was on her way to Argentina for some recon­struc­tive surgery. She wanted a por­trait of her body before the change. I painted one for her and started on this one of Brighid the next day. The odd­est thing, I painted the face of the lady onto Brighid’s body. I won­der what she looks like now and hope that she’s happy in her new skin.

Nude pas­tel draw­ing done with Schminke pas­tels on Rives BFK paper.

The draw­ing for a free print will occur on Jan­u­ary 1, 2010. That’s this Fri­day! Join the mail­ing list for your chance to win!

I met Kris in 2004 after she’d just returned from India. The first piece that we cre­ated was an oil pas­tel draw­ing, Shim­mer in the oil pas­tels sec­tion. Kris has a won­der­ful deep glow about her and india red was a nat­ural back­drop for her por­trait. I had this life draw­ing on dis­play at Hip­bone Stu­dio where my col­league, Julie Neil­son fell in love with it. It hangs in her liv­ing room above the fireplace.

I used two dif­fer­ent tech­niques for the high­lights on this pas­tel draw­ing. The face and upper torso are ren­dered in a removal process, the legs are built up in a tra­di­tional dark to light method. Com­pare the two and notice how the upper body glows with a tremen­dous lumi­nos­ity. I have a video in the works teach­ing this tech­nique. Sign up for my mail­ing list to be the noti­fied for this exclu­sive offer via email.

Nude pas­tel draw­ing done with Schminke pas­tels on Rives BFK paper. Col­lec­tion of Jule Neilson.

I have always enjoyed sketch­ing, espe­cially on rough newsprint. I’ve never found a paper with the same com­bi­na­tion of color and tooth as newsprint. It’s a shame that it’s not acid free. This is on of my favorite life draw­ings of Kestral, it’s in a psuedo Japan­ese style, very sim­ple and almost purly line. It suf­fers from one of the most com­mon fig­ure draw­ing mis­tackes, tiny head syn­drome. Other than that, it’s a fun pas­tel fig­ure drawing.

Nupas­tel on Newsprint.

When I was liv­ing in Port­land and too poor to afford mod­els, I put an ad on Craiglist, trad­ing a print of the final pas­tel draw­ing for a 3 hour sit­ting. Cara answered my ad. She had to study for finals and asked if I could draw her read­ing a book. She stud­ied, I drew. The base of this pas­tel is a won­der­ful orange pas­tel from Sen­nelier, it makes Cara’s skin very lumi­nous. I traded the fin­ished orig­i­nal to a Croa­t­ian named Branko for a win­ter coat and some hik­ing boots. I miss Portland’s barter sys­tem, I’ll have to start one up here in the Noog.

Nude pas­tel draw­ing done with Schminke pas­tels on Rives BFK paper.

Orange navel is a pas­tel fig­ure draw­ing of an artists mode; named Dale. I worked with Dale over sev­eral ses­sions cre­at­ing the pieces Ver­mil­lion, in the Pas­tels Gallery and Pumps in Oil Pas­tels. She had red hair and very pale skin that reflected light was an incred­i­ble radi­ance, she was one of my favorite muses. Dale was in the The­ater and a big Woody Allen fan. We exchanged favorite films once, her’s being Every­one Says I Love You, with Edward Nor­ton singing. Mine was Miller’s Cross­ing with Gabriel Byrne, not singing, our col­lab­o­ra­tion sort of faded to black after that.

Nude pas­tel draw­ing done with Schminke pas­tels on Rives BFK paper.

I am giv­ing away a 5″ x 7″ print of this piece at the end of Decem­ber. Sign up with the form on the right of the page and you’ll auto­mat­i­cally be entered for a chance to win. I’ll announce the win­ner at the first of January.