Last night I attended the figure drawing workshop at the Concept Design Academy. Let’s just say that I am a little out of practice. I haven’t been to a figure drawing workshop since 2005. Hell, I don’t think I’ve really done any life drawing since 2005. Pretty much the only time I draw with real media is at Magic: The Gathering shows, but that is slightly different since I’m working in Sharpies and usually drawing fantasy characters or super heroes. The day before the workshop I had to practice by brushing up on my daarktoids so that I wouldn’t feel completely lost. I used some reference from mjranum-stock on deviantart.

What I didn’t realize was how much of a toll it would take on my fingers and wrists. The workshop was 3 hours long and I was drawing in a fairly small sketchbook, which is pretty customary if you ever attended any of the AAU workshops with me. I like being able to stand while I draw so that I can easily move around the model to find the best angle possible. It was funny because so many people kept offering me a seat. I guess holding a sketchbook with one hand for 3 hours is harder than I remember. During the last set of 5 minute poses I had to sit down and take it easy because I was experiencing some pretty bad nerve pain in my wrists. I’m going to try and attend the workshop every Sunday, hopefully my fingers and wrists will be able to hold up.

I brought my tablet PC with me too in case I wanted to try and work digitally, but 3-10 minute poses might be a little too short to work digitally. I dunno, maybe if they threw in a 20 minute pose I might consider it. I think there is also something nice about being able to work with pencil again and have something physical to show people…even though I don’t really show anyone my sketchbook, hah! Maybe I should even consider getting some charcoal again…yeah I never thought I would catch myself saying that. I pretty much hated charcoal in school but now, I dunno.

These sketches range from 3-10 minutes long. I’m sure you can probably pick out which ones are which. On shorter poses I usually don’t block in the head very much, I’m much more interested in the pose. Even in the longer poses I don’t spend too long on the face simply because I am much more interested in the anatomy. Doing portraits of people is easy because you can find anyone to sit for you. Finding nude models is much harder, so I wanted to take advantage of the situation and focus on anatomy over portraits. I should probably work in a larger sketchbook too so that I can fit the whole figure in there. In some of the other drawings I did last night I made sure to include the feet.

I must say, getting back to some figure drawing was awesome. I think the thing I liked the most about school was going to the weekly figure drawing workshops. I dunno, there is something that I really enjoy about drawing the figure. Like I said before, hopefully I will be able to attend the workshop every week. If you are in the area, you should definitely think about dropping by. The school is fairly small, but it feels like it has a great community that is very close. I don’t attend the school so I felt really awkward going to a workshop where everyone else knows each other except me. Everyone was very nice and friendly and made me feel at home. See you next week CDA!