Sketchy Nights 3-8-12

 Sketchy Nights at Toscana was successful again last night. We had two new people that came to draw and the energy was great. I didn't draw as much as I usually do since my allergies were really bad (sneezing and drawing does not go together) but I did manage to do a few short gestures and one long sketch.
For those of you who might be new to figure drawing, gesture drawings are rapid sketches of short poses (1-3 minutes long). The object of doing gestural sketches is for warming up and to turn off your left brain, the side that thinks and analyzes everything. You don't have time to think about what you are seeing, so you try to just capture the essence of the pose, often just light and shadow or energetic lines. Using larger paper on an easel can make it really fun- if you really use your arms, it becomes whole body drawing!
We spend at least 30 minutes warming up and I believe it really shows in the final long sketch. My drawing skills have been getting better since I started doing this a month ago...it just goes to show that practicing actually works!

My longer pose drawings are getting better. I spent more time on concentrating on how the legs overlap and tried to show that "push pull" of  shapes going back and coming forward in space. I definitely felt I could have spent another hour drawing!
I'm looking forward to next week's session.
Cheers,
Reb