Royal Drawing School - The Drawing Week

Life drawing week taught by Francis Hoyland and Charlotte Mann. 

Egyptian Pose- Solid 2 feet on floor one in front of the other. Shoulders square. Greek Pose- contra poste, angle of the hips, weight on one leg and head slightly down. Baroque pose- diagonals.

Pretend you are sat on the opposite side of the room drawing the back of the model (the side you cant see). EMPATHY with model. You could even stand in the same pose as the model and try and feel what it would be like to stand like that. After, the model spins around and you can draw corrections on top. 

Drawing by Francis. Advice- A model is in an environment, there is a fire/ a pillar etc. There are gaps in between things. Everything becomes shapes 1. what you see 2. draw. You choose what you want to draw. Focus on: what is under what/ what is across from what? Using Matisse' Compass + DIRECTIONS

More advice: Tell the truth with your drawing, what does it actually look like. Teaching motto: Empathy and Service.
Imaging a head in a shoe box- draw the highest point of the head and draw down and round for the shape of the head. Draw a plumb line from the middle of the collar bone down. First sketch lightly and then make darker marks when you are sure it is in the right place and the right size.
-see something
-continuum of forms
-just exploring making no definite marks
-led about
-sort of geometry - inevitability of next mark
out of relationships and correcting things a body arrives.
'Look in the middle and draw egg shapes' Delacroix

One model keeps moving poses every few minutes. All must relate to each other and all must keep changing.

Draw a model in the middle and then imagine her in the boxes facing each other from memory/ imagination. Its one thing to draw a model, but another thing drawing a sketch in the street, it is over so quickly that you must use your imagination.

Draw a pose in a cube/ a figure in a box.

Drawing on a grid

A cubed grid is taped on the floor. You must draw the body in relation to the grid. The grid and body must keep being corrected in relation to each other. If the grid is not corrected then the figure becomes warped. 

Tracing the grid with acetate.

Portraits done with the acetate held at a sheer an angle as possible. Trying to give the effect of the skull in the Holbein painting 'The Ambassadors'

Tracing the scene with the acetate lets you see what it actually looks like and where you have been going wrong. 

Look at an Old Master painting:

Draw it all 

draw from memory

draw a floor plan of painting- you learn much more about the painting. Also perhaps that the artist made it up/ the scene couldn't exist. 

draw again from memory- usually more accurate as you have gained more insight into the painting from earlier exercises.

Drawing Exercises.

These drawings were all made during the same exercise. Look at lots of different images for one second and have 1 minute to draw from memory. Compare all attempts with the rest of the class.  

These were for another exercise. Sit in a circle and say words or poems or anything and everybody has 5 minutes to do a drawing. Actually a pretty unhelpful activity as it just becomes illustration and the drawings are a bit boring.  

 Old Master Grid

Recreate an old master painting with models and a grid and some bits of furniture in the studio. Participants of the workshop take turns to model and draw from different angles. 

Floor plan drawn from original painting. 

Choose a character and pose as them. Look carefully at what you can see from that position. Then imaging and draw from memory that point of view. 

Models do 10 minutes as each person in the picture. Draw the whole picture.