04 // Live Drawing

This weeks task was something I definitely do not do enough of, but will be doing a lot more of in future. It may not be the easiest thing to head out and do; it can be a bit nerve-racking, leaving the comfort zone and drawing in public - especially whilst being scrutinized by passers-by - but it's pretty beneficial in that people when out in public tend to make some odd poses that you might never consider using when figure drawing. Therefore the study of hoomans in their natural habit can yield some pretty nice results. Plus it's good practice, which is never a bad thing.

So the first port of call was the exterior of the University building, where a throng of people gathered, milled about, wandered etc, making this a good spot to warm up with a few sketches/scribbles.

My choice of medium for this installment was a black ink brush pen. My reasoning for this choice was that I figured having the option to easily produce thin and broad strokes with a single implement would allow me to produce more variety in my mark-making, thus enhancing my ability to get more details down on paper in half the time. While the brush pen was definitely effective in achieving this, the nature of the pen makes it very difficult to control skinny lines, particularly when outside and trying to work effectively at speed.

Here are my first few efforts, including a couple from the interior of the library rotunda area.

All in all, not a bad first effort, give or take a few silly mistakes, and poor representations of the subject matter. Despite this, I definitely learned a thing or two from the exercise.

Following on from some post-sketching analysis, I decided that the brush pen was my main problem; its a tool I'm not entirely comfortable with at the moment, having not really put enough practice into yet. From what I've gathered, it excels in producing measured strokes, when time is plentiful enough to spare on ensuring that each mark is controlled enough to produce the desired results. In this case though, it resulted in too many accidents for me. 

Considering which approach to take on my next endeavour, I returned to using my fave pens: a 01 fineliner for rough layout, form seperation and tonal work, followed by a slightly thicker fineliner for silhouette linework. Happy days!! The speed was increased exponentially just by using my two favourite pens! Without having fear of uncontrollable lines, I was able to get shapes down quicker and more confidently, producing far better results than before.

Fuelled by this new-found confidence - and having a comfy seat within Dundee train station - I was able to quickly get a few sketches out within 10 mins. There is definitely improvement within this second pass...