On the 18th August I was fortunate enough to attend a fashion life drawing session at the V&A in Dundee, being held in conjunction with their current Tartan exhibition. The model was none other than Drag Queen sensation and all round good egg "Cheddar Gorgeous".
We had a couple of warm up drawings where we focused on other attendees of the event (see above, the first was a continuous line, second was holding the pen at the very end and drawing with your arm outstretched ), but once fully warmed....we moved on to poses from Cheddar.
I have done life drawing only twice in my life. Once was an in person session of short poses, which I think I went to about 10 years ago. The only other life drawing event I have taken part in was an online session held by the amazing team at 2B or not 2B collective which was a selection of short poses and 2 longer ones. Doing life drawing in person, and oddly wearing clothes, made it quite a bit more complicated than I had expected. I have never done fashion illustration or any sort of drawings involving clothes, and the shapes and textures are so much harder to depict than bare skin.
I think I might have sat in possibly the worst location possible for this type of drawing.
Not only did we have a side angle, making the poses much more complicated to draw as the perspective is uncommon, but we were also facing into the light, meaning Cheddar was mostly just in sillouette. In fact, it wasn't until afterwards when we got to meet her, that we could tell the colours in the Tartan and her make up. This was a real shame as the Tartan outfit had been especially commissioned by designer Owen Edward Snaith using a tartan he designed and officially registered called "Incentive" named after the boat that was used by Edward Johnstone to the end of his fishing career, the ‘Incentive’. The design is intended to mark the respect that Edward Johnstone has for fishermen past and present that have fished off the East Coast of Scotland.
I found some of the challenges given along side the poses quite a “challenge” as well.
We had to do continuous line drawings, not taking the pen off the paper (thankfully I have had a bit of practice with that during my art foundation practice)
We had to draw with our non dominant hand (pic 1 below)
We had to draw poses over the top of other poses, (pic 2 below)
and most problematic for me was the “don’t look at your paper” pose. (Pic 3 below)
There were a number of reasons this one tripped me up. Firstly, not looking at your work as you draw is always going to produce some rather abstract impressions unless you have an innate ability to just sense and know all the proportions and positions of your drawing on the paper.
Secondly, it was suggested we switch mediums to try and bring in some of the different colours on display. This meant any small inkling I had as to position of my drawing on the paper was out the window.
Thirdly, I am autistic and sometimes struggle with eye contact. This was a 10 minute pose where the model was facing us the entire time. Making eye contact and not being able to look at the paper was pure agony.
Overall I ended up with some interesting images although none that looked particularly accomplished.
I decided when I got home that I would draw one final work where I had a good reference photo, good lighting and no time pressure.
I produced a colourful portrait on my A4 sketchbook using watercolour pencils, which took me a couple of hours (though I wasn’t timing it…I had some rubbish TV on in the background and broke for tea, so not really sure how much dedicated time I spent on it).
I am actually really pleased with how it’s come out. I have managed to grasp a passing resemblance to the subject which I normally find incredibly hard to achieve, and I the textures in the outfit were fun to work on, despite the challenges they posed.
I really like the colours and the use of the bright colours when defining her features and the shadows. It just feels bright and playful.
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