S T U D I O P R A C T I C E: OUAN404 - Study Task 5

I have heard several visual arts tutors mention the importance of life drawing and how it should be a serious practice for any practicing visual artist. Whilst is is considered an old or traditional practice by many, drawing from life is an important part of contributing towards developing key visual skills when it comes to producing any art or design pieces. The fundamental practice trains the eye to see details accurately and observe emotion and gesture that can then be transferred onto a page using a variety of mediums. Skills that are learnt from drawing from life, specifically the figure will transfer to other areas of drawing and improve non-figurative art so it has more substance to it. Some of the crucial parts that figure drawing plays in art education is making you aware of how the body works and operates in a space, depending on the position of the figure and the shape of their body. Throughout my education I have been fortunate to have been given to undertake life drawing classes several times. The first time was first year college when I was 17 years old, it was at this point when I started to practice figure drawing that it became clear to me how little I knew when it came to anatomical drawing. Over the course of 10 weeks I attended sessions where I was given the chance to use a variety of materials to produce drawings of a life model, and over time it became clear to me more so how to body worked and how to produce sketches of different parts of the human body. Afterwards I realised how helpful these sessions had been, as I could already see an improvement on the way I drew people and figures. During the art foundation course I did, I was then reintroduced to life drawing and fortunately I had a basic understanding at this point that I could then build upon. The life drawing I did here was much more extensive than the previous sessions I had done, and I was becoming more confident when it came to drawing the human body. Producing drawings of something this complex requires understanding and technical ability, both of which improve with time, especially when you practice with the figure. The techniques and skills that are learnt from life drawing are highly transferable because in essence, you're training your eye and your ability to observe and translate visual information onto a piece of paper or whatever it may be. Life drawing also helped my general visual ability and I try and practice it whenever I can to make sure I'm on top of it.

During the visual language brief; Flow, Form and Force, the figure drawing we did, which involved doing a range of short and long poses in various positions such as; squashing, stretching, pushing and pulling. During some of the longer poses we could look at the gesture in more detail and include observations such as; shape, form, perspective and foreshortening, all through a variety of mediums appropriate to the pose. The types of poses we were looking at here are all everyday poses that are quite essential in understanding the way the body works in space and in my opinion are important when understanding specifically movement and anticipation to apply to the animation method.

Some of the artists I have looked at, as inspiration when I draw from life;