My parents kindly gifted me an art course at the Slade for my last birthday - I chose one that would focus on moving from drawing to oil painting. I had hoped it would be more focused on mark-making and how drawing can influence painting, but it turned out to be more of an introduction to using oil paints. I haven't used them since school however, so in some ways it was good to have a refresher and just invest some time in thinking about using colour, as that's an area in which I don't have much confidence. Click images below to see larger.

All drawings in 4B/5B pencil and graphite stick. Click to enlarge and see sketching times.

More life class. I was trying to be more expressive and loose in style this week - not sure if it was working so you'll see that some of the later drawings are focused more on accuracy. I was looking at drawings by Riccardo Mannelli this week and thinking how much I'd like to get his sense of three dimensional muscles and skin texture - but then I also love the expressiveness of Egon Schiele etc... I want to develop to be able to do both and still have my own style but don't know if that's possible. I also want to get better at composition because I can never fit the feet on the page...! (Should pretend I'm doing it on purpose really...) Anyway, click images below to see full sketches.

First time in ages that I've actually managed to get to life class 2 weeks in a row - amazing. I've also never drawn a model before who decided to wear sunglasses the whole way through and chew gum. Anyway, click images below to view larger.

This week at life class we were drawing a disconcertingly beautiful man - whichever Renaissance artist it was who said the young male form is the pinnacle of beauty on this earth was not far wrong. Anyway (ahem), click images below to view full drawings, and see captions for lengths of time each sketch took and the media used.

Some work from tonight's life drawing class - some short exercises and longer drawings. Frustratingly, putting these drawings on my website doesn't give a sense of their scale. Today I was working in an A4 sketchbook, all previous life class drawings have been A3.

Click to see full pictures - see captions for timings and tasks. 

More drawings from life class - some a bit stilted so I'm not as pleased with them as usual, but a good evening of drawing nonetheless. Click images to enlarge and to see timings of each drawing. All in pencil (4B & 2B).

It's been a while since my last class, and there's a new teacher, so it took me a while to get into drawing quickly. I still am really enjoying getting the chance to do a full two hours of drawing from life though. Click images below to enlarge and scroll through.

Today at life class we spent the whole hour and a half session on one drawing of a moving figure. If we filled our page we were asked to consider the work of William Kentridge (who I love), who creates animated films by continuously redrawing and erasing from one charcoal image, and work into our drawings repeatedly. We were given a word at random to focus our drawing - mine was 'left' so I decided to focus on negative space and the outline of the figure left behind. We were also asked to consider the overall drawing and make sure it worked as a whole. Quite a specific task, but I'm really enjoying having more instruction than I've experienced at life classes in the past - it is much more challenging than being asked to just draw a figure, and I think it is helping improve my sketching skills.

Apart from comparing my thighs to those of the enviably toned models, I've really been enjoying the (free! amazing) life class run by my university art society. We draw lots of short poses which I think has been good for me as I'm used to spending long periods of time on pieces of work. Apologies for the slightly shady photos rather than scans - my A3 sketchbook won't fit in my scanner and I can't be bothered to do them in bits and stitch them together.

Three 5-minute drawings of the same pose from different angles (one while I was standing precariously on a chair...)

5 minute sketch

5 minute sketch

10 minute drawing using pencil and graphite stick

20 minute drawing