It had been quite a long time since I’d done any drawing from life. I don’t usually have my sketchbook with me when I’m out and about places, nor the time to be doing quick (or slow) sketches of people. So when this opportunity came up, I couldn’t possibly miss it.
Once the presentation about the Posebook app was done, we reset for doing sketches. I took one quick snap of John Tucker as he struck his first pose, and after that set the camera aside.
From that pose I whipped out a very bare lines sketch.
The first section of the sketch period, John struck poses for about one minute each. That meant you really had to be quick about your sketching.
John was very good at holding a wide variety of poses.
Sometimes I felt the time was way too short to do more than just key parts of the pose. But that was okay too.
After the really quick poses, John then struck one for five minutes, which gave more time to focus on details.
Then Stephen gave us a real challenge. John would strike a pose facing one part of the group. You had three minutes to look at John — but you could not draw while you were studying him. Once your three minutes were up, you could start drawing (while John turned to face another section and struck the same pose again for them).
I wanted more to get the tilt of his head, with as much of the expression as possible. So, his right hand which actually held a prop pistol got short shrift from me.
Yeah, I’m not so good at drawing a skull from memory (that’s what he was holding). But again I was going for his expression, and the way he was holding his left hand.
The last pose of the evening, he struck so we could sketch with a sense of weight and the accomodation of an object with the balance of the body.
(These aren’t all the sketches I did during the evening, just the ones I found most interesting — and yeah, better than the ones I didn’t post.)
All in all, it was a stimulating evening. I felt rather out of practice, but ended up pleased with what I did do.
