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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.

The January meeting of CAPS featured Stephen Silver showing off the new app for artists that he and his programmer partner Johnny Byrnes have developed. We had quite a turn-out for this evening, many of the folks being first time guests. They’d heard about it online and being followers of Stephen’s they turned out in force. Made for an interesting evening.

The first part of the evening was Stephen’s presentation. He’d brought his primary model, John Tucker, along with him, because the latter part of the evening would be a session with John posing for us to do sketches.

Left to right: programmer Johnny Byrnes, model John Tucker (in pirate garb), artist Stephen Silver

Stephen demonstrated the apps he had designed, and showed many of the poses John had made for him. John is very expressive, not just in the poses he strikes, but also with his use of his hands, and of course his expressions.

Stephen’s demonstrations of aspects of the app were impressive.  In addition to all the still poses, the app includes instructive short videos pointing out elements of the pose, everything for the lines and twists of anatomy to the way drapery hangs on a body. It was fascinating stuff, and made me sorry I didn’t have a smart phone or table yet. This was great stuff. There’s an app of male poses and one of female poses – both reasonably priced, it seemed to me. They certainly cost less than most pose books, and there are a lot more pictures – because Stephen made a point of getting a variety of turn-arounds for nearly every pose.

After the presentation, he raffled off 6 free downloads of the Male app. My friend Jim MacQuarrie, who likes to complain that he never wins anything, won one of the apps.

Jim wins an app

After that, we reshuffled the chairs into a big circle, and John set up shop to start posing for us.

John sets up for modeling

After that, it was an evening of sketching away. But I’ll make a second post of all that.