rebecca wallis illustration: November 2006

Yet more faces.

More faces

Faces

Last weekend, full of coldy germs, I lazily put my feet up and reread a favourite book, the great Figure Drawing without a Model by Ron Tiner, which always inspires me to take up a pencil and get drawing.

The chapter on the anatomy and characteristics of different faces was particularly interesting and I spent ages coming up with a variety of faces, exploring how long and thin or how wide and round they could be and still be feasible. Another section dealt with how and why the topography of a face changes as it ages, which facial muscles lose their elasticity first. All fascinating stuff.

Red Flannel Elephant cards

My Red Flannel Elephant Christmas cards by Gretel have arrived, and very lovely they are too! My dodgy photos don't do them justice.

Why not treat yourself to some too?

Life drawing - 6th Nov.

The life drawing session on Monday was packed full so I'll be arriving early next time to claim an easel and a decent spot. I started the session sitting in a chair at the edge of the room trying to keep out of the way of the increasingly annoyed huffing puffing man in front who obviously liked to step back three or four large paces after each stab at his paper with the charcoal.

To placate the huffingpuffing man, I squeezed through a gap in the wall of students to sit on the floor and gaze up the very tall model, but not too close of course, didn't want to make her uncomfortable or indeed, to see too much. We were total strangers after all!

I'm sure there's a proper etiquette for life drawing including: try to give everyone enough space to step back from their work, don't make eye contact with the model and most importantly, huffingpuffing man, please try not to break wind and disrupt the silent atmosphere of concentration.

And to any life models out there, please put on some clothes before wandering around to look at everyone's work and make general chit chat!

I'd folded over the large sheets of paper to make them easier to hold, and didn't spray them with fixative (or plain ol' hairspray) til I got back so when opened up, the folded paper revealed a nice ghostly print of each sketch.