Working within the restrictions of a Life Class I began an hour drawing of a seated pose which also encompasses some foreshortening. I tried looking for shapes and direction of receding lines. I think that I have partially achieved the foreshortening but I am not totally satisfied with the results. The forearm could have been wider in width and the knee doesn't quite seem right and I need to look more carefully at the shapes particularly in the foreshortening. The proportion needs to be more carefully taken into consideration, the right forearm is not the correct length and the angle of the forearm from the wrist is not right.
I tried another pose and I think this was more successful and certainly the proportions worked far better.
Essential Elements
This exercise I found hard at first but it really concentrated my eye on tone. As the lighting in the life class is poor it made me think more and be more aware of where the darkest tones were. Since I have done this exercise it has certainly improved the way I look and observe a pose and I think before I start where the light is coming from and try to add some strength to my work. I have mainly used charcoal and the one I feel which has been the most successful is the one where I used a soft charcoal attached to a metre cane and held the cane half way down so that I couldn't fiddle and add too much detail.
I think that I should have concentrated more on building up the tone and
letting the sketch evolve rather than going for a true likeness. I think that I would like to achieve a sketch somewhere in the middle of these two processes.
