So last Friday a bunch of us headed over to 3rd Ward in Brooklyn to check out their “Drink n Draw Overdrive” event. Apparently they have live figure drawing there every Wednesday and this was a special promo event. The Wednesday sessions are two and a half hours long…but this one was from 8pm to 2am for $15. Plus free beer. Sounded like a good deal. Plus, I cant speak for everyone but I definitely could always use some figure drawing practice.
The event was crowded. I had no idea this many people were into spending their Friday night drawing nude (or oddly semi-nude) models. But we got a pretty good spot on the floor by one of the stages. Good for foreshortening practice if nothing else.
Figure drawing sessions usually start out with quick poses. I think these were one minute long.
Next we moved on to ten minute poses…I alternated between ink, pencil and watercolor.
And then 20 minute poses.
I really like this one by Domitille:
And one of mine:
They really kept things moving. All of us agreed that hour long poses are kind of boring for a cartoonist. I know I dont really care if a drawing looks polished or finished in this setting. Luckily, the longest poses of the evening were 30 minutes.
After about 4 hours of this you start to get a little loopy. There was an experiment with making the models into Simpsons characters that ended up getting into some creepy territory.
By the end I wanted to see how much I could remember from my art anatomy classes back in school. Apparently I dont know how hips are constructed anymore.
All in all it was a kind of awesome drawing marathon. We all said we would make figure drawing a regular thing, but time will tell whether this is a new years resolution we’ll end up keeping.
Hey, this sounds awesome! Check out http://www.thecanvaspdx.com. They do costume model figure drawing every Monday night at 7pm. 15 minute warm-up pose and two 30-minute poses. The Figure Drawing is FREE, pay for the booze!