Yesterday afternoon, I met with my friends Kim, Danny and Steve in the pub to quickly celebrate Kim's birthday before she had to go back to Plauen in eastern Germany. That was at five o'clock. Three hours, three Belgian beers and a quick meal later, I had a life drawing session with the VOIC.
So, how unsteady was my hand? I won't claim that the life drawings below are my best ever, but they're not nearly my worst either. I sat down at a table for the first time since I started taking part in those sessions (I normally prefer to either sit with the sketchbook in my hands, or stand at an easel). That helped, and what also helped was that the model was very good at sitting still. So was her identical twin. The pink elephant, on the other hand, was a constant nuisance.

For the first few drawings, the model kept her wraparound towel on, so I tried to work on draperies and feet. There's a girl in the class I teach who can draw feet amazingly well, so I need to improve to keep up with my student.

Nice hands. Terrible legs.

Cartoonish face, proportions all wrong. Must have been that pink elephant trumpeting in my ears.

I had to cheat a bit with this one. When I was drawing this one, I liked how the abstract, minimalist painting in the background framed her skin and hair against a square red area. However, I didn't have any colour tools on me so I tried, and failed, to replicated the effect with my grey pencils. That wasn't the same because the red square was the same brightness as the hair, causing the hair to disappear. Photoshop to the rescue... this is actually a good approximation of what it would have looked like if I'd had my colour pencils with me.

This one turned out all right in the end, though as I was working on it, I had no idea how to make the way the model's body was turned unambiguously clear. Older, fatter models usually have some folds that can be used to indicate how the twist works, but this model lacked them. In the end, I don't think it was necessary to emphasize the mechanics. She's turned. This was how it looked.