Light & Shadow

I have one more life drawing class for the summer term but today was the last one with the main teacher.  Next week we'll have the other teacher from earlier this summer who taught us to start drawings with 10-15 lines.  Today we began with gestures of random length.  As usual we were meant to get everything down in the first few seconds and then expand if there was time.  I've included two pages of samples below.

Then we did 5 minute drawings that I found really useful.  We built up the drawing layer by layer in different colours adding more and more "accurate" information as we went.  The first minute was a light gesture drawing as "extravagant" as possible capturing the spirit or movement of the pose.  Next was a minute for "landmarks" either skeletal or on the surface.  These include elbow bones and belly buttons.  Next was a minute for drawing mass with large and then smaller elliptical lines.  The last 2 minutes were for "informed contour lines."  Informed because of the information gathered during the 3 previous minutes.  There are two of these below.

Then we did one pose for 45 minutes beginning with the constructed lines, then some light contour lines and then only light and shadow.  The idea was to end up with a drawing with no lines but everything built up only by light and shadow.  This teacher has been interesting giving another unique method for life drawing.