One thing I love about the Art Students League is the privilege of working with the wonderful models. In addition,?the poses at the Art Students League are often repeated over several days. I was glad to have the opportunity to work on this figure drawing for about 6 hours.
Another terrific instructor, Michael Grimaldi. taught our morning figure class. (Click on his name to see his extraordinary drawings.) The poses were long, some lasting weeks at a time. It is wonderful to be able to study the figure in detail.
Then I had the good fortune to spend a week studying at the Stanford University dissection lab. Both Michale?Grimaldi and Dan Thompson taught the class,?through?the Bay Area Classical Artist Atelier.
As?I study anatomy, I begin to see more structures in?the human form.
My objective for this?drawing was to investigate the figure's construction, movement, and relation to light. Next to?the figure is my drawing of the skeletal substructure, and another of the lights and darks on the model and in the background, with a dark-to-light scale drawn along the left border.?You can see that I was struggling to find the form for that left arm!
This young woman held her pose for 15 hours a week for 4 weeks. I'm sad that I only got to draw her for about one week. I would have loved to stay for the whole pose, but it was time for me to fly home.