Tonight's Life Drawings... without charcoal!!

What fun I had at the life session tonight!
This afternoon I went out and bought myself a dip pen with some interesting large spoon shaped nibs to try and left my nice safe charcoal at home just as I had promised myself...
And what better way to break out of the comfort zone than to use a scary new unpredictable un-rub-out-able medium! The model couldn't have been better suited to the inks... He was any illustrator or life drawer's dream model - dynamic, confident, hugely imaginative and with the strength to carry off the extremely stressful looking poses and hold them a long time too. Just so exciting to draw, a real treat!
I left the studio so exhilerated at the end of the session and grinned all the way home! I really enjoyed myself and love the dip pen.
Here's how I got on... a bit messy, a few ink blobs, but I liked it...

Warming up with a 5 minute pose to start

In this second 5 minute pose he was trying to portray falling through space, fantastic except I was so excited about getting used to the dip pen and ink all my measuring went out the window!

15 minute pose, starting to get the hang of it now...

20 minute pose, trying out a bit of brush and plain water to find the mid-tones...

Another 20 minute pose, really starting to like using the brush and water...

And the final 20 minute pose where I ran out of paper for the full stretch of it.

I'll definately carry on experimenting with ink for life drawing, I might take along some white gouache for the highlights next time and use coloured paper...

I do hope these sessions can continue, there were suppossed to be eight of us tonight but only two of us showed up. It made for a very nice relaxed atmosphere but Helen who runs the studio would not have made any where near enough to even pay for the model. Last weeks was cancelled altogether because too many people couldn't make it. Lets hope we can find some more artists to keep it going, I'd be gutted to lose it...