Exercise 1: Basic shapes

I managed to acquire my stepson Mason to sit for this sketch, the caveat to this was he wanted to lay down and watch a seemingly endless stream of mind numbing drivel on TikTok, It didn’t seem to be a bad way to get him to sit still for a duration so I agreed to his terms, his diplomacy in his debate club seems to be paying off. I completed three drawings for this exercise, the first two being preliminary drawings, this was a great way of understanding the pose and the position of the body. The angle of the head the arms relaxed over the trunk and the legs crossing over and locking at the feet, the second drawing was all of the above but with more of an emphasis on the composition and atmosphere.

Sketch 1

Basic shapes and their relation to one another, I was careful to try consider the weight and downward force that came from the reclined pose.

Sketch 2

More background and interaction with the soft furnishings helped to describe the weight and mass from the subject as he absorbs some annoying visuals and grating sounds. This was also a good lesson for me to remain focused throughout polluting distractions.

Final drawing

With the form explored, understood and committed to muscle memory, I selected a larger sheet of paper around A3 size, I followed my normal process and selected my 5.6mm mechanical pencil, I am aware that this is almost becoming a crutch to lean on, it seems to be working so while I am reluctant to change things up I will try to change my process in the spirit of experiment. I loosely and lightly outlined the forms onto the page, I am conscious to not make the pose mechanical or too rigid, I introduce the background at this step too as this will be directly affected by the model, if the background was a lamp or a bookcase for example I would probably imply it is there on the sketch and work that up once my anatomy seems successful.
This drawing needs to have weight and the sofa needs to show that, it needs to wrap, distort and change its shape to follow the subjects form. The hatched lines on the material added to the compression effect on the soft material.

Using both linear and tonal value to describe the influence each form has on one another. The exercise notes did suggest that the model be prepared to sit for an hour, we didn’t sit down for more than 35-40 minutes in total including a toilet break half way through the final drawing, luckily I had all the information needed to pick up the pose where we left off. I don’t know how I would have used the extra 20 or so minutes, I feel I had enough time, I may have spent the “free” time to work into the sofa some more, really describing the forms with a little more intensity, although this may have detracted from the pose overall so I am not too concerned.

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