Life drawing 3, Dec 8, 2018

With my new job, now I feel more relaxed about spending some money on extracurricular activities :). I went back to life drawing yesterday. James came along as well. It was his first life drawing session. Until yesterday, he only used reference photos found on the web for figure painting practice.

The studio I went to a couple of months ago is now closed due to lease termination. The teacher recommended all the students to go to Alley 97, a 4-story old building serving as a cafe, a gallery and an art studio. The studio is much smaller than the previous art studio. You can see the model closely, if there isn't too many attendees.

Although I have been drawing people on the MRT 5 days a week for a few weeks, I still felt a bit rusty at the beginning of the session. Somehow it took me a few attempts to get the proportion close (I think it's still a bit off). I forgot what Charles Reid said about cast shadows. I thought I would be able to make 2 drawings but it still took me a good whole session to complete 1 painting.

I used Arches paper 300g watercolor paper. It's more expensive than all the other brands I've tried here in Taiwan, including Saunders, Canson Montval and a popular Chinese brand called Baohong. Arches paper beats all of them. It's just easy to work with and allows room to correct mistakes.