Figure drawing on ✨MYSTERY WATERCOLOR PAPER✨ (Patreon)

At Art Night this week, my friend Amanda was struggling with a watercolor block and some gouache, and proclaimed that that paper was trash. Funny enough, it was the same brand as the watercolor block that *I* had recently proclaimed was trash - Fluid - but hers was cold press (a rougher texture), while mine was hot press (smooth, like bristol board). I asked if she'd like to switch. She immediately preferred the hot press.

I brought her block to figure drawing tonight, since I knew my friend Jason was modeling and I have a hard time drawing him anyway, so there was no pressure to make anything worth keeping. Took the pressure off a little.

We started out with 5-minute poses, of course:

"WTF" note because that pose was not sustainable for five whole minutes! He was a trooper, but he won't be doing that one again.

The long pose we chose for the evening was great for practicing knees, but I have a hard time drawing the figure all opened up because there are fewer landmarks ("elbow is an inch behind the knee," "chin is overlapping clavicle," that sort of thing), and I HATE the staff! I hate having to draw a straight line (so I never do!). My first sketch was super boring:

But I was pretty excited about my second sketch, when I decided to throw reality out the window:

The watercolor block I took from Amanda is a cool 6x12" landscape size, so I planned on exaggerating this figure vertically.

As usual, I preferred the sketch to the drawing I did for the final version, but I did end up liking Amanda's paper! Here's an in-progress photo:

This paper gives such a nice glow! Here's the final:

That glowy transition between the colors on the legs made me so happy! I'll be returning to this paper for sure.

I finished this in about an hour, so I put it aside (instead of ruining it by continuing, YAY LEARNING) and did a couple more sketches for the last 20 minutes.

I've been talking about hand grip lately, and I noticed that for this one (and any looser drawing I make), I organically transitioned to cupping the pencil with all four fingers and lightly leaning my thumb on top of it. This allowed me to use the edge of the pencil lead instead of just the pointy tip.

Same with this one:

I liked the face on this, it looked a lot more Jason-like than the others.

Here's the link to this particular brand of Fluid paper (the cold press block) in case you're interested! I'm sure you'll see more experiments with this block over the coming weeks. 

Speaking of coming weeks, we probably won't be getting together for figure drawing the next two weeks (Michael's getting a PUPPY next Wednesday, which is the best reason to skip), but I'll be keeping an eye on other local figure drawing sessions to see if I can make it to another one. If you locals know of any sessions coming up in the next two weeks, please let me know!