Basic Shapes

To create a portrait you must recognise the shapes that make up the body. A sphere for the head, cylinders and squares. I wanted to look into the shapes of the body, and combine it with more practice of foreshortening.

With this first drawing I stuck to a medium I am most comfortable with and used cross hatching to develop some tone. I began by building up the body in basic shapes. The torso, where I started, was a square that due to the position of the model became a twisted quadrilateral. A cylinder neck and obviously a sphere for the head. The arms and legs, again to me, were rectangles of sorts which I had to curve out as the drawing progressed. The foreshortening I used within the composition creates a shape itself, almost a triangle that draws the viewers gaze to the head of the model. The legs spread out in opposite directions which draws the gaze in. This gaze then follows up the torso, twisting around to reach the neck and head. Drawing the chair helps me to identify the proportions and see if everything fits in correctly. I’m really happy with this piece, I think the proportions are accurate and the tone is effective. I would like to try, further down the line, watercolour pencils using water to blend out the cross hatching.

For this piece, I went down a similar route for my choice of medium, using a thick stick of lead. This allows me to work with a charcoal like medium without as much mess. In this position by my model a triangle is formed with the whole body again but due to the angle he is sitting at it is more of a right angled triangle. The torso is more square in this drawing as it isn’t twisting to the side.
A sense of measurement is made through the surrounding objects, the book shelf and the mirror behind, which create more of a sense of space than the previous drawing. The bookshelf adds to the models gaze, which has a sense wondering about it. There is a thought process and a clouded mind within his face. This could be as he is looking into the distance rather than at the viewer.

For this drawing I got a bit more experimental with my drawing medium. I used bright colours with oil pastel for a more stylised drawing than one focused on realism. It allowed me to be a lot looser and focus more on my use of lines than tone. The background furniture, again, created a sense of space and proportion for the body to relate to, it helped me get his sizing and proportions right in relation to the chair and area around him. A triangle shape is again formed in this piece, that draws the viewers gaze to the head. However the shape takes place within the models arms rather than his legs. A triangular shape is formed separately in his legs due to him crossing his foot onto his knee, but it remains separate from the head. The torso shape can be seen to be more definitively as a square in this drawing. The shapes that make up the body are more easily seen do to the focus on line over tone. I think since this piece is larger than my previous oil attempt, it works a lot better, so an even larger scale could work more effectively.

I should experiment with colour as I move forward as it adds a lot of life and vibrancy to a drawing. Identifying shapes in the body really helps me to place the proportions and create an accurate depiction of the body and this exercise really helped me to focus on that and I got great, improved results. I should practice a variety of positions in a variety of media to really improve myself further.