The first model was a muscular woman, but she posed in a slouched seated posture. It was hard to reconcile the two. The charcoal drawing captures the muscular part, but not the slouch - and looks a bit like something from a sci-fi graphic novel. The painting captures the slouch better, but misses the muscles. And then because it was a long pose, I felt obliged to try the feet and hand. I like the composition; the anatomical accuracy, not so much. As a fellow life-drawer said, "drawing the feet" is awfully similar to "drawing defeat".
The right side of the next week's model came out oddly shrunken compared to the left side in the painting below, but I still can't decide where that puts the picture on the scale from "interesting" to "creepy weird". The charcoal drawing was a bit bland, so I added a background (the drawing is on translucent mylar, so the paint is on the back). It's okay, except I made him balance precariously on his left shin. That placid, slightly supercilious look is about to change into one of shock, as he tumbles backward into the abstract Howe Sound sunset.
Sometimes I like best the drawings I do at the end of a session, quickly with the flat side of a charcoal pastel stick. They never fail to meet my expectations, since I have none by that point.
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