I had an active week this week, and soon the Fall will arrive, and with it I go back to my non-summer schedule. This includes drop-in drawing starting in October, and continued sketching outdoors, and continuation of a portrait drop-in drawing session I found this summer. I will also start going to the university when the weather gets too cold to draw outside, and go to their drop-in drawing as well.
I find the drop-in sessions to be lots of fun, and in many respects more productive than workshops. I love drawing and painting people, so the drop-in sessions are perfect for me. I find there are several types of drop-in sessions, and each has its own special value and things I can learn.
The life drawing drop-in session is what I would call a traditional drop-in session. It lasts about two hours, and we have a model. We begin with 30 second poses, which force us to draw quickly and just get the gesture of the figure. Then we go to 10 minute poses, then 20 minutes, and finally in the end we get about two 30 minute poses. This kind of session I find good to focus on fundamentals, getting the basics right, and observing the model for tricky areas to draw. There is not enough time to paint, and no time really to finish the drawing during the session. Sometimes if a drawing is really good, I might go home and finish it, but I really prefer to complete the drawing with the model there for reference. These sessions are great for honing drawing skills, creating masses, placement of the figure on the page, and learning to work fast.
The second type of drop-in I had a chance to do in the beginning of the summer was a long pose drop-in. Here the model took one pose and after each break she resumed it. These poses are usually sitting or reclining, because of the time the model spends in the pose. This session lasted about 3 hours, and there was plenty of time to paint, which I did. I still did not finish the painting, but I completed enough that I just had minor touch ups (artistic touches, not drawing or model related touch ups) to do in my studio. This kind of session lets the artist reach the finishing stages of the painting, and yet the time limit is still short enough that you have to work fast, and accurately the whole time. No photos are allowed at any of the drop-in sessions, so I have to get it right while I am at the session. It forces me to work directly from the model for the whole painting.
The third type of drop-in I have participated in this summer was what is called a portrait drop-in. This lasts two hours, and the model maintains the same pose for the whole time. This is less time than the long pose, but because there is only one pose for the two hours, I found the time adequate to draw a head and shoulders portrait, but not paint or do the whole figure. Others did paint or do the whole figure or both, but I do not think any of them were able to complete their piece in the time allotted. I was lucky, I got into the zone, and finished a little early. I had to resist the temptation to fiddle with the finished drawing in order to fill up the time and I did. I just started to cleanup quietly during the last ten minutes so as not to disturb the others. In this session, when we have a professional model, the model is nude, so it is like the life drawing sessions in that sense. Alternate weeks, one of the participants models, so we get a draped model, which I would like to do more of. I find clothing difficult to do, and drawing clothing needs lots of practice too.
I am sure that there are many other types of drop-in drawing sessions that I have not had a chance to experience yet, but I found these three provided a rich mix of opportunity that exercised unique skills with each type of drop-in. This kind of practice is a must for artists interested in drawing people or portraits.
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