I spent a couple of days trying to find a white sheet for this exercise, which believe it or not is actually quite difficult in Thailand because all the bed clothes are usually a patterned quilt and sheet set. I thought about a towel but I didn’t think a towel would be crisp enough so I decided to go with the two orange pieces of cloth that I bought last year and had used in several exercises. Being the cloth that they use to make the monks robes out of and using the girlfriend as a model, this was always going to be controversial.
In the last research point an Anatomy Drawing I mentioned a free e-book I downloaded ‘Human Anatomy Drawing for Artists’, in it I came across ‘The Arm of Saint Peter’ by Leonardo da Vinci, where Leonardo ‘uses folds like curving cross-contour lines to describe the cylindrical forms of the arm’ – Dan Gheno, a study that was influential in the next three drawings.
For the first drawing the model was laid on the floor, feet towards me with her head and hands on a bolster pillow, this helped me to draw a partial outline., curving from the elbow down to the waste ‘A figure drawing must first be outlined or suggested before it can be properly drawn’ – George Bridgman. After suggesting the figure, I drew in the outline of the cloth and began hatching with cross-contour lines to describe the box shapes of the chest, waste and hips.
The second drawing was a tonal study which I( drew from the first drawing not from life, in white pastel on black paper. I was going to draw over the top of this in orange pastel and decided I would do the next drawing in orange on coloured pastel paper…again.
The third and final drawing was in orange and brown pastel with the model in a sitting up position, which was not the best of drawings but it does show off the models figure under the robe cloth and like the other two drawings,
My Drawing Course 