Group critique with Peter

I had a group critique with Peter today after seeing him on Friday to ask for some advice for over the weekend. Peter advised that I look over the fashion films and features on Purple magazine and Show Studio and do some quick drawings in response to them to loosen my drawings and work on my observation. Life drawing sessions are defiantly helping to loosen up my approach and pace to drawing the figure but I am still struggling with faces and hands where I freeze up- I find it easy to represent the clothes and folds as clothes have such movement in them that I am just representing how they look at that one time. Everyone knows what a face should look like proportionally so I am a lot more timid in interpreting them and that shows in my work.

Sketchbook drawings from Show Studio

Peter's advice is to consistently draw, every day, all day to improve my observational drawings skills and loosen my hand and my hesitation. I think I am defiantly worrying about working towards a final piece in such a short amount of time and Peter has reminded me that this project is about improving my figure and observational drawing skills and a final piece will naturally develop from that. The key points for me to focus on over the next week are:

• Use a mixture of life drawing and online observations to draw quickly and improve skills quickly
• Mix tone, line, detail and negative space- use a variety of tools and line weights
• Fool myself- start away from the face, working boldly and fluidly and work into the face from various points- put detail where it needs to be but not everywhere, focus on shape
• Detail is only needed as part of the overall language, not everywhere- the garment is part of the bey, not separate
• Speed- draw fast, free, consistently
• Photocopy figure drawings and experiment with detail, tone, layering on top of these

Cecilia Carlstedt's fashion illustrations are a great example of focusing on line, shape and structure followed by detail.

My plan is to approach the fashion department to draw some of their outfits and draw the students making their dresses, continue life drawing and work quickly. I'm going on the London trip tomorrow, so Wednesday morning I will be buying sketchbooks and hurtling forward!