Get better at figure drawing
Peer over the shoulder of fantasy artist Patrick J Jones as he draws live from his life-drawing workshop, without slavishly copying what he sees
Patrick J Jones draws from a life-drawing workshop.
When I got the great call from ImagineFX’s editor to draw a life model for the cover illustration, I was beaming with energy and filled with notions of mighty gestural turns, curvaceous glutes and hips a-sway; but the brief came with a hurdle: no nudity could grace the cover! A chaste nude can work, of course, but usually at the sacrifice of the major curves that make the female figure so appealing and graceful. I decided there and then it would be an artistic challenge! Normally, I teach life drawing at university, but for this commission I planned to record the stages live at my first private figure-drawing workshop, which was a big call, with every chance of me falling flat on my stupid face in full view of the class. It was also decided that an Asian model would be great too, and I agreed, but it would turn out to be my second challenge.
In this workshop I’ll be working with classic butcher’s paper (newsprint) and charcoal, while relating a tale of the wondrous unknown that greeted me as I walked into my first private life-drawing class with this exciting commission and cameras rolling…