COMBINING PASTELS

This gestural exercise is intended to help you move away from outlines in your figure drawing. You will need a soft pastel in a favourite, non-representational colour and a hard pastel or pastel pencil in a dark colour. Aim to work large so that you can employ your whole arm in your mark-making and use the exercise to make several drawings in response to poses of 30 seconds – 2 minutes in length.

Stage 1

Make your first mark using the broad side of your coloured pastel – it should be a broad, confident stroke which follows the most prominent line of action in the body, from the top of the pose to the bottom.

Stage 3

Lightly scrub the pastel back into the page using the broad edge of an eraser, or the blade of your hand.

Stage 2

Your following marks should elaborate on that first mark, recording the shadows on the figure in broad, calligraphic dashes.

Stage 4

Finally, switch to a hard pastel or pastel pencil – something capable of a sharp, dark clarifying mark – and draw in a minimum of marks to clarify the contours of the body, seeking to follow the flow of the body.

Next month:

Figure Drawing in Soft Pastel jakespicerart.co.uk