How did I deal with…
Live Portrait and Nude Drawing and Sculpting
I have made a lot of live model courses and workshops in different countries during the last 20 years. Here you can see a selection of them:
Live portrait workshop
These are some samples of the last live drawing model course I made in Berlin, focusing on portrait. We were using easels, long poses (~10 min.), standing around our model.
My teacher encouraged us to try different media. After a few tries with pencils, I tried chalk:
Chalk
Pencil
Live nude workshop
I assisted to a prior workshop for 4 years. We were using easels, mostly one male model, quick sketches, 1‑3 min., no hatching, no details, just training the ability to quick catch the form and understand foreshortening, learning to see.
At the end of the session we used to have one single pose for ~10 min.
I tried also different techniques, including pencil. My teacher proposed me to try also wooden pen and I later drifted to felt pen by myself.
Felt Pen
Wooden Pen
Pencil
The practice on this workshop gave me a whole lot, for instance:
- I'm able now to build up in my mind a virtual grid, identifying the internal proportions of my model
- Translating 3D models into 2D enables me to correct myself
- Walking around the model, looking for the best perspective, helps me understand their tectonic, and
- How to deal with foreshortening.
You cannot develop these skills copying photographs.
Live drawing at the museum
During that time, also thanks to my teacher's advice, I was drawing live sculptures at Berlin's Abguß Sammlung Antiker Plastik, with some friends and colleagues. We used to meet on Sundays.
The last year in that workshop, I refined my technique so, that my teacher told me he didn't have anything else to teach me.
Live sculpting
Before the Nude workshops, I assisted to several live model sculpture courses with live models, using clay, rotating tables and a kiln.
Together with this sculpture group and teacher, we visited artistic highlights from East Germany like Dresden's Skulpturensammlung im Albertinum, Weimar's Bauhaus Museum, Naumburg Cathedral and many others.
Live Portrait and Nude workshop
When I first arrived in Berlin (2008), I attended a live model drawing and painting workshop with a group of teachers from East Berlin.
I experimented with several techniques and different kinds of models, young and old, men and women, nude and dressed, posing and just sitting, portrait and body, etc.
Here you can see some examples from that experience:
The sessions here were more extensive, we had a lot of time to focus on details and it was also socially intensive.
Still Life pencil process
All the time through, until today, parallel to workshops and courses, I am practicing my pencil drawings with still life at home.
After the first time drawing live models in Barcelona, at the Sant Lluch workshops, I could never stop again. So I kept drawing live models and nudes until I emigrated to Germany in 2008.
First live session
I started in Barcelona, around the year 2004, while doing my Master in 3D Animation Film Making with Maya. One of the exercises was to draw, right there and then, a nude model standing in the middle of the class:
1 to 3 minutes sketches, no time for details or hatching. The whole sense of the exercise is to understand the tectonic, foreshortening, volumes, original forms, perspective and translating them to shapes.
All these were samples of live drawing using analog techniques. But there is much more drawings to see, also digital. If you want to see more drawing and pre‑production art, including concept artwork, click on the following workflow breakdown card links:
