I took pictures of different stages of my drawing during a three hour live session to show my drawing process. In this drawing I am using Conte pastel pencil on Artagain paper.
I first block out the structure of the figure using vine charcoal with straight lines. I measure carefully to make sure the proportion and the gesture is correct. The vine charcoal allows me to wipe mistakes off easily.
I then start to render the figure starting from top to bottom using Conte pastel pencil. I work from top to bottom because often as the sesssion progresses the model will shift the pose substantially. In a group setting it's hard to be picky over the pose so I don't want to commit any detail to the rest of the figure until I have to.
I do spend a lot of time on the face. It seems I get more compliments from by fellow artists when I nail the likeness.
In this sitting the model has done a great job of maintaining the pose. I typically render the figure by blocking in the cast shadows first, followed by rendering the form shadows by establishing a mid tone and describing the voloume of the form. I then pick out the high lights using kneaded eraser, using the tone of the paper as high light.
When I use darker grey paper, I will try to incorporate the grey as part of the cool mid tone and using a white chalk/pastel as high light.
I spend the last 20 minutes of the session polishing the entire drawing so the figure looks consistent and accurate. If I have time, I would put in some background so the figure doesn't appear floating.
Three hours (with 5 minute breaks every 20 minutes) is not a lot of time. I wish some day I get to do longer poses where I can have more time to refine the drawing.
