Life-Drawing Session Sketches

Hi peeps, 

I went to my first live life-drawing session yesterday evening and thought I would share my sketches with you!

The session was in the centre of London and lasted 2 hours. The venue was fantastic, and the model was very good.
(Fun little anecdote ; I went for drinks with a friend last week, and I remember noticing a man sitting across from us in the bar, as he looked quite distinctive. Turns out that that man was our model during yesterday's life-drawing session! How odd is that?)

While I did feel quite rusty, I also thoroughly enjoyed it, and being able to work from life was very refreshing and energising. 

Here are the drawings I made that evening.

I used my current sketchbook, which is an A3 sized Seawhite of Brighton sketchbook. I bought it a few years ago specifically to take to life-drawing sessions, as it has a hard cover perfect to prop up the surface when sitting without a table. I didn't get to use it for its intended purpose much (between not having much money to go to sessions and the pandemic), so I have been using it as my regular sketchbook for a little while now (most sketches you'll see me share at the moment are made in that book.). 

We started with 2min poses, which I opted to do in pen to force myself to loosen up quickly. 

I wish there had been more short poses like this. Most poses for the rest of the session were 10min, which I find to be an awkward amount of time, personally. 

We then had a few 5min poses, of which I wished there had been more also.

Next we had a few 10 min poses, and I got cocky and tried using a pen for a couple of sketches, which I quickly regretted, haha.

And finally, we had some 15 min poses, and a final 18min pose. 

(I was seriously impressed that the model managed to keep his arm in the air this way for 15min!)

The 18min pose was a challenge as the model moved to the far end of the room and the chairs cut off his feet from view from where I was sitting. 

Overall though, I really enjoyed this session. People were quiet but friendly, there weren't many of us so we were able to move around the room if we wanted a different angle on a position, the model was clearly very experienced, and it didn't cost an arm to be there (£12 for 2 hours!).
I will definitely try to go back at some point. 

It was also rather refreshing to be drawing amongst other people.
I like the solitary nature of my job most of the time, but I have been mourning my lack of a social life a bit more than usual lately, so I could feel the benefits of being among other people acutely this time round.
Going into central London to do a session like this isn't cheap when I take the cost of travel into account too, but it might be well worth it on occasion. We'll see. 

That's all for me with this one,
I hope you are all well,
All my love,
M