Art course in Paris (2014)→ Week 1
I was super excited about the first day of the class. I reached the studio on time to meet my new art teachers — Timothy and Michelle. They were super nice and greeted me right at the entrance. There were people from different countries — Australia, United States, Belgium, Canada and France — who had travelled all the way for the class. Some students were returning for the fourth time. As we spoke about our experiences over wine and beer, I felt I belonged here.
Next day on we started drawing. We spent our mornings drawing at the studio and our afternoons practicing at the Louvre. Tim and Michelle asked us to first draw the figure using the techniques we knew and then later gave personal critiques to every body. My figure drawing on day 1 was hilarious and I made the most common mistake that everyone makes — starting from top of the page and running out of space at the end. It was difficult for me to draw figures as I didn’t know how.
Then Tim taught us a new technique for figure drawing that describes overall gesture of the figure. They called it inner movement curves. We start with drawing a line from the crown of the head down the center line of the face passing further down to tip of the toe. The next line travels from the top of the head, wrapping around the body in the opposite direction and down to the toe of another leg. Third one is for the arms. We started with 5 min poses and drew the three curvy lines describing the gesture.
It was a fun exercise. The idea was to understand the gesture of the overall figure. The lines do not represent the boundary or some part of the figure. It just represents the movement. There can be an infinite number of movement curves or lines and hence we can draw more than 3 if we like.
It took me a lot of time and practice to get them right. Since the second half of our day was spent at the Louvre, I got a lot of sculptures to practice from.
Later during the week, I learnt another technique using Boxes. We drew boxes or cubes for the head, torso, chest, arms and legs. It helped me in understanding the tilt of the body and its planes. I drew the inner movement curve first and then the boxes. However, they can exist independently too.
We practiced these for the rest of the week.
