CG-Hub

For the first time on friday, I decided to show up at a drop-in session for nude figure drawing (drawing naked people). I've been wanting to give it a try it for AGES, but was never really brave enough.

To my relief, (being female myself) our model turned out to be female. Not the wrinkly old hairy/fat man I prepared myself to see. She was actually pretty too, so it lessened the awkwardness of it all. Now, I realize that this experience may vary.. Which is why i'm partly scared to go back. Not everyone gets the ideal model every time. lol For all I know, next time around, I could be that sorry sucker to end up with the old obese hairy dude. So that was pretty much my only concern after the fact..

I was honestly so relieved that the model turned out to be of the same sex. I don't know if I'd quite have been ready for a stranger's wang in my face for four hours straight, being my first time and all...  That's right. Four hours. D: Almost makes you feel sorry for the model..  It flew by, though. From what I heard, the models are paid pretty well, too.

Anyway, the session started off with a bunch of 2-5 minute "warm up" poses to sketch (the image on the right). Slowly the time limits increase to 10 minuntes, 15 minutes, and finally the last three or four 20 minute sketches (left). The poses change for every time limit, but the artist sticks to drawing the same model. Some places do it differently, I assume.

As far as medium type went, everyone had their own personal preference. The session was un-instructed, so nobody told me what to do, or critiqued my methods. I brought a mechanical pencil and sketchbook, but there were people there using card paper, charcoal, ink, you-name-it. One that caught my attention was the person sitting next to me, using an intuos 4 and his Mac. (note to self: bring tablet next time)
His sketches turned out amazingly well, half because he was the only one capable of using such an accessable, limitless palette. Really made me want to come back for the sake of trying it all out digitally.

ANYWAY! All in all, it really went well. I felt like I learned a lot just from those four hours, and it really wasn't as traumatising as I thought it would be. I hardly even remembered that I was drawing some random stranger in their birthday suit - I just ended up turning her into another 'object' to draw.

(TL;DR Version: IT WAS GREAT. I'M GOING BACK NEXT SUNDAY! :D)