Life Drawing - 11^th January 2026

I managed to get my first 2026 session of life-drawing done this past weekend. I was trying to find a particular style of pencil work that achieved the result I wanted, which I didn’t manage to do although I feel I’m closer to it.

I haven’t yet found the words to describe the style/effect that I want. When Mark Sheerin wrote about my England’s Dark Dreaming charcoal drawings on Criticismism he said:

To further characterise his drawing, I would say that his figures are very inward. In charcoal, their bodies are pale or grimy, never warm or especially inviting. Whereas classical life drawing conveys a sense of anatomical fidelity, Watson seems to dispense with flesh in favour of bone. His men are stony or grave rather than vigorous; his women perhaps dented rather than curvaceous.

…and of some of my sanguine pencil Acid Renaissance drawings:

Sanguine pencils, rather than charcoal, give his figures renaissance pedigree, quite at odds with the mood of fin de siècle Viennese expressionism.

And this new mode I’m trying to pin down is similarly a juxtaposition of opposites: a touch of renaissance or classical life-drawing, a dash of fin de siècle Viennese expressionism, a bit of William Blake, and something else as well. I’m working on it.

The first drawing (detail displayed above) was probably the closest to my goals. I used a 4B graphite pencil on A2 190gsm Hahnemühle Nostalgie paper to lightly sketch in the features, using some basic rough cross-hatching for shading.

After the session I realised I had positioned my easel too far away from the model for me to be able to see their features in enough detail for the scale of the drawing (a rookie error - I should know better by now!).

I tried a second drawing from the same distance, this time displaying the entire seated figure. I switched to a 6B graphite pencil on the same Hahnemühle paper. This was better in terms of distance between the easel and the model, but the end results were less well-defined and looky scrappy due to the softness of the pencil. It might have worked in 4B, but I didn’t have time to test that.

For my final final drawing of the session I swapped back to a 4B pencil but changed the paper to 280gsm Somerset Velvet Antique (56cm × 76cm). I used cross-hatching that better followed the contours of the body, and that was an improvement. The larger sized paper was also probably an improvement, but it was far too soft compared to the smooth fine grain Hahnemühle paper.

So my notes-to-self for next time are:

• Stick to a smooth fine grain paper such as the A2 Hahnemühle Nostalgie,
• Position the easel closer to the model so that I’m close enough to be able to clearly see details,
• Use a sharp 4B pencil (save the 6B only for very dark areas), and use contoured cross-hatching for shading to add volume.

I’m hoping to fit one more life-drawing session in at the end of January.