Life Drawing - 31st January 2026

Paul Watson

Life Drawing - 31^st January 2026

Part of a drawing of the head and shoulders of a female-presenting model seated on a chair.

I finished off the last day of January with a second session of life-drawing, following on from the session earlier this month.

The first drawing (detail at the top of this post) took two forty-minute sessions. As per my notes-to-self after the life-drawing session on the 11th January I used a sharp 4B graphite pencil on smooth A2 Hahnemühle Nostalgie paper, with a 6B pencil for some of the darker areas.

It’s a reasonable likeness of the life-model, but some of the proportions were slightly out, and the shading was not to the standard I wanted.

For the second drawing (below) I used the same 4B pencil and Hahnemühle paper, but worked much faster for a single thirty minute session. Whilst the shading is much rougher than the first drawing I was far more pleased with it — and the proportions of the figure are much better.

A female-presenting figure standing with their hands behind their back — Thirty minute drawing with 4B graphite pencil

I’d like to get another one or two life-drawing sessions done over February, and use the second drawing from this session as a starting point: get the figure drawn out first, then build up the shading gradually to a more precise level without losing the dynamism of the drawing.

I’ve also got a slowly-fermenting idea for some photography which might be coming in March.