Life Drawing - 22^nd February 2026

In my last post at the end of January about the life-drawing aspect of my artistic practice I wrote about using the second of the two drawings as a starting point for February’s work, with a broad idea to:

get the figure drawn out first, then build up the shading gradually to a more precise level without losing the dynamism of the drawing.

Yesterday was the only life-drawing session I have managed to schedule during February, but I did manage to work on this plan, and I’m fairly happy with the results shown at the top of this post.

As with January’s work I used a sharp 4B graphite pencil on smooth A2 Hahnemühle Nostalgie paper, with a 6B pencil for some of the darker areas. Building on my plan I drew quickly and blocked out the major areas of shadow, while keeping the line work as clean as I could.

On the second drawing of the session—the standing pose shown on the left of the header image—I added a bit more graduation to the shading, and I think this works well, but I am tempted to tidy it up a bit when I do some more life-drawing next month.

As before, I’d like to get another one or possibly two life-drawing sessions scheduled for March, but I also do have an idea for photography that may consume one of my free weekends.