Painting Printmaking Illustration

LINE, FORM, Henry Moore & Procreate

By chriswoodartist / February 12, 2014 / art, computers, drawing, graphics, life drawing / Leave a comment

I have long been interested in the relationship between line and form and so too was the British sculptor Henry Moore, who was the inspiration behind the following series of drawings.

In an attempt to make my forms look a little more convincing I normally add some element of shading and when working in charcoal this is easily be achieved by first placing the charcoal on its side and roughly blocking in the areas of tone. Next I work back into the charcoal and smear it around either with my finger, a smudging stick, known as a tortillon, or with a paper tissue. You can almost get a photographic effect with patience and a couple of smudging sticks. My favourite is made from a very tightly rolled piece of suede. However, tone can be described with LINE only and Henry Moore did this with a series of undulating lines used to describe the sections of each form. This “BRACELET shadowing” adds character to the drawing at the same time as creating an emphasis on the spatial elements.

The imaginary drawing below was made as a very quick demonstration of how Henry Moore depicted FORM with line rather than tone.In addition, he often used a technique known as wax resist, which exploits the fact that oil and water don’t mix. The drawing below was mapped out in charcoal first, then I used white oil pastel to describe how the forms flowed from one to another. This was accentuated by adding more dark lines with a number 6 sable brush using watered down Parkers Quink Ink, which is water soluble and great to draw with because once dry you can add a wash of pure water to soften the tones. The marks made with a flexible brush are more expressive too !

In common with many of his contemporaries, Moore experimented with abstraction and the above is based on one of his sculptures. Here we see the reclining figure distorted and split in two.

The second term of my EXPERIMENTAL LIFE DRAWING WORKSHOP explores FORM and the draped model. I particularly like experimenting with different materials to WRAP the model in or to conceal or distort the pose.

Here’s a more abstract piece, where I concentrated on the 3D components of the pose rather than the pose itself .It features a collection of cylinders that bare a resemblance to a popular childrens toy in the UK, known as “The Slinky”, which was a giant steel spring that when toppled forward it would climb down the stairs !

In common with many of my drawings the above is a composite of several poses.