To my pleasant surprise, as soon as the new cyberspace-based figure drawing group was formed, new members seem to join from out of nowhere. One of the very first was an artist named John Gabbert. To my surprise and delight, the first artist to finish a drawing of the first drawing assignment, for which I was the model, was John Gabbert. As you can see, he is a very capable artist who's drawings suggest to me that he is very comfortable and enjoys doing them. His drawings reflect an accurate likeness to the original model/image.
This drawing, also by John Gabbert, was part of the cyberspace-based figure drawing group's assignment to draw from an upside down model reference photo. The upside down model was me. Although this drawing has been turned back upside right for better viewing, as you can see, John Gabbert's talent shines through, even upside down.
One day, Crystal, one of the cyberspace-based figure drawing group's artists, did a single drawing of 4 different group models from 4 different photos at the same time. This drawing was called "models at rest" and can be seen by clicking here . The idea sparked interest in creating a group assignment doing something similar and the assignment was created. I was one of the four potential models involved. To me it seemed like an extremely difficult assignment and I was fascinated to watch as each artist who participated overcame the challenges and created a drawing, each in a different way.
This drawing, by John Gabbert, shows 3 of the 4 potential models in a skinny-dipping context. This is something I can certainly relate to and as an occasional hot spring visitor, at least one of which is in fact in a field owned by a farmer, like to think of the drawing in that light. And speaking of light, I'm amazed to notice that John overcame one of the potential obstacles for his drawing by actually changing the figure of me and making it seem as though the lighting in the photo was coming from the opposite direction than it actually was in the photo. A pretty impressive "trick", I think. I like the caption in the drawing and particularly like that John signed the drawing on a rock in the middle of the water (hot spring? :-).
I was, of course, quite pleased when it was announced that a group project would be done from one of a very large series of poses that I had been working on that I called "Props" - because I used sticks, boxes, tables, etc., to help with the pose. I also created a black background, giving a particular feel to many of the photos. The project was to use this effect and draw on a dark background, working from light to dark, to develop the drawing, somewhat like a a negative. John indicated that he found this approach quite difficult, but regardless, I really like the effect that the lighting and this approach gives this drawing, and I thought that, as consistently seems to be true for John's drawings, the figure seems quite accurately drawn.
I created so many different potential drawing reference images in a relatively short period of time, that I honestly can't remember why I created this particular pose. At least I remember doing it, so my old age isn't completely getting the better of me, thank goodness :-;. In any case, John indicated that he wanted to do a little Memorial Day foreshortening practice and selected a couple of drawing reference photos to work from, one of which was one of mine and resulted in this drawing. Like all of John's drawings I'm pretty impressed, and even in my ignorance, I can certainly see that this one would be a particularly difficult challenge. However, as usual, John made it seem nearly effortless, at least from just looking at the result.
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