Life Drawing Llantwit Major

11/06/2026

A busy session. We had a warm up of quick gesture drawings, a memory drawing exercise and also a go at creating a composite drawing assembled from two separate poses.

All in all, artists were presented with 12 poses of different lengths during the session, and some chose to draw multiple drawings of the same pose, so yes, very busy.

See these drawings at:
https://www.facebook.com/oriellifedrawingllantwitmajor

Thanks to all for coming and to Ben, our life model for the evening.

04/06/2026

Life Drawing classes resumed this week after a short break, and we introduced a prop to help create negative spaces for our artists to consider.

See these drawings at:
https://www.facebook.com/oriellifedrawingllantwitmajor

Thanks to Photoulla for more of her expressive poses, and to everyone for supporting this class.

21/05/2026

I was on my run this morning and noticed this goosegrass smothering some cow parsley. It got me thinking about the one minute gesture drawing exercise from the last block of classes, so I went back to photograph it.

If anyone's still struggling with the exercise, try this — the cow parsley is the gesture, and the goosegrass our drawing. It's not about drawing what the cow parsley looks like. We're trying to describe what the cow parsley IS DOING (growing upwards), and the goosegrass is our depiction of that.

This has either clarified the concept, or confused you even further! 🤔

14/05/2026

Many thanks to everyone for making our final session from this block of classes both productive and enjoyable.

One aspect which really stood out was the response to the blind contour drawing exercise — even though the closely observed elements are disjointed from the whole, the pose is recognisable and still comes across strongly.

See these drawings, and others from the session at:
https://www.facebook.com/oriellifedrawingllantwitmajor

A big ‘thank you’ to Photoulla for all her dynamic and expressive poses.

07/05/2026

Our 30th session in Llantwit Major!

Thanks to all for coming along, and of course to Szaria for modelling for us last night. Much appreciated.

See drawings from this class at:
https://www.facebook.com/oriellifedrawingllantwitmajor

06/05/2026

30/04/2026

The exercises the group have been doing this block might look easy but they're deceptive — they require a high degree of concentration and the application of an unfamiliar method of working (see blind contour and gesture exercises in earlier posts).

Nevertheless it's great to see the group persevering, and in time the rewards will become evident.

Trust the process!

Thanks to Laura for her effective range of poses; much appreciated as always. See drawings from this class at:
https://www.facebook.com/oriellifedrawingllantwitmajor

23/04/2026

Thanks to everyone for an enjoyable session last night. It was really encouraging to hear comments about how the rapid drawings we’ve been doing have helped in the longer studies.

Information about the Blind Contour Drawing and Gesture Drawing exercises can be found in the posts below.

Thanks again to Ben, our life model for the session.
See drawings from this class at:
https://www.facebook.com/oriellifedrawingllantwitmajor

16/04/2026

A new block of sessions and a new theme — learning to draw is learning to see. With this in mind we tackled Blind Contour Drawing and Gesture Drawing exercises (see posts below).
We finished our first session after Easter with a 45 minute reclining pose.

See some of this work at:
https://www.facebook.com/oriellifedrawingllantwitmajor

Thanks to Matthew, our life model, for stepping in at the last moment when our scheduled model couldn’t make it.

16/04/2026

exercise: GESTURE (SCRIBBLE) DRAWING

This is an extension to the Line of Action we’ve looked at before, and the exercise should be done rapidly and furiously! Have fun!

Look at the model. The pose should be dynamic and full of movement.

This exercise isn’t to draw what the hands, arms and legs, etc, look like but what they’re all doing, together. Again, this isn’t easy, but we need to suspend our understanding of what a drawing should look like and respond with an honesty and directness that young children often have. Scribble, and resist rendering the forms.

My examples are each one minute long. Longer poses allow too much time for unwanted detail to creep in.

Unlike Blind Contour Drawing, these results can be viewed creatively, especially if we choose a different medium.
I’ll repeat; have fun! 🙂