Burlesque Drawing

This is a life drawing with a burlesque twist. The evening had a “Bond Girl” theme, with the models dressed accordingly. There was no tuition, but there was a fully functioning bar.

The session was much like regular life drawing classes: short poses of 2 mins, then 5 min poses, then a couple each of 10 and 15 minute poses. There were breaks to get to the bar and say hello to your fellow artists and even a fan dance. There was even a quick-draw competition which I was pleased but somewhat embarrassed to win.

Because of the changed location, my drawing was somewhat different from my usual. I was drawing with different media. No easels here, just a pad on your knee, so I was using pencil, with a fine ink pen.

Another difference was the models were clothed. I found that made it harder in some ways than nude life drawing. With the nude, you can see the line of the body, whereas clothes made that less clear. I found myself building the body up from a series of sections of the visible body, and the shapes of clothes. Once I found myself doing this I tried to sketch in the whole body quickly – I used a stick figure scaffold (see technique #5 in this blog) to help get the overall shape first.

Here are some of the pics from that evening.

I’m glad I made the effort to go along. Check to see if there is something similar near you.