Life Drawing from Home: Watersoluble Media (Patreon)

Alongside Lance's Sunday posts, we're going to be sharing new mid-week blog posts from our drawing tutors. These will focus on ways to improve your life drawing from home and are specially commissioned for the Draw Patreon. Our first series of 8 posts, by Shelley Morrow, will explore a different drawing material each week. In this first post she'll be introducing how she uses water-soluble media! You can share your own efforts on social media using the #lifedrawinghfromhome #drawingfromhome and #drawbrighton hashtags, or by linking to @draw_brighton or @shelleymorrow1.

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What is watersoluble media? In a nutshell, anything that dissolves in water. There is a huge array of watersoluble or water mixable media on offer in most good art supply stores, so much so it can be baffling which ones to choose from. In the materials list below are a few examples of simple and affordable suggestions for you to try.

Aims of this exercise:

• To introduce you to the materials and a great stepping stone to using watercolour.
• To help you simplify drawing the figure and encourage you to analyse the pose as a whole, rather than a detailed study.
• To see how the use of colour and simple strokes can bring life and vitality to your drawings. 

This is not an introduction to colour theory, more an introduction to colour, no knowledge of colour is needed as playing with different colours will help you to gain confidence with using colour. If in doubt, choose your favourite colours!

Materials

To try everything in this blog, you will need:

• Caran D’Ache: Neocolor II: Watercolour Crayons or similar (make sure you get the watersoluble ones) 
• Watercolour paint – one to three colours of your choice; any will do but if you don’t have any I would recommend the Cotman range by Winsor & Newton, they are great for starting out with and more affordable than the artists range. Personally, I prefer tubes to pans when working in the studio as they mix quicker, but you can work with pans if that is what you have.
• Charcoal pencil or compressed charcoal, any charcoal if you don’t have either of these – the gum arabic used as a binder in compressed charcoal makes it slightly waterscoluable and it works well combined with other watersoluble media
• Soft brushes (larger ones rather than smaller) - rounds or flats or whatever you happen to have
• A small palette (jam jar lids will do)
• Jar of water
• Cartridge paper – the heavier the better, but any is fine, you will need quite a few sheets so ideally have a pad or most of a pad ready to hand. A3 is a good size to work on.
• Workspace – it’s better to work flat rather than at an easel when working with water, so clear a space on a table and get all your materials ready to hand

Reference photos

Working at home, you'll need some images to work from. You might be working from one of the many online life classes that have started in place of in-person sessions, or you might like to use the refernce material form our Patreon. Download the images, open them up as slide show so you can quickly toggle between poses and time yourself for each drawing before moving on to the next pose - 1-3 minutes would be ideal.

Exercise 1: Water-soluble Crayon

You will need: You will need a water-soluble crayon, brush and jar of water

Step 1. Look at the pose, note the angles of the shoulders, spine and hips. Sometimes they may not be visible so look for other reference points such as the chest and nipples. Start with the torso. Draw a line with the crayon to denote the angle of the shoulders, then look at the angle of the spine, it is usually curved, place this in line with the angle of the shoulders. Try not to worry if they are in the right place or the right size, they are only guide lines. 

Step 2. With these two lines in place you can now start to add your contour lines over them. Remember we are working with just the torso to begin with and we are working quickly so try not to get involved with any details, keep your focus on the whole. Depending on your speed, you can branch out from the torso and start to add more angles such as the hips, arms and/or legs and or/head and then add the contour lines on top. 

Step 3. Before the pose finishes, wet your brush and very broadly add some strokes to make the crayon bleed. Add these to the darker tonal areas you see and keep it general. Don’t worry about it going in exactly the right place or keeping it within the figure, let it spill out and let it be fresh and free. 

There is no need to complete the whole figure, do what you can in the time you have leaving yourself about 20 seconds towards the end of the pose to add some water.

And Repeat... Repeat this at least 5 times. You don’t have to do one per sheet, try three or even 5 per sheet, let the drawings overlap and try not be precious about them. 

Exercise 2: Watercolour & charcoal

You will need: watercolour paint, brush, jar of water, palette if you are using tubes and charcoal pencil/charcoal.

Starting conciderations: For this exercise we will start with the watercolour. Choose a colour, any colour will do. Mix up your watercolour dipping your brush into the water and mix the paint to a smooth consistency. You will get a feel of how much water you need to add as you go along, it just needs to be smooth enough for you to add the paint to the paper so it flows easily. 

Step 1. Look at the pose. With a loaded brush of watercolour paint, roughly describe the shape of the figure, the whole figure. If you are not used to using a brush, just think of it as a drawing tool. You are drawing with a brush, rather than painting. Concentrate on the shape rather than the contour lines, you may well end up with just a blob, that is fine. This won’t be the finished drawing, it is all about getting a feel of the pose and working out where things are in relation to one another.

Step 2. With your charcoal pencil, while the paint is still wet, you are now going to add your contour lines on top of the paint. Again, try not to worry about aligning your paint with your lines, it is better for it not to fit properly and be uneven rather than trying to make the two fit together. You should find that the charcoal will go much deeper and darker when you run it through the wet paint and will be lighter on the dry paper. This will give you a nice variation in your line. Try and vary the pressure while you draw to give thicker, darker, lighter and finer lines.  

And Repeat... Repeat again at least 5 times. Adjust the timings of the pose according to your needs, but remember you need to work quickly.

Summary

Try these techniques with different media, you can use watersoluble crayon with watercolour as in Exercise 1 and you can also try inktense or watercolour pencils instead of charcoal in Exercise 2. There are no rules, if you have an idea or have some other materials to hand, try giving them a go using these exercises. If you feel that the timings are too long or too short, then adjust them accordingly. Everyone works at a different pace but the key is speed, don’t let the poses be too long or you will lose the freshness. You need to work quickly but be focused, don’t draw in a panic. Watercolour techniques tend to lend themselves better to working quickly, spending too long on them can often flatten them and they can lose their freshness. Above all, enjoy the process and try not to worry about the outcome. Good drawings tend to emerge when you are engaged with what you are doing rather than worrying about what will appear. 

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By Shelley Morrow