Figure And Portrait Sketching At Cholamandal Artists Village

Cholamandal Artists Village has become the fall-back venue for our sketching group. Apart from each of us choosing subjects of our choice, which we do on some occasions, the resident (professional) artists at Cholamandal arrange one or more still life compositions for us on each of our visits. They also sketch along with us to demonstrate the many ways in which we could explore each subject.

On a couple of occasions we also had people sitting for us. The first time this happened the model was a friend of one of our group of sketchers. We were told that he would be coming in a little later and therefore I warmed up by sketching the drapery that had been arranged as the backdrop for a still life composition.

Once Sumit (our model) arrived, while most of my friends attempted portrait studies I decided to sketch a full figure. I had sketched people from life only on a couple of occasions before this and was therefore quite pleased with the result. I took this photograph of Sumit after I had finished my sketch.

 

Some weeks later we had an old man sit for us. This time I tried to draw only his face and I think I did a fair job of it since the old man was very happy with it. That day a reporter from a daily newspaper had come to interview the resident artists at Cholamandal about the Sunday morning sketching sessions that they had been running for a long time and since we PencilJammers happened to be there that day, some of us were also interviewed. I was not interviewed but when the article appeared in the newspaper I was very surprised to find that my sketch had been included in the news report.