UNDRAWING THE FIGURE | ALEX ALFORD

13 Jun

Dates: Friday 10th October
Times: 10am - 4pm
Location: Enniskerry
Skill Level: all levels welcome

Please see detailed workshop information below

If this course is fully booked or not currently scheduled, go ahead add your name to the waiting list HERE

Payment plans available contact us directly

aBOUT THE WORKSHOP

Undrawing is an approach to capturing a live figure quickly and accurately with simple marks and proportion through triangulation. It’s fun to learn and easy to incorporate into your art practice. This workshop begins with Undrawing, then we’ll apply the techniques to create narrative through experimenting with dynamic compositions.

Undrawing grew from Alex’s desire to draw the figure from life more quickly and accurately, as the most interesting poses tended to be the shortest ones. To figure out how to get faster, Alex watched videos of himself drawing, much like how an athlete might study videos of their games to improve their performance. He could tell when he was “in the zone” by the kinds of marks he made. When he focused on using just those marks, his speed and accuracy improved dramatically. Even more interesting, this technique proved to be teachable. Alex led a 2-day Undrawing workshop at the Schoolhouse in 2023.

Undrawing doesn’t take the place of studying anatomy and how light defines mass; it’s about training ourselves to identify proportion using our innate sense of spatial geometry, and learning how to capture it with a limited lexicon of simple and repeatable marks.

Class size is limited to a dozen or so students, who should bring lots of cheap paper (newsprint or sugar paper) and a set of student-grade soft pastels (the square, unwrapped kind - roughly €5 for 8 sticks, but a larger set is fine). Class structure will consist of demos and plenty of hands-on experimentation, with breaks at the top of each hour. There will be a live nude model. As we’re using pastels, aprons and hand wipes are encouraged.

Free Undrawing time-lapse videos may be viewed here: instagram.com/undrawingworkshop

- The Core Principle of Undrawing: How to capture a live figure quickly and accurately using a minimal set of simple, effective marks.
- The Technique of Triangulation: Using spatial geometry and angles to measure and confirm accurate proportions by eye.
- Identifying Your "Zone" Marks: Learning to recognize and utilize the specific marks you make when drawing most effectively ("in the zone").
- Speed and Confidence in Life Drawing: Techniques to significantly increase your drawing speed to capture short, dynamic poses.
- Building a Visual Lexicon: Developing a personal, repeatable set of marks that form the foundation of your drawing style.
- Creating Narrative & Dynamic Compositions: Applying Undrawing techniques to arrange figures on the page in a way that tells a story and creates visual interest.
- A Complementary Approach: How Undrawing integrates with traditional artistic foundations like anatomy and light study, rather than replacing them.
Lots of cheap paper (newsprint or sugar paper)
A set of student-grade soft pastels (the square, unwrapped kind - roughly €5 for 8 sticks, but a larger set is fine)