Inslee Watercolor Painting Class
Last night I attended my first watercolor painting class with the amazing artist, Inslee, at her studio space in Soho. I had such a fun time and learned a bunch about illustrating the fashion figure! Inslee began by introducing herself, explaining that she was mostly self-taught as an artist following a summer course she took in high school, which I found inspirational because if she could teach herself maybe I can too. She showed us the basic proportions of the fashion figure: You draw out ten spaces evenly, then fill in the head between lines 0 and 1, the neck between 1 and 1.5, the torso between 1.5 and 3, a waist curve to 3.5 then the waist goes down to 4.5, the knee falls around line 6, and the rest of the leg continues down to the last line. The elbow falls right around the waist at 3 to 3.5 and the hand is around mid-thigh at 5.5. You can see these measurements in the photo below of her explaining these proportions. In the fashion figure, the body is all condensed into the upper half of the proportion and should fall no lower than line 5, and the legs are long and slender, as if the figure has been stretched out. After explaining these basic building blocks and showing us a little how to proportionally draw a face, she gave us a preview of one of her calendar prints (she releases a calendar every year full of her art and this is the 11th edition) by letting us try to draw and paint our own version! I had never really worked with watercolor before so that was an interesting adventure but I like to think I have a good artistic eye as a photographer and I'm really happy with how my piece turned out! I didn't have enough time to finish (I could've stayed there for hours shading and touching up and outlining) but all in all created a beautiful painting! Everyone that attended the class was so sweet and created their own unique takes on the figure -- it was so interesting to see how different each person's work turned out, even having been based on the same original! I hope to try more of this in the future when I have some time! Thanks Inslee and Melissa for a wonderful evening!
