Drawing like a Cubist

Earlier this year, before the first lockdown, the students taking the History of Art module Drawing: History and Practice were lucky enough to see the marvellous Royal Academy exhibition Picasso and Paper. One of the drawings on display – a study of a Seated Man from 1915 in the Marina Picasso collection – then became the template for one of for their own drawing exercises. Picasso had drawn faintly in pencil the outline of a seated man, before then going over it in ink in a facetted cubist style, suggesting a formula for deriving cubist forms from realistic observations. Here are some examples of student work after Picasso by Beth Tether, Annabel Irwin and Francesca Coyer: