self portrait II

Yesterday we did another self portrait (No, I didn't get a haircut. My hair was up in a clip).

This time we used the reductive process. Using an x-acto knife or scissors, we scraped charcoal onto the surface of the paper and spread it around with a cloth. Then, we used an eraser to create the highlighted areas of our face and went back in with charcoal for the shadows and white conte crayon to add back the brightest highlights. It's harder to get as much detail this way, but I really enjoyed the process.

The bottom right grayish area is what the charcoal first looks like when you spread it on. I really like the eraser marks all around the outline of my head. It looks like an etching. Well, I guess it is etching in a way.

self portrait

No, this is definitely not the skeleton picture I was supposed to post Friday. That crappy cell phone picture really came out bad, so you'll just have to look at my crappy cell phone picture of a self portrait for now.

Those of you that don't know me will just have to trust me when I say that everyone in class said it looks just like me. And it's probably pretty fitting for Halloween right now with that scary look on my face. ;)

Skeletal

Here is my attempt at drawing a Skeleton. It was not fun at all. Too complicated trying to get every bone in the right place. But then, I bet if I didn't try so hard, it wouldn't even matter. Would it?

No Bones About It

We had to draw this young lady last night. I will post my feeble attempt later tonight.

If anyone noticed, I haven't posted a drawing in a while. The last few classes were all about 1 point and 2 point perspective, vanishing points, horizon lines, etc. Pretty cool stuff that I remember from 20 years ago. It is relatively easy stuff. Then, Tuesday night we had to draw several boxes on a table. Of course, you can't use the perspective you learned, because your vanishing points would be way off the page, so you basically have to wing it. Who knew drawing boxes would be so difficult? You draw a bottle and no one really notices right away if it's off a little, but with a box, it's instantly apparent when something's not right. It was a frustrating night.  At least it was for me. So far that was my least favorite day in class.

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Foo's random curiosities: Why is it that we call it Northern Virginia and they call it Upstate New York? Upstate Virginia? Northern New York? Doesn't sound right, does it?