Drawing To A Close

The semester is just about over. I have to study for my final exam in Public Speaking, which is Monday. I've never been so happy to be finished with a class.

Now, for my drawing class? I was sad that class had to end. BUT. I'll be happily returning to the same disheveled art room in January for Drawing 2.

Here are some of the figure studies I did.

These are all the demure poses. You can go to my flickr page to see some full monty's.

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.

Class Critique

Back for more Drawing class.

I really would like to take a picture of everyone's individual work. I love the point in class, after about 2 hours of drawing, that we put them all together for a critique.  It's pretty amazing to see things from everyone elses perspective.

Teacher said my objects are slightly leaning to one side. Also, she said the draping was really nice on the lower left and then she said, "As I walk up to it, I lose it." Meaning, everything falls apart? It stinks? Who knows. I figure I'm more impressionistic in my attack. Meaning, it's a mess up close, but if you stand back? Not too bad. And if you take a cell phone picture? Even better. I have no idea why my coffee cup is so much taller than the real one, though. hm. Teacher didn't even mention that.

charcoal/white conte crayon on drawing paper

*click on pictures for larger views

More Drapery

We were "drawing the drapes" again last night. (No Mom, this is not a t-shirt.)

I was not feeling it this time either, but I try not to think about it too much anymore and just jump right in and get busy. I must say, it actually looks pretty good in a cell phone picture. It's a nice little mess in real life, though. There is one young lady in my class who's style I love and she is so hard on herself; the sign of a great talent if you ask me. It's usually the ones that think they are good, who in reality suck. ha.

charcoal/white conte crayon on drawing paper