Week 6: Oh the irony!
This class did not help my pencil drawing skills whatsoever, but, you know what? I didn’t care! This class was so much fun!
The lesson for week 6 was on value and light, and the study of chiaroscuro, one of my favorite methods of drawing and seeing the human form. In the exercises above, I started with a dark tone, and slowly erased to reveal the light areas, while adding value to express the dark areas.
I wasn’t as successful with the left drawing above as I was with the right. The biggest reason for this: my carelessness in choosing my medium. *Sigh* And this, my friends, is a great segue into Week 7.
Week 7: Portfolio review and a lesson in cross-hatching & other techniques
After a series of one-minute gesture drawings (two of my favorites are shown above), Sherry, our instructor, set the model into a long pose for the rest of the evening. I began drawing a study of Karen until it came time for Sherry to review my portfolio.
Sherry spent over an hour reviewing my work and progress in the class. She offered me some practical lessons in cross-hatching, and constructive advice on how to achieve my goals in the class. I have to admit that Sherry is a great hands-on instructor.
I’ve taken classes with some very fine artists and I never quite “got” what they were saying. It seemed to me that a lot of what they had to offer was more theoretical, more a “feeling” for the form and/or object.
Sherry gets right down to the bones. She will take the pencil and show me how to hold it, how to cross-hatch and remind me to keep the point sharp and follow the plane. She will take the stump and blend the charcoal that I am using to show me how to get the effect I am striving for. She will take tracing paper and draw directly over my figures to demonstrate the technique I usually fail to achieve.
Overall, she acknowledged that I understood and drew the human form adequately but that I needed improvement in technique and the proper use of my many tools. Isn’t that what I’ve been writing all along?
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