Art Class: Day 6 FINALE

Here we are, six weeks later, and look how much I've learned.


That, um, is supposed to be me. It's kinda hard to get all the proportions and whatnot right when doing a self portrait. Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if I'd been working completely on my own. As it was, I was in a room of people chatting and cracking jokes. Every now and again, I'd laugh, and then I'd look back at the mirror and notice that MY WHOLE ^#$%$^IN' COMPOSITION WAS NOW OFF!

*sigh*

That said, there ARE some elements of this particular picture I'm pretty proud of. I demonstrate that I at least KNOW where the highlights should be. I also think I did an okay job with the hair - both that atop my head and that slathered around my mouth like a kid's birthday cake. Given another... oh, I dunno... twelve hours, I mighta had something which resembles more closely the pinnacle of bearded perfection that I am.

Now that the class is over, I've got a big plastic tote full of charcoal and other drawing supplis that'll hopefully see a lot of use. Of course, that may not happen, what with November rapidly approaching...

Art Class: Day 5

The art course I signed up for is only six weeks long, so we're nearing the end. If there's one thing I've learned from the course, it's that I LOVE CHARCOAL DRAWING!

I know I say pretty much the same thing every week, but... DANG, charcoal is just FUN. Plus, it gets that black stain all over your fingers, so people see you and KNOW you've been doing something artistic. It's a good time.


It's also a LONG time - charcoal takes forever to get just the right shade of gray. Most of the charcoal pictures I've done so far (including the one above, which I copied from a photo in a National Geographic photo book) are unfinished, simply because I don't have the time in class to get everything just right.

We added a new tool today - a white Conté crayon. I got a bit of use out of it today - the crayon helped define the edges of the umbrella and some of the foam on the water (that's right, that's supposed to be water in the background). The white Conté is gonna take some getting used to, but I can see it being very useful.

Oh, I guess there's one other thing I learned from the art class - I'm one of those guys who licks his lips a lot when he's concentrating. Seriously, my lips kinda hurt right now. Time to go home and use that "True Aggie" chapstick I have left over from college - and I never even used it for what it's meant for...

Art Class: Day 4

The above isn't actually something that I worked on in class. It was a homework assignment: "Write your name 100 different ways." Obviously, I didn't quite make it.

Still, I actually found it to be a lot of fun coming up with different styles for letters. It took more concentration than usual to write my name, as I became more focused on the shape of the letter than the symbol itself. I'll probably come up with a few more "fonts" when my time opens up.

As for last night's class... We spent most of the time working on another still life arrangement composed of an object we brought from home (unfortunately titled our "fetish" object) and an object given us by the instructor. We worked primarily in charcoal and... well, I think I might be in love.


My two objects were a box of multi-sided dice and a metal creamer. Again, I started by plotting the basic shapes with the softer vine charcoal, and then I added more shades and values with compressed charcoal. Eventually, the goal was to add the darkest darks with a Conté crayon, but I never got that far (I haven't really been too impressed with Conté crayons at this point, anyway).

I regretted defining the faces of the dice with such dark lines after last night, but, looking at the scan this morning, I think there may be some potential in creating such definite lines in charcoal. Going forward, though, I'm going to leave line definitions to the easily-erased vine charcoal. I really enjoyed using the dark compressed charcoal to build a picture out of shadows and values rather than lines.

Before we left, we each received one micron pen to use for next week's class, so I've got that to look forward to.

Art Class: Day 3

We spent last week's drawing class scribbling with three different varieties of charcoal on HUGE pieces of pennyweight paper. So, yeah, you don't get scans this week. You get poor quality photos.

Enjoy.

Our subject for the day was a rather large pile of completely eclectic objects. We picked out a particular viewpoint and started sketching - first with the vine charcoal, and then we added more detail with compressed charcoal. After about fifteen minutes, we got up and changed places, taking over someone else's drawing. So the two pictures I've displayed here are the ones I started, but I didnt' get to this final image on my own.


The first view I picked out had a large vase of flowers framing a bust of Diana. I had originally left the upper-right field blank, but, after pressure from the instructor, I decided to add in the whiteboard (complete with the reflection of fluorescent lights on the surface).

It was difficult to accurately gauge the space between the vase and the bust... and I don't think anyone even WANTED to try to draw Diana's face.


The second picture I started was an extreme close-up of a small dragonfly pendant leaning up against a wooden box. That box really TICKED me off, too. I took it for granted that the box made a perfect cube, but the front plane was ACTUALLY slightly off from the rest of the box. It really messed up my perspective.

I feel a little bad taking credit for this piece, because it looks NOTHING like I originally planned. The others who contributed added most of the defining details.

Art Class: Day 2

Okay, so last week's hour was pretty much NOTHING I hadn't already learned from my independent study. This week, though, we got into some of the stuff I signed up to learn. We did a bit of perspective drawing and shading (two of my biggest problem areas), but we ALSO got into some new materials, including ink and vine charcoal.

I worked a lot more with value and shadow than I'm used to. It's all pretty much rubbish to look at right now, but I learned quite a bit.


We were given an object to sketch quickly using the ink. Can you tell what I picked? I can.*


Of my two ink pictures, I think I prefer this one - except I put it in the wrong place on the page. Layout's something I haven't really considered until now.


Vine charcoal I found difficult to work with, simply because it's not great at making definite lines. It's good for blending shadows, though. Too bad I suck at shadows.

*It's a pair of pliers. Hope you didn't cheat.

Art Class: Day 1

So I signed up for a drawing class, thinking my skills would progress a little better if I had a more disciplined learning environment for a while. We started off the class with contour drawings of another person in class - meaning that we drew one other person in the classroom without looking at all at our hands as we drew.

Here's what my partner came up with while drawing me:


Personally, I think it's a fantastic likeness!