Lavender Hill - Term 3, Week 10

All to soon another term has come to an end and how I struggled with this cast drawing.  I think because the features were on a diagonal and the top of the head was missing.  I kept bashing away at it trying to work out what was wrong.  After quite a long time one of the founders, Ann, came to my rescue. She first corrected the mass of the top lip then shortened the nose and lowered the eyebrows. Finally she lightened the background to make the hair area above the forehead wider.  Everything made a lot more sense after this.

 

 The cast

 

The setup

 

Me murdering my drawing!

 

Charcoal on brown packing paper.

All better with Ann's corrections.  The two sphere's were a demo by my 

teacher of compressed value ranges. Sadly I spent so long trying to get the 

drawing correct I never got to do this.

So with the little time left and my cast drawing corrected my teacher suggested we finish of on the life drawing side.  I was a bit relieved to at least get the general drawing and shadow shapes down quite quickly.  It was a nice end to another good term. What a shame they go so quickly.

 

Charcoal on brown packing paper

 

Lavender Hill - Term 3, Week 9

We started out drawing a cast of a flayed man which was full of detail. My teacher stressed that we should approach this in just the same way looking for those big shapes first to get the proportions and gesture.  I then had to think about simplifying the tone by thinking of planes. Every plane change equals a tonal change but first we need to mass in the large shapes of tone before going into details.  I really got into the drawing of this but I am still struggling to see the tones.

 

The cast we were drawing.

 

Charcoal on brown packing paper

 For the last part of class we went onto the figure side.  I managed to get down the pose and basic shadow shapes.  My teacher quickly smudged some tone over the arm to show it was in front.  Made quite a big difference to my drawing.

 

 Charcoal on brown packing paper

 

 

 

Lavender Hill - Term 3, Week 8

So only having been to class on Saturday I was back on Monday for more.  This week was a new challenge of a still life in charcoal.  What made it very challenging was that there was not a lot of tonal variation.  My teacher said in this case it was best to put in a mid tone and then look for the darker, harder edges and highlights.  Not easy at all but I really enjoyed trying this.

 

This was the set up. 

 

I was drawing from a different position than the photo, so I had

foreshortening of the teapot, ellipses and glass to deal with.

 

Lavender Hill - Term 3, Week 7

So I am still trying to update my studies from school back in June.  This week I missed my usual Monday class so went up on Saturday morning to catch up.  There is always a nice relaxed feeling on Saturdays and not so many people as in the evenings.  John was taking the class and I asked to focus on just getting down the first lines for proportion and gesture as I am still very slow at this stage.  After a quick warm up I went onto white paper and spent 30mins just trying to get to the shadow shape stage.  As always it was challenging but good fun and Jon is another good teacher.

 

Warm up on brown packing paper

 

Each pose about 30 mins

Lavender Hill - Term 3, Week 6

So I have to say that the angle of the cast this week was so challenging.  I tried so hard to get it right but it was one of those nights that the harder you try the worse the drawings get.  I never like to give up though as I know that I am learning a lot even if the drawings to show it.

 What I was trying to draw.

Warm up drawing.

The start of my final attempt. The darker lines over the 

head, chest, shoulders, pelvis and front leg are my 

teachers trying to correct my errors.

So this really isn't pretty, I was rushing to put the tone

 in and totally lost all my shapes and proportions. 

I'm sure if I had another 3 hours I might have 

been able to save it.

My journey continues

I've been posting my drawing progress for the last 4 years on conceptart.org. Unfortunately the website has been down a lot recently, so I have decided to create a blog so I can continue posting what I have been up to.  Hopefully my old sketchbook will still be available in the future, so if you are interested in seeing what came before please try this link http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=166235