Sunday, October 30, 2005

Daylight Savings & Drawing Class

Hi there,

You will be pleasantly surprised that it's daylight savings time.."Fall - fall back an hour, Spring - spring ahead an hour." I awoke this morning to all the digital clocks in my apt blinking "12:00am, 12:00am" when it clearly was not. Silly clocks! They're so flirty and mysterious.

Ok, so here's last Wed's class drawings.

Alex (the teacher) decided to make things entertaining by having kids from the class model for 10 minute portraits. There was a tiered stage in the center of the room, with a leather chair for a person to sit in. Floor lights we angled in the general direction of the seat, and all the workhorses that we sit on were angled toward it, too. There were mirrors to each side of the sitter, so if anyone got bored, they could pick a new angle of someone's face without moving from their spot. Genius! It was a lot of fun. Alex turned off the lights, called random people up to model, reset the lights for each face, and we all drew in little 10 minute bursts. These are six out of eight that were done - two are missing because I totally hate one that I messed up on and am not confident to share, and the other one is missing because I was the model.

These are all soft vine charcoal or compressed charcoal on sketchpaper (18"x24" originally, but I cropped for asthetics/brevity). Names are left out because I'm horrible at names, and I don't want to offend anyone if I get it wrong, and they see this. However, most of the kids in this class are pretty nice, and I wish there was more time to talk in class while you draw.

Charcoal of Classmate01 - 10 min
Charcoal Portrait, Classmate 1

 Charcoal of Classmate02 - 10 min
Charcoal Portrait, Classmate 2

Charcoal of Classmate03 - 10 min
Charcoal Portrait, Classmate 3

Charcoal of Classmate04 - 10 min
Charcoal Portrait, Classmate 4

Charcoal of Classmate05 - 10 min
Charcoal Portrait, Classmate 5

 Charcoal of Classmate06 - 10 min
Charcoal Portrait, Classmate 6

Friday, October 28, 2005

Drawing Class

If you have a b&w, or even color photo you'd like me to do a charcoal of please email me. I need the practice!*

Thanks for playing!
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*Participants acknowledge that the drawing may look nothing like the submitted photo, and release Diana of all responsibility to the contrary.


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With a year's worth of drawing classes from the Academy of Art College, a woman might believe that she qualified for upper division classes at San Francisco State University. Having taken Intro to Drawing, Figure Drawing One and Two, Anatomy, Intro to Animation, Figure Sculpture One and Two, plus a slew of graphic design classes, she may even think she had skills beyond doodling, which anyone could plainly see.

Ah, Foolish woman! How could she not know the Academy of Art College's credits were non-transferrable to anywhere but up a yahoo's butt-crack?! Oh, the folly-the misinterpretation!

And where is our woman now? Plugging away faithfully at a San Francisco State University introductory drawing class Monday and Tuesday nights from 5:10 - 7:50. Nevermind that she works from 8-5. She flies to class from across town at a rate that is unbelievable. Latent years of non-drawing are slowly melting away like a popsicle in July. Or, more specifically, like a popsicle in Hell during July. If that makes sense.

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Anyway. Here's a sketch I did on Monday.

Charcoal of Hilary
Charcoal of Hillary Clinton, surprised.

Drawn from a black and white photocopy roughly 3"x4", this took two hours. It took so long mainly because I was piddling around and could get away with it. If pushed, I could do this drawing in twenty-five minutes or less. Two hours, there could've been five of these. There are issues with this pic. I could've pushed the check/eye bag area more to make it look more like HilIary. Also, I shouldn't tell you this, but I started with proportions slightly off on purpose, to see if my teacher would notice. He didn't.

I often find myself wasting time in class, because I'm lazy, I'm tired, and there aren't many people I can compete with skill-wise. I don't mean this arrogantly - it's just that having people better skilled than me is sort of motivating. In my class, there are a lot of non-art-majors, and beginning sketchers who don't know how to draw. So, the teacher is in beginners' mode when he's giving advice, which means he skips me altogether. "You don't need me!" he said to me last class.

But this is wrong. I do need help! I need to push my skills higher, but don't know how! My drawing almost as good as it once was, so this class is really helping warm me up. For some reason faces are much easier this time around. However, something is missing. Were I in an upper level class, there would be plenty of people who are better skilled than I.

We were supposed use the entire class to do one drawing. That's two hours and forty minutes.

The last twenty minutes of class, I got frustrated at doing nothing, so I started over with a photo of Donald Rumsfeld:

Charcoal of Rumsfeld, 10.24.05

This sketch is five minutes away from being Hillary, and I was still being lazy. The shadow forms at the bottom of his jowls were more pronounced, and as you can see I was purposefully cutting into his jawbone at the bottom, playing with the weird shadows formed by skin. I may rework this, or do it over.