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


*******
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.

*******

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.

3 comments:

  1. Cool! I used to draw all the time too, and last week I decided to start again. I bought a sketchpad and some pencils and a gum eraser and a kneaded erasure and a stump. Now I'm scared to draw anything. It's been a long time.

    I like Rummmy's jowels in that pic. I like the way the lines are kind of fluid.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey Kate - what good timing! Maybe we could exchange notes on sketching. I had some trepidation, too, about drawing anything in the beginning, because I was scared of making things that looked horrible.

    T gave me this fabulous book, Everyday Matters by Danny Gregory, which tells a very personal story about life and drawing through Gregory's every day sketches. He talks about fear, and about his progress that has in relationships and drawing. ...One of T's friends gave it to her, which she gave to me, and if you're interested, I'll be happy to give it to you, in order to spread the good vibes this book puts out. No joke ;) Just email me and I'll mail it to you!

    Some of the best advice I got was "get over it and just draw," and '"draw every day." A thing about drawing is you do make stuff that looks silly in the beginning, but that's also the fun part - it's totally okay to make mistakes. I make mistakes all the time! And you know what, it feels really good. I don't do them on purpose, but I'm better for the wear, not worse.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you kid fabulous! You really are fabulous! :-) I'll email ya.
    :-)

    ReplyDelete