Tag Archives: charcoal

Portrait Drawing

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As a follow-up to the blogs about “drawing and sculpting” (posted June and July) here is a portrait that I drew during the last class session of “Beginning Portrait – Drawing and Sculpting”. Remember the point of the class was to enhance your drawing skills through sculpting.

Pencil on Paper, May 2012

Now, in comparison look at the following portrait that I drew during my “Beginning Drawing” class during March 2012 (just a couple of months earlier). The nose and in particular the ear in this drawing are not as well developed as in the above drawing. Partly it was a lack of skill but also a lack of “seeing” things and being able to translate it into 2D. The sculpting truly helped to understand the form better and become better at drawing.   🙂

Charcoal on Paper, March 2012

Drawing from a Life Model

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Last winter quarter I took Beginning Figure Drawing at Gage. One of the great things about classes at Gage is that you have the opportunity to draw from life models. It’s quite different from copying another artist’s painting or drawing from a photo – challenging in many ways and rewarding at the same time. To really study the figure and learn to draw and paint it correctly you have to draw from a life model as often as possible. Here my first long-pose-drawing that I did during a class session in January 2012.

Charcoal on Paper | January 2012

Block In

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During winter quarter I attended a Figure Drawing class at Gage Academy. One of the methods to create a quick figure sketch we’ve talked about was “block in”. It’s good to have a good light source to create strong shadows – and then you quickly block in the dark areas and thereby create a first sketch of the figure. Following are two sketches I did in class.

The first one (woman standing) literally took only a couple of minutes. The second one (man sitting) took a little longer, may be 10 to 15 minutes. I find it fascinating what one can create with only a few strokes and capture/express so much.

 

 

Simple (?) Line

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Starting in January (winter quarter) I’ve been taking art classes at Gage Academy in Seattle. One of them was Beginning Drawing. Although I had some crash course in drawing basics by another instructor earlier last year, I signed up for this class in the hope that I could fill in any blanks. Overall I did not learn a lot that I didn’t know already, still it was a good experience and I got more practice. One exercise that we did very early on was a great eye opener regarding space and composition.

The instructor asked us to draw an exciting line and then draw a boring line. The point was to be emotional and spontaneous. Here is what I drew.

Charcoal on paper – guess the exciting line is obvious, the boring line is the little one in the upper right corner. Note not only the wave (or lack thereof) but also the thickness of the line.

He then asked us to draw a line that stays inside the edges of the paper. In doing so we were asked to make it more dramatic, may be using the length of the charcoal (not the tip) or whatever else we could think of to achieve the look of movement and drama.

DSC_0002Charcoal on paper

Next he instructed us to draw another line just like the first one (exciting and lively) but this time going off the edges of the paper at least once.

Charcoal on paper

Now observe how the dynamic of the drawing changes. The drawing where the line goes off the paper seems to be more interactive. It seems to suggest something happening outside the “frame”. Is that fascinating or what? I certainly thought so. I also was very impressed with the fact that one can express so much with a “simple” line. It seems so emotional, deliberate and artful (especially the first one that stays in the “frame”, my personal favorite) and yet it’s just random, coming out of a more or less emotional movement of the arm/body. I was super fascinated with this exercise.