The Face and all

I enjoyed drawing this week. On Monday we started a long drawing of the head, features and all. It was more difficult than I expected even though we had already been working on all of the features separately. But we did it anyway. The class split into two groups to draw the two models. In retrospect the view I drew from was too straight on. I feel that I still did a decent job of it. On Wednesday we continued the portraits. I worked on this drawing for almost four hours. At the start of the semester I found it hard to spend over five minutes on one picture. What a difference!

On Friday we returned to the full figure. It was bad. We’ve been working on the head and facial features for about two weeks now and while it was really enjoyable and definitely good to know, it showed me how huge a difference not practicing makes. Friday’s drawing started with quick gestures as we used to do. The break really showed. The first ten of them were terrible but I picked it up again pretty quickly. It’s nice to know that even if I do let my practice slide a little that I’ll be able to come back to it. Especially as I won’t be able to take life-drawing-two next semester. Maybe in the Spring.

For the long drawing I originally got a bad angle where most of the drawing would have been leg and wanted to do a full figure. So I moved when I got the chance. It was as though I had completely forgotten how to draw. I honestly didn’t know where to start. After about 20 minutes worth or failure I thought, ‘I don’t know what to do, so lets start from the start’. I went from spine to egg through all the limbs. This may seem obvious but I didn’t use to follow the formula that specifically. Anyway the drawing turned out ok. When we finished up for the day there was still something off about it. That’s ok though, we work on it again on Monday and I’ll have fresh eyes for it.