no class this week

(Halloween parade--the school is on the route)

Drawing New York (is impossible) - Barnes & Noble, Union Sq

I went to a Monday night drawing class with my same teacher. They meet at different sites around town and draw from life. The idea is to be clever and quick enough that you can make a good drawing even when the people move or leave. I did everything wrong! It made me crazy.

We're at the 3rd fl cafe, B&N Un Sq.
(gawker stalker: Aaron Eckhart walked by me as I was getting off the escalator.)




First, here are 2 pictures by my teacher. He did them for me on separate visits around the class when he could see that I was floundering. I include them here so you can see where I was aiming. Can you believe how gorgeous they are? Each panel took him about a minute. It seems so simple when someone else's brains & arm performs the work.

my notes--I made them abt half-way through class to remind myself what I was supposed to be doing. They're kind of funny directions to myself.

aaah! they kept walking away!
I gave up and started again.

it's not working.
and that poor lady in the bottom right corner--she should sue me for visual libel

trying . . .trying . . .really, I was! Drawing sucks.
Not sure why there's a gremlin in the top right quadrant.

I think I know where I'm going wrong, but it doesn't make it easier to do it right.
The guy in the Yankees hat (lower right) was asleep and therefore motionless.

I didn't plan to post these drawings because I wanted to pretend that this night's failures never happened. I've had some--okay, a lot of--candy & now the episode seems funny instead of frustrating.

Drawing Class - Week Six: Ben & Francesca, reading, against reflections in the window

Same materials as always: 2B graphite pencil, oilstick, junky oil pastels, and 23x18 paper folded into quadrants. The drawing is still shape-based, but the color is supposed to be realistic.

This was the best drawing of the night; it had a nice rhythm. You'll just have to trust me on that because I obliterated the nice parts (her head, the pattern of her hair and ponytail, the reflections to her immediate left) with the pastels.
Now I wish I'd used other colors to build up the black instead of using the black stick.

The oil pastels are making me a little crazy. With the way I handle them & the results I'm getting, I might as well be drawing with Crayolas. I'm having trouble making the colors blend and mix into each other. I know it's possible for the finished surface to look luminous instead of caked-on, but I can't manage it myself. Am I not pressing hard enough? How do I make the colors slide into each other instead of stacking up or clogging up the works? If anybody out there knows what I'm missing, please advise.

I do not love drawing bottles. I don't have enough physical coordination to make the two sides of the bottles match each other. I was going to disguise my slip-ups with oil pastel. Well, I lay my efforts naked before you.
I liked drawing Ben. He has an interesting face--very thin, long features--and he holds his head very, very still.
This was Francesca's first night as an artist's model. At first, I wanted to fire her because she doesn't hold the same pose for more than 3 minutes. She just about made me crazy with moving her head around while I was making the first drawing, but I decided I was ready to try drawing her again for the final panel. Good practice, right? (For what, I don't know.)
The sketchy lines underneath the darker sketch are a kind of panicky, scribbled rough draft I marked just in case she never rotated back to the same position. The pose finally represented above isn't the one I started drawing (her head was pointed the other way). I had to modify even my light sketchy draft 4 or 5 times in the same number of minutes. Red. Rum. Well, it was the end of the night--I'm sure she was tired and restless. She's not fired.

Drawing Class - Week Five: Drawing is Hard

scanning and photoshopping are harrrrd too. sorry about the gray rectangles and shadows.

More of that outline-shape drawing stuff.
We were supposed to draw the outlines of the figure's shape and then draw in all/lots of the background lines/shapes connected to the main figure. The idea is to make a coherent composition with interesting shapes, patterns, diagonal lines, whatever. The teacher's 5 minute sample was gorgeous. My versions, umm, errr--I had trouble getting to the background before the models changed.

Meet our models Rebecca and Luke. Rebecca is the same model from the first day of class, the one whose portrait looks like a topographical map.

I ended up drawing everyone's backside all night. I'm going to get to class earlier next week so I can get a better chair.

All the drawings are 9B graphite on paper 18x23, with bits and strips of white tape covering up mistakes I didn't want to bother erasing.

This was a longer drawing, probably 25 minutes. I got it into my head that I needed to draw the chair in silhouette and I fiddled with it for way too long. The teacher called "5 minutes" and I realized I hadn't drawn in any of the background, so I panicked and started scribbling in the windows.

I think it was a mistake. I liked it better when the lacy chair was floating on all that clean white background. I don't think the background works because it doesn't really match. It's too obvious that I didn't draw it with the same care (or fussiness).

For drawing #2, I was determined to get to the background. You'll also notice that this time for the chair, I just drew the thing with as many interior lines as I needed, no more fussy tricks. Well, I started drawing Luke's head a little too big and so his figure ended up huge (and took more time). Once again, I ended up with a 5 minute background. I wish I had drawn more of the floor.

But the radiator? (far right) I like it. At first, I thought "this is the worst object I have ever drawn--it's like I wasn't even trying" but I was too lazy to erase and start over. Now I like how the top and bottom of the radiator don't match, and how it screws up the perspective lines. It seems sort of puppy-like, with a furry bottom and a back leg dragging behind. Hey! Look at me!

The Ten-Minute Sketches

this one I kind of like except for his right paw. I think this is the fastest drawing I've ever done in my life. It felt kind of like cartooning.

Trying to go faster. My least favorite sketch. In life, she's twisted more than the outlines of the drawing suggest, her shoulders are thrown out and back, her right leg is cocked down toward the floor and I have the weirdest angle on her neck and the left side of her shirt. She's actually very thin and well-proportioned. From where I sat (below her), this is pretty much how it looked, but it looks so weird now. I gave her the biggest back in the world. Sorry Rebecca.
another sketch with problems. [This is a "warts-and-all" drawing confessional.] I was doing crazy things at the end of class--miscounting the chair legs, messing up angles because I was looking at one thing and drawing another. I needed a Coke.

Drawing Class - Week Four: figure + big setting of inanimate objects

my teacher told me "inanimate objects help your drawings of live figures, and live figures will help your drawings of inanimate objects." I think he might be right. It looks a lot better after he had me add more easels, etc., in the top right corner and draw in the "Exit" sign.

First, you draw the hair shape

then the head-ear-neck shape
(I was supposed to draw them separate from the hair shapes, and
not supposed to fill in the jaw line)

torso shape, arm shapes, pant shapes

Graphite pencil + oilbar + oil pastels, again.
After talking with me about this picture, my teacher asked if I was a Cancer. (I'm Pisces) "Ah yes," he said. "Same thing." I kind of love him.

Drawing Class - Week Three

the assignment was to draw severely cropped versions of the seated models and to pay attention to shapes, not anatomy. And to draw fast.
The pencil is an 8 or 9B. Next we smeared clear Windsor Newton OilBar all over to smear around the graphite and give some slippery action to the color on top (like turpentine under oil paints). The oil pastels are those cheap Loew Cornell $7 for 60.


The parts that look scraped away (the red legs, for ex.) are where I got carried away and had to scrape it off with a razor blade before trying again.

he had the most amazing, best-shaped hair

the hand and wrist turned out okay. You'll have to click & blow up the picture to see what I mean. The rest of the picture, esp the head? DISASTER!

Drawing Class - Week Two

Kevin

charcoal drawings of models--they were lit by strong spotlights so we'd have nice sharp easy-to-draw shadows on their clothes. I included the third photo as my half-hearted gesture toward indicating scale. The paper is abt 17x23, if you're wondering. This was the first I'd used charcoal. They're kind of weird to hold. Some people in my class used their fingers to smear it around & I swear they achieved photo-realistic effects for the flesh. Incredible! Meanwhile, I'm scribbling in the corner like it's a twig-shaped Marks-A-Lot.
I made a mistake on the hair in the second drawing. The model had black hair and I colored it black on the left side, where the light hits. It looks weird because black indicates shadow everywhere else. I should've outlined it and left the inside of the shape blank.

Drawing Class - Week One, more of the same

the photos might look better uncropped. I like the colors peeking through at the top.

Drawing Class - Week One, cont.

from my digital camera. I'm having big trouble taking pictures without a tripod. the edges are a little wonky in every shot I take.

Sept 2007 - Drawing Class

my teacher laughed, "what happened here?" I said, "I don't know. I just kept going!"



This was the first day of John Ruggeri's drawing class. We were supposed to draw portraits without lifting our pencils from the paper. It took me a while to get the hang of it.

Beginning Painting - a red hot mess

This is the story of an abstract painting. It's drying on my wall (an oil painting takes almost a year to dry completely). I don't like looking at it, but making it was interesting.

collage (canvas, glue-stick, magazine paper):

you're looking at a blue umbrella, lots of drapery, tan bulletin boards, a tea towel with a blue center, and a table corner at the very bottom.

The painting (way below) began as a magazine collage from life. The tableau was at least 15 feet wide. The model was a weird clown. He irritated me. That's a giant red wig on his head, and . . . I don't feel like cataloging the rest of his outfit. You get the general idea. We quickly sketched him on newsprint, drew the best one on a large canvas board, and then colored it by filling in the shapes with cut-up magazines to match the real textures and colors. We had several days with the model, but my collage is unfinished because it took me forever to find the exact colors. Our teacher wouldn't let me slide by on the colored swatches I first thought might be close enough. I thought I would go nuts and I did, a little, trying to match the tinted shadows of the main white drapery, and matching the reds? I hate matching up reds! A very, very tiny part of me enjoys matching up reds.

I wouldn't have been so careful had I realized: 1) it didn't really matter 2) I wouldn't finish before the tableau was disassembled and the model went home 3) just because the colors and shapes are accurate doesn't mean the collage will look good 4) sometime very soon I will strip the canvas board clean, recycle the paper and re-use the canvas.

When that was finished, we cropped out a section of the collage to use as the object or beginning sketch for a painting.
I really liked the tea towel section on the far right and was trying to work out a crop there, but my teacher didn't think my sample crops over there were really working. I can now admit it's possible I was drawn more to "blue!" than by other considerations. She saved me from ending up with a big oil painting of beige and blue triangles--geez.

Here's the little crop, followed by the painted version:

They were supposed to turn out non-representational/abstract, but mine leans toward a more literal representation. daaaang it.

On the final crit day where I had it hanging 'landscape orientation' (sideways?), as I had painted it, Ms Meyer said it still looked like a portrait, or a sideways or upside-down portrait. I'd rather not own a portrait of a red-wigged, orange-egg-headed clown without facial features, much less advertise myself as its creator, but here I am.
One painting free to a good home.
Once it dries, I'll probably paint it white and recycle the canvas. The canvas had been whitewashed once already--I reused an somebody else's orphan painting from the back of the art closet.

Beginning Painting - Bonnard naked lady postcard

The entire canvas, courtesy of my trusty Canon PS400 SureShot.
(The dumb thing refuses to wear out or break. )Below: from my crappy scanner. Most accurate color with best detail [click on it to see what I mean], but I couldn't fit it all & I didn't know yet how to "merge" on Photoshop.

This is copied from a tiny postcard version of Bonnard's La Toilette 1914 (a.k.a. Toilette Rose). (the postcard I worked from had slightly different colors than the original--click thumbnail at link to zoom) My attempt is unfinished, as you can see--I had to return the postcard to my teacher. She picked it out for me when she saw I was headed toward copying a nice, simple painting of a bowl of fruit.