Drawing Class - Week 7: Classmates "comic strip" with eerie hollow socket eyes.

The extremely horizontal format of this last Wednesday's drawing means that I don't have time to scan it in this afternoon and do the Photoshop merging. I'll probably scan it eventually because it's almost pointless to post oil pastel paintings you can't 'click' on to see the strokes close-up, and my digital camera can't capture that degree of detail. And it distorts the straight edges. Also, the scanner gives a more honest representation of the colors. For now, here's a photo for this week. (for all 4? 5? of you kind friends tracking my progress.)

These are a few of my classmates. We are seated in parallel rows, facing each other, drawing each other, and trying to be good models for each other by not moving too too much.

1. We were supposed to fold our paper into four horizontal sections and, in the first section, make an interesting composition with the figures' shapes, perhaps playing off their change in size as they get closer.

2. Second section: vary the composition, perhaps by radically changing the scale of the heads. The three figures here are the 3 left-most figures from the panel above.

3. Third section: make a third completely different composition, and, instead changing the scale again, perhaps by using the negative space in a different way, or perhaps some "other" way. (yeah, me neither.) I was mostly finished with this panel before I realized that all 3 of my panels were pretty much identical. Dang! I'd tried to start them out so differently on the left-hand side of the page, but by the time I got to the right side, I was back drawing the same thing.

4. Fourth section: I didn't know how to make a radically different or even mostly different composition, so I dropped my gaze a little and drew their torsos/drawing boards. Now I realize I should've looked lower and drawn their shoes, which would've been more interesting than a finished row of squarish boards.

5. Color: pick one section and add color to the entire section (not just a cropped section of it or partial color).

So--I think 'composition' was the object of the lesson, or composition-by-cropping. I'm still feeling really weak at composition, so way far lost that I don't really understand why I don't understand it.

One tiny comment my teacher made did help me a lot. I couldn't figure out which panel to choose for color and I was leaning toward the bottom one or the second one, but I didn't think the choice of any of these four made a difference one way or another. He said, "well, yes, it does. Your bottom panel would have too much brown wood, and the second panel would have too much of the same flesh color." So obvious, but in that moment, the coin finally dropped. It's like arranging colored shapes!

It was a long and frustrating night, but I had a Diet Coke to see me through the struggle and so by the end of the class, I was enjoying myself. I kind of like this one! The likenesses are pretty good and I'm feeling a lot more confident layering the oil pastels. Not confident enough to attempt drawing the lines for their eyes because I couldn't even make the pastels give me lines in the right places for their mouths, but just before I left class, I was starting to feel happy about the wall to the left of the purple door and about that center closet door because they turned out close to the colors I was trying to make. Progress! Also, it's easier/more fun to coax out their likenesses in the pastels than in pencil--I don't have to worry so much about mistakes or getting it wrong the first few times and making a mess with the eraser because I can keep layering and adjusting. Also, since you're working with color on the whole entire face instead of inventing arbitrary lines to represent the facial features, it's so much easier to tell if it looks like the person or not.

I like adding color more than drawing lines.

On separate occasions, I showed this drawing to Liesel and to my brother Rob, and they both said, with almost the same words and exactly the same happy intonation, "hey! you're drawing cartoons! a comic strip!" And both times, I was like, "no--cartoons? comics? what are you even talking about?" I see it, okay, I see it.

Drawing New York - Rockefeller Ctr, lower level (still impossible)

First, some junky photos of the night from my crummy camera-phone. You're welcome!

* * *

Bonus Monday night class again. We met at the GE Bldg and went to the courtyard below where you can watch the ice skating from inside, behind glass doors. I'd never been there. It was pleasant and warm. The tree wasn't up yet and the crowds weren't overwhelming.

We were supposed to draw out our panels and add oil pastel to one of the four. I ran out of time, natch, so there's no color. Too busy going hog wild on all those little windows, I guess. I have a difficult time deciding which details to leave out. This surprises none of you who know me at all. It surprises me every time! It's hard for me to simplify a big picture without stripping the heart away. It's a lot easier for me, a beginner, to approximate a scene with masses of overlapping information and hope that some of it turns out right than to isolate and then precisely delineate the few perfect, elegant shapes capable of representing the same thing.

When my teacher came by, he cried, "Good Lord--the data in that thing!" I had been thinking the same thing, but about the world. I'm not used to paying so much attention with my eyes.

Enjoy the wonky 'straight' lines. Charming, aren't they? Every single one goes off track even more perfectly than if I'd planned it.
It's like having a student driver for a right hand.

Long, long ago I had some children's books with wobbly ink illustrations very similar to these--I think a few were set in New York!--and I remember thinking, "why do adults always think kids like messy drawings just because we [kids] can't draw very well yet?" I don't know why I imagined that adults were conspiring to deprive young readers. The pictures were probably great. I remember that the back pages and dust jackets proudly declared the inclusion of original work by artists who were "award winning" (imagine my total disgust).

I'm supposed to be concentrating here on representing the figures as shapes with stylized straight or round lines--no fluid, curvy stuff. I'm trying to do that here but it's a lot harder for me to stylize than to copy what my eyes are telling me and I forgot sometimes to STOP trying to make the pictures look like the real people and to just draw shapes without worrying if they're accurate. The top panel, my first of the night, is my favorite because the people were far enough away that it was easy to turn them into little shapes.

The top panel is looking up to street level, from the rink facing 5th Ave.
The second panel is the ice rink, looking east, below street level.
The third panel looks south toward the cafe tables around me.
The fourth panel looks southwest, same tables. The girl to the far right of the third panel is the same girl centered in the fourth.

I like to draw the other art students because I imagine they're less frightened by my drawing board and my unblinking, unwavering stare.

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 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.