Drawing 1: Final Post

I realized today that I never finished up the series of posts from when I took Drawing 1. This post will remedy that and hopefully I will have enough of these "loose ends" tied up to carry on with my drawing.

The assignment during one of the final weeks required us to use color (chalk) pastels. I feel very unsure while using color, so this scribbling of colors into the shape of a vase and some flowers is what I ended up with. I made several versions, but this is the one I liked best and presented in class.

Another topic we covered was perspective. I made this next drawing a week or so before we did that topic. Perspective is the only thing I sort of remember from the awful art classes I took in 7th grade or so. I was told the contrast and feeling of this drawing were nicely developed. It unfortunately didn't photograph too well with my cellphone's camera.

The final was very enjoyable. In the middle of the large room, on top of a platform, were a few tables with bottles, books, and fabric on them. There was also a coat hanger with several jackets and hats. I enjoy drawing fabric, so I focused on the coat hanger. I also feel most comfortable with charcoal, so it's not in color.

The drawing for the final and my noticeable improvement since the first day is what earned me the only A in the class.

Once I get a new camera in a few months, I'm going to go back and rephotograph most of my art. I'll use better lighting as well. I don't think any of the pictures I've taken of my drawings are that great. You lose a lot, which you will by photographing it anyway... but a better setup and camera will help.

Abandoned drawing from December

My last attempt at making a complete drawing was at the beginning of December. On my coffee table, I set up a vase with a few of my fake flowers (lilies) and wrapped fabric around the base. (The fabric was actually a very comfy long skirt.) I used 18" x 24" drawing paper and charcoal for this drawing.

I spent maybe 2 or 3 hours on it my first day. I sketched out a general layout of drawing and then started to fill in the details. The fabric draping and folds were very time consuming. I also tend to get lost in the folds. I haven't figured out a good way to tackle those yet.

The second day I spent maybe an hour on the drawing. This involved finishing up the fabric and touching up the flowers and vase a bit.

On the third day I quickly toned the fabric area and added a few highlights. It was not finished at all at this point, but this is where I abandoned the project.

I doubt I'll go back and finish the flowers, vase, and background. I do feel the the fabric looks decent at this point, but could use more contrast.

I think this was just too complicated of a setup for me right now. I need to rebuild my attention span and ability to focus so I can sit down and finish a drawing in a day. Or finish most of it in a day and do the touch-ups of shading and highlighting later.

Drawing - Week of July 8, 2012

Didn't draw much this week. I will claim the food related post from earlier today makes up for that. I have some new silk flowers to draw. They are sunflowers and daisies. Flowers with many petals are very difficult to draw. I don't like most of my attempts so far. Here is the only picture I feel like sharing this week. It even includes a Kat!

One of Kat's favorite sleeping places is behind my drawing board, which is usually leaning against the wall.

Drawing - Week of July 1, 2012

I plan on drawing regularly now. I'm not horrible at it and the only way I can improve is with practice. Unfortunately, I don't have much motivation to draw anymore. When I was taking the drawing course, I had homework assignments and people to critique my drawings. Now I have no pressure to get a drawing finished and no one to show it to. My current idea is to post what I draw every week on Friday or Saturday. That will provide me with some sort of motivation and also (maybe) someone to show it to.

I like to draw flowers, so I drew a lily and a rose this week using charcoal on drawing paper. I still don't like to draw roses. I will probably torture myself with roses until I think they look good. I also want more silk flowers to draw...

The photo quality isn't too good, sorry about that. I will eventually get a decent camera. Until then, I only have my cell phone. I also should have cleaned up the drawing a bit more. Charcoal smudges a lot.

Drawing 1: Finally an update!

Sorry about the complete lack of updates about anything. Baking hasn't been going well, so I haven't made any new recipes. My Drawing class is going fine, I just haven't had time to take any pictures and post them! Until now, that is. Here you go! (I think I may get a better camera eventually... the camera on my phone isn't the best.)

The midterm was several weeks ago. The table in the middle of the room was set up with several boxes, spheres, bags, and cups. Here is what I decided to draw:

Sometime after the midterm we covered pop art. Our assignment was to choose any common object and draw it. I like peanut butter so I decided to draw a Jif peanut butter jar:

Next we had to draw just anything around the art classroom. I like the folds in fabric, so I chose drapery.

The homework for that week was to draw anything around your house. I drew the hallway, but I'm not sure where I put that drawing. I'll post it later, I guess!

A week ago we did perspective drawings, but since I drew the hall way from a 1 point perspective, I didn't have to do that. The other part of the assignment was to use a 4 inch by 5 inch grid to draw anything we wanted. We made a view screen out of clear acetate sheets and cardboard. I suppose I can post a picture of that later. Anyhow, I decided to purchase some silk flowers and draw them. I liked the tiger lily best:

I'm going to say that is my best drawing yet.

On a non-drawing-related note, I recent purchased a print from Charmaine Oliva. She's kind of awesome. Here is the print above my flowers and some of my books

I will hopefully update more often. We'll see!

(Just as a note, everything was drawn with charcoal (either charcoal pencil or stick) except the Jif jar, which was done in colored pencil.)

Drawing 1: Week 4

Instead of class during week 4, we had a snow day. It was very windy, cold, and snowy out. I managed to make it to class, but the few who made it were sent home after the assignment was explained.

The topic for the week was negative space. The first part of the assignment was to draw a few objects by shading in the negative space. No outlining was allowed. Just shade things dark. Here are my attempts:

The second part of the assignment was to place a ball in a rectangular space, fill in the background, and place a shadow. I did two of these. Drawing an object without having such an object to look at is not easy.

The final part was to draw an apple or some such thing in a similar style to the second part of the homework. I found a tomato in the fridge. It was slightly moldy, but I didn't include that in the drawing. Just the tomato part.

That was all of week three. Nothing too exciting, but also not very easy.

Drawing 1: Week 3

Week three of class was about contour drawing and surfaces. The platform in the middle of the room had lots and lots of paper bags arranged on it. Most of the bags were crumpled. We had to do a contour drawing of three bags, with just the outlines. Thickness and flow of the lines is what was important, not perfection. Here is the first drawing I did.

The other in-class drawing was of three bags, but this time we had to fill in the detail of one of the bags. I chose an extremely crumpled up bag to fill in the details of. It was very very frustrating. I thought it looked awful until I finally looked at it again half a week later.It looks pretty good. I should have filled in more of the shading!

We had several options for homework that week. Since the crumpled bag was so horrible to draw and shade in, I decided to draw and shade crumpled pieces of paper. I did the shading too dark.

This is not an easy thing to do if you want good results. I will have to practice more!

Drawing 1: Week 2

The second week of the drawing class focused on creating shadows and shading. In class we had to draw balls and boxes with proper shading and shadows with either charcoal or pencil (I chose charcoal!). There was a large platform in the middle of the room, covered with a white cloth, that had various sized boxes and balls arranged on it. This set up is what we had to use to draw our still life of simple objects.

First, we had to sketch thumbnails from different angles until we found a set up we wanted to draw. Here are my thumbnails: 

I did more thumbnails that I needed to. I couldn't figure out how I wanted the items arranged in my drawing.

I finally decided to draw an area that had three balls which almost made a straight line. The light was shining pretty much directly down on the objects, so there wasn't much shadow. This took me a few hours to draw:

I gave up on the in-class drawing when I couldn't think of any way to alter or improve it.

The homework assignment for the week was to create a still life drawing of three or five objects. I spent almost an hour creating a set up of objects I liked. Here are my thumbnail drawings:

The first set up was of three glass jars filled with either candy or sugar. While making the first thumbnail, I realized that candy inside of a glass jar is a very difficult thing to draw. This made me change the set up and started a search for simple objects. I finally decided on a small glass jar full of sugar, a tiny potted plant that I'm growing, and a spool of thread. 

The drawing took me three nights to complete. I had to draw at night to get the shadows how I wanted them! Kat was very helpful during the day:

That is, she was helpful until she decided to knock over the plant and thread while I was gone one day. She fortunately did that after I was finished with everything except shading the background.

Since I decided to set things up on the coffee table, I had to sit on the floor by the couch to get a nice angle. Here is another view of my set up:

The towel is on the floor because I was using charcoal to draw. Charcoal is very dusty and I didn't want to get that in the light colored carpet. That would be an awful thing.

Here is the final version of my drawing. Somehow the corner got bent. I might have to blame Kat for that...

And that concludes week two of my adventures in drawing. Maybe one day I'll figure out how to take better pictures...

Edit: I was told to make the background dark. Looking at this picture, I need to figure out how to make it even darker! And to take non-fuzzy pictures. New camera is needed, I guess :(

Drawing 1: Week 1

You may have noticed that I've been updating less often. There are several reasons for that. I figure I can at least provide a weekly post of something I make/create with the adventure of taking a drawing class. It'll be fun.

Since I teach at the college level, I'm able to take free classes. This semester I decided to take a class called "Drawing 1". I'm not entirely sure why I decided to take a drawing class. Possibly just because it seemed fun. And also because I don't think I'm very good at drawing. People with very little actual art background take art classes, right? Sure they do.

Anyhow, the drawing class takes place every Saturday for several hours. The first day was just spent going over the syllabus and needed materials/supplies. (Note: art supplies are expensive.) We also were given a homework assignment. I had to find a drawing by a famous draughtsman,  make a copy of it, and then reproduce it using the grid method.

This is the drawing I chose:

It is "Study of a lily" by Leonardo. The photo copy isn't that great, but it was the best I was able to get from the copy machine. (For the actual drawing, click here!) I spent nearly an hour going through art books at the local library. Most of the books focused on paintings which made it difficult to find pictures of drawings. This drawing seemed relatively simple and I think it's lovely.

This took me a few days to draw because I have limited time to spend on it. Throughout the week I added a bit at night before sleeping. Here is my progress:

Day 1:

Day 2:

Day 3:

Final version:

I think it turned out okay. It's too dark and there are a few areas I don't like. The pencil was weird and I kept smudging everything with my hand. I'm not used to all these fancy drawing supplies yet.

And this concludes the first week of taking a drawing class. See you next week with another update on the adventure.