This Week's Drawing and Painting Class

Firstly, I'd like to say a big thank you to Cynthia and Leanne for their words of encouragement on my last post. My clay class was on Monday, and those feelings of inadequacy that I described carried over into my drawing class on Tuesday, although I feel better now.

One thing I have noticed every week in the drawing and painting class, is that I am much slower than everyone else. During the still life studies I noticed that in the time it took me to do one still life drawing, other people had drawn several, or had drawn one and painted one. I didn't let it bother me as I noticed that their drawings were very sketchy in style whereas mine was more polished. The past couple of weeks it has bothered me more - we have had a model to draw and the classes have been quite intense - the first week we had to draw two portraits from different angles, and this week we had to draw the model in three different positions. So I've had to draw much quicker than usual and adopt a more sketchy style myself, whereas everyone else has been producing finished pieces! Don't ask me how.

So, I was feeling quite down about this but Anita and her son (who modelled for us) helped to put things into perspective for me. Firstly Anita said it doesn't matter how long it takes, it's the finished result that's important. Also she commented that I had completed the study in exactly the way she asked us to - measuring and paying attention to proportions rather than detail. She pointed out that she didn't need to correct any of mine, whereas she had to help others get their drawings into proportion. Actually, I noticed myself that one lady filled in quite a bit of detail, but he had no legs, and there was no room left on the page for them either! That's when Robin chipped in with probably the most important piece of advice I'll ever need - he said the foundations are the most important part of a building. He's a wise lad for only 16.

So here are my drawings from this week. You'll be pleased to know that he kept his trousers on (I was anyway), but I couldn't bring myself to draw his nipples. It just felt wrong! He's my friend's son and he's only 16! Oh, and these are probably the worst photo's ever - if we get any daylight in this country before spring I'll retake the photo's and replace them!




Just out of interest - if I was to draw a corpse would that still be classed as a life drawing or a still life? :)

I didn't go to the life drawing class this week after all - I stayed home and made something with clay instead! Coming soon!