This week's class was frustrating for all of us. I hesitate to even share my results, and we all agreed we are sick of drawing our hand! This time we rested a masked off piece of glass on our hand and traced the outlines onto the glass. The glass also had a single vertical and horizontal line running through the middle. The exercise was to experience using that simple grid to make a proportionally larger drawing of what was on the glass. More studying of relationships and negative space aided by the simple grid repeated on our larger rectangle on the drawing paper. This proved harder than we expected - the eye did not want to make the leap to the larger size.
In addition, we laid down a ground with a graphite stick before starting to sketch. Once we'd gotten the hand sketched as accurately as we figured we could, it was time to "play" with shading. We could make areas darker with the graphite pencil or use the kneaded eraser to lighten areas. I really struggled seeing the light and dark areas of my hand, and now can see some places I could lighten up that I'd missed yesterday. The teacher suggested I could rub out along the outside of the hand to make it pop off the background more, and once she rubbed a spot, I finally got the idea. I had fun with the eraser making swoops and hash marks to give energy to the background. But my poor hand still looks pretty deformed and lifeless to me...
We started a second hand drawing (preceded by groans from all), this time holding something "interesting" in the hand. I chose my cell phone which allowed my fingers to be curled - a much more attractive pose. Not enough time to get very far on it, and I assume we will continue working on it next session.
We were encouraged to turn our work upside down if we got stuck, as well as to concentrate on getting one quadrant at a time right. Amazing how much the upside down orientation helps one to see how to fix something out of whack. The teacher also focused on seeing the negative space rather than the line itself, and I felt I was finally starting to get that. Another helpful technique.
In addition, we laid down a ground with a graphite stick before starting to sketch. Once we'd gotten the hand sketched as accurately as we figured we could, it was time to "play" with shading. We could make areas darker with the graphite pencil or use the kneaded eraser to lighten areas. I really struggled seeing the light and dark areas of my hand, and now can see some places I could lighten up that I'd missed yesterday. The teacher suggested I could rub out along the outside of the hand to make it pop off the background more, and once she rubbed a spot, I finally got the idea. I had fun with the eraser making swoops and hash marks to give energy to the background. But my poor hand still looks pretty deformed and lifeless to me...
We started a second hand drawing (preceded by groans from all), this time holding something "interesting" in the hand. I chose my cell phone which allowed my fingers to be curled - a much more attractive pose. Not enough time to get very far on it, and I assume we will continue working on it next session.
We were encouraged to turn our work upside down if we got stuck, as well as to concentrate on getting one quadrant at a time right. Amazing how much the upside down orientation helps one to see how to fix something out of whack. The teacher also focused on seeing the negative space rather than the line itself, and I felt I was finally starting to get that. Another helpful technique.
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