Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Drawing Studio Session 5 - Positive Space


Yesterday was my last drawing studio, and it was back to drawing more antlers and feathers. I admit this disappointed me as the teacher's comments in the previous session led me to believe we'd be doing a shading exercise. Well, I suppose this is a shading exercise of sorts. We used the picture plane again but unlike in the negative space drawing, we were to do more than just draw the outline of the objects. This time we were to add details, especially in the feather. We started by setting the ground, then worked on lightening and darkening to bring out the positive space. Quick mention was made of shared edges (no hard delineating line) and composition (mine needs cropping to eliminate some of the negative space in the bottom right quadrant.). This didn't feel much different from the negative space one for me, since I ended up darkening the background (others experimented with leaving their still life objects darker and lightening the negative space). But I liked leaving some shading on the antlers, then really had a breakthrough when I decided to block out areas of shadow within the negative space and make them even darker. I got an enthusiastic "Yes!" from the teacher, so will work on this a little more to blend and shade.

I continue to read in the book (Drawing on the Artist Within), doing additional exercises as I run across them and wish that we'd gotten farther in our 5 weeks. I was not alone. We have the option to take additional sessions as drop-ins or join the next group later in the year. It's tempting...I can see how much I need more of this.

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