These are some images from the last few months or so. Relatively short poses, mostly under an hour.
I’ve been pursuing a more seasoned and sensitive description, allowing for more construction and “thinking out loud” with line.
I’m sticking with charcoal and carbon pencils for a few months, and I’ll possibly go into a Cont’e crayon-mode or other red chalk next. They have possibilities I haven’t explored enough. I make it a habit to work with a single medium for a several month stretch, and then rotate to another so that by the end of a year I may have worked in three or four drawing media. So much of progress is showing up, being energized and diligent, but without going stale. Switching up mediums like that helps, but it doesn’t affect structural or perceptual problems.
I’m still not (often enough) seeing or taking-in the whole form at once…something I’ve been able to do on occasion in the past. By this I mean seeing the part, an arm or whatever, and it’s place in the entire figure almost simultaneously and drawing it that way. Tricky stuff, but I know there’s a groove where I’ve managed it before, and when it happens it’s where you know you ought to be.
I’m thinking that each drawing, good or bad, is a brick in the wall of your experience. It’s the sharpening of the eye and refining one’s shortcomings that really matters with these, a nice drawing is the by-product. Not that I don’t shoot for a nice drawing each time. I do, but I find my own criteria for that drawing has changed a bit. I like chatter in my drawings now, and enjoy seeing bits of construction showing about, maybe even a finger print or two.
I found myself telling a student last night that one shouldn’t “speak in monotone”, that is, draw with a line that has no inflection or personality. I was surprised that analogy came up, but I think it’s helpful.
There’s a nice season where one measures diligently, renders exactly, and goes as far as they can that way, as far as their talent, training, and knowledge can take them. I wish it could last forever sometimes, because to get buried in a drawing for hours, for it’s own sake, is fun. But, now I need to make use of what skills I may have obtained to make things that find their way into the marketplace, my objectives being in paint these days.
Thankfully, I have the blessing of regular weekly classes and motivated students where I can maintain some edge to those skills, an endless process I thoroughly enjoy.
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