Drawing From Life

my set-up at Atelier 2302

In mid-September drawing class resumed at Atelier 2302 and I picked up from where I left off. With three "Bargues" of increasing difficulty under my belt, I have now moved on to working from life. I spent three weeks drawing different angles of three different casts: a horse's head, a bust of an old man, and a skull. My task was to create a construct of the subject, finding the essence of the big, over-all shape in as few lines as possible. I was off to a rocky start with that horse's head, but each attempt after that continued to see improvement. 

I have now begun working on my actual project, an ear. It is really hard to see the construct in the above two photos, but trust me, it's there and I have worked out the over-all shapes of the big form without getting bogged down in details (an urge I have to fight). In this construct I have also worked out the shadow shape, separating the lights and darks into big groupings. You can see in the below photo what I was working on today. I filled in the shadow shape with a flat, even tone and as soon as that was done I could see areas that needed correcting- it was actually pretty cool. I find it surprising how much it looks like an ear considering the simplicity of the information.

The learning curve continues and sometimes I feel overwhelmed with my lack of knowledge, but I shall persevere! I hope someday this is all second nature.