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| A photo of the cast I am drawing. |
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My drawing, in progress. |
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You may remember that in the fall of this year, I
discussed Darren Kingsley's class and his comment that we would be working for
many weeks on our drawing of a facial feature in his class. Well, he kept to his word. We are still
working on the feature we initially started with all those weeks ago. I chose to draw the cast of the
eye of David.
It has been a really valuable (excuse the pun) exercise in
understanding value. We use both hard and soft graphite. With the
shadows, we started with 6B pencils, and HB and H pencils in the lights. Rather
than try to obtain the "correct" value in the first pass, Darren taught us
to reach our values slowly, working in layers first in the shadow and then in
the lights. The shadows in my
drawing are about as dark as I will take them. Because my graphite application is not yet consistent—sometimes I am unintentionally applying the graphite with different pressures—they are more scratchy than they
should be.
The light areas
under the eye will be pushed still darker, perhaps much darker, and then I will
start the light areas above the eye brow. I have tried to concentrate in one area at a time, but Darren says my drawing
reflects that I need to focus on even smaller areas at a time, again, not
reaching the final values, but consistently putting in layers of value in small
areas. Of course, value relationships are key.
In addition to value and value relationships, this class
focuses on drawing techniques. Each time we come back to the drawing, we are encouraged to
look at it anew, as compared to our subject. Sure enough,
each time I begin to work on the drawing again, I see errors that have been
there from early on in the process. Erasing with a kneaded eraser works in the
beginning if I gently apply it, but there comes a point where the paper
will begin to get rough so I have had to leave some drawing errors even
though I would prefer to make changes.
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| Value drawing by Dan Thompson. |
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I've included a value drawing done by instructor
Dan Thompson in his full
time 2
nd level class. I did not see it done, but if you look closely
at it, you can see his use of value to suggest planes and turn form in the
portrait. He has graciously put it up on the wall so all of us can learn from
it.
When we finish our drawings of features, we will begin to do a feature
in paint. However, lest I am tempted to get too excited about getting to paint,
I must remind myself that the paint will probably be two values—a mix of ivory
black and burnt umber for the shadows, and the same mix plus white for the
light areas! It can be difficult seeing others working in color. However, I've realized that working in black and white is really key
for me to understand how to manage color and values of color once I get that on my palette. More later!
Judith