"She refused to be bored, chiefly because she wasn't boring." Zelda Fitzgerald

Showing posts with label pencil. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pencil. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Pencil Drawing

Life Drawing class in the Foundation Visual Ar...Image by vancouverfilmschool via Flickr
Somebody asked recently to hear and see more about the drawing class A and I are taking together on Monday nights so, I thought I'd give an update. I am still really, really enjoying the class although I have been frustrated a couple of times now in the process of drawing. I know that charcoal is a really hard medium for me to work in...so strong and permanent and messy and so little flexibility in value. I know that I overdue my piece just as easily with drawing as I do with painting. I wish art came with turkey timers that popped up when the piece was at an ideal stopping point. It is so easy for me to just adjust and adjust and adjust and pretty soon I have adjusted what was a beautiful drawing into oblivion. Bah!

I think our teacher is a super lovely soul and I like her non-interventionist style quite well but I do think it would be fun to try taking for somebody more directive and see what that felt like. I like feedback and pointers and while she is very encouraging and open I am not sure how much this class is molding or directing my abilities. I struggle with this not nearly as violently as some of my classmates. It is amusing to listen in on certain students ardently suggesting that she might use more diagrams or give more statistical breakdowns or evaluate our work more stringently. Some people simply go into fits when asked to draw what they see and not criticize the life out of every stroke their pencils create.

The stuff I'm sharing is my favorite out of the produce from the course...there are of course several more clumsy pieces, nobody get the idea that I'm some sort of wizardly, mad drawing genius. I am ridiculously human, truly. I am surprised that after years of being nervous about color and concentrating on black and white art production....I am now struggling to go back into the simple world of black and white.

In some ways I think it is easier to portray something using color because some little bits of a scene are suggestible just by the shade of  green or red or whatever it may be whereas with no colors you must lean only on clean lines and honest shading. So much trickier after all.
Photobucket
Enhanced by Zemanta

Monday, April 12, 2010

A Peek Into My "Studio"

My bedroom, my kitchen, my garden and the couch are really collectively "my studio" at the moment...there's no dedicated creative space in our house, no real "spot" to store all the artistic goods just a general flow of creativity that messes up the whole place and keeps us humming all over.

Friday was an explosive day for me, spurred on by a swap I was part of that involved a lot of crafting but, that was only the downhill push. Before I knew it I had avalanched my way into full creative mode complete with large amount of scrap fabric and other materials flying about and thrown hither and yon. Been way too long since I did any sewing, felt awfully good to sit and hum away on the machine again. I miss it. Am looking forward to a nice space for sewing at our someday house. Speaking of which....there may be house news on the way! (just a little teaser)

But, here's a peak into my workbasket lately:













And then....on the subject of personal artistic-ness I have to include this portrait sketch in pencil that one of my fabulously talented and inspiring fellow Tuesday art session painters did of me. I feel like I won the lottery! Can you believe it? I have had my portrait "done." So exciting!



Here's my favorite bit:



Photobucket