Drawing 1 - Final class

Yet another sad day when my Drawing 1 class comes to a close. This was my best class to date and I'm sad to see my little blossoming artists go, but hopefully they keep up their practice by drawing often.

For the final class I like to revisit the assignment after the first class, a self portrait. I quickly do a demo that encapsulates everything we covered in the past 9 sessions and bring it all together as an effective system to do a final self portrait, in class, so in about 2 hrs and a bit.

They are observing in mirrors for the most part so they start with a strong vertical axis and find comparative measurements to construct the general layout and shape. I am a bit of a stickler for proper proportions at first in order to help learn proper observation and translation onto the page.

Drawing is freeing. You can work in many medias and use many techniques. You can tone the paper and use the eraser to draw lines in light as you would with charcoal for darks. Allowing you to really sculpt the portrait like clay, only as a flat 2D image on paper.

Once the general look is right, some begin putting in their values. Afterward we have a quick critique comparing their first drawings in the class to their last drawings and comment on their observations and improvements during the course. Here are some of the works in no particular order.

You can see that in 10 short classes one can really take it to the limit with drawing!  If you are interested in classes I have more coming up in the winter, including a "life drawing" course at ACAD int he evening, so you'll get instruction and time to make marks based on live models!