Week 7 class was frustrating for many of us. This was the first week we started working with the casts that Rose has available for us to use, and we will be doing this for the next three weeks as well. Here’s my “cast” as she calls them:
I keep reminding myself that Rose’s motto regarding this class is, “Be the Sloth! Be the slowest person in the room.” All I have to show for it so far is five or six points and the start of a line which I know to be incorrect, and a value scale with a list of where the values fall on this cast. (This is probably the most important part of this exercise!) All of us are having a challenging time, and we’ve only been at it for a couple of hours in class. I’ll post a pic of my progress at the end of the next class.
Work that I’m doing home in my studio includes revisions to the still life from Class 6:
Rose wanted me to focus on lost and found edges and to get rid of as many “lines” as possible. Now I’m falling in love with the drawing and I have to finish it by adding the bottom of the glass. I understand now that the lack of linework in the drawing brings the image to a new level of realism! To do this justice, it needs another 6 hours at least. I’m not so worried about the detail, it is the shading and blending that I am focusing on with this piece.
As I learned in class, you can use a piece of glass to check the curve from one side of a goblet to the other. A sheet of slightly smoked glass or plexiglass would probably do better, but this is what I had at the time. Hold the sheet of glass in the vertical center of your drawing and this allows you to see the reflection of one side cast onto the other.
Here’s an image showing what I mean. In the sheet of glass, you can see a ghost of an image outside the right edge of the goblet. I held the glass at an angle to make the ghosting more obvious. What a great tool to have in your toolbox!
Finally, I went to town on Saturday to find something white that I could draw. There are no white statues in Kona. I went to some thrift stores and finally found this:
I just couldn’t stand drawing something that was badly made, and clowns or dolls are right out. I also didn’t want to do something symmetrical which leaves out bottles, bowls, or vases. My little 75 cent dove will do nicely!