"Sarah" (graphite and chalk; 16" x 12")

Today was the last session of Lisa Semerad's figure drawing (short pose) class at the Art League School in Alexandria, VA.  To top off our nine-week forays into the fascinating world of figure drawing, we were assigned to a two-hour-long pose with just a bit of instruction about different kinds of paper and drawing tools.

I chose a warm, mid-toned Canson Mi-teintes paper, since it seemed to match her skin tone fairly closely.  Getting the pose down wasn't hard.  The challenge for me was to get hatching right.  Last week, Lisa showed the different types of hatching--simple, contour, planar, and cross--and told us to practice at home.  Have I done that?  Of course, not. 

And working with white chalk as well as graphite made things really exciting (i.e., confusing).  The paper provides the mid tone; graphite pencils, darks; and white chalk, the highlights.  If you mix graphite and white chalk, you get a disgusting blue gray!  They don't come into contact, excpet where there is an abrupt change of planes from dark to light.

Two hours was a long time for us, a luxury--enough time to get the drawing right, add values, work the environment which the model occupied into the composition, and fiddle.  The model's right knee got a whole lot of white highlights, for instance.  It comes forward too much.  Oh, well.

The Fruits and Vegetables Journal (pen and watercolor; 9" x 4")

Today I am sharing the first page of my new journal--"Fruits and Vegetables."  A great thing about doing a journal on the produce is that I can eat my models after I am done with them.  I couldn't do that with flowers, although I once tried to eat a rose when I was a child.  It smelled so good, but tasted funny!

I took a picture of my simple supplies for the project--a watercolor box with gazillion colors, a brush, a Micron pen, a mechanical pencil, an eraser, plus a 9 x 4" piece of watercolor paper.  Do I need all those colors?  No.  I once bought and tried many unusual colors, whose names I don't even remember, so I might as well use them.  The brush comes with a reservoir that you can fill with water--quite handy when you are travelling.  I sometimes draw first with a pencil when the subject is complicated.  Pineapples qualifies as such, as anybody who had tried to draw them would testify.  I have never drawn a pineapple before; it was a fascinating exercise. 

After I inked over the pencil lines, they were erased.  Then I finished with several layers of watercolor wash to achieve the three-dimensionality of the fruit.  When I have a few more pages done as well as the cover designed, I will bring the whole thing (30 sheets altogether) to a local "Staples" for binding.

Now every time I go to a grocery store, I find myself lingering at the produce section.  Wow!  Look at the form of an artichoke!  Radishes!  Carrots with their delicate foliage!  Have you seen the Brussels sprout stalk?  There are so many wondrous things in Nature.  To really see something, one has to draw it. 

"Black Tulip Dress" (oil pastel on paper; 20" x 14") sold

sold

An unused box of oil pastels I had bought several years ago bugged the miser in me to do something about it, so this weekend I took a workshop with Lisa Semerad at the Art League School in Alexandria, VA.  Oil pastel is waxy pastel that doesn't behave like the traditional chalk pastel at all.  It doesn't produce dust for one thing.  Art is great, but with cadmiums in some paints, who wants to breathe in toxic stuff and die young? 

It's gooey, tactile, and versatile.  You can combine this nifty medium with oil, acrylic, watercolor, and colored pencil; you can paint on paper, canvas, metal, glass, plastic, or whatever!  If Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec had had these babies, he would have created an even wilder oeuvre.

There were ten students in the workshop, and we shared the attitude of fun, experiment, and childlike fearlessness.  Since we didn't have much experience with the medium and didn't burden ourselves with the expectation to create masterpieces at the end of the day, we didn't get frustrated and remained thoroughly cheerful.  Guess what!  We did make some good art!  Look at "Black Tulip Dress".  Does it look like my usual artwork?  When I thought I had been really brave, Lisa came around to ask if I was ready for some crazy stuff.  Gasp.  I said "sure."  She began to scratch with a couple of colored pencils all  over the paper!  I continued the wild act and signed my name.  What a weekend!

Hands and Feet (graphite on newsprint; 18" x 24")

"Hands" (graphite on newsprint)

When I was painting "At the Aquarium", I had a hard time painting the hand of the figure.  Initially it looked like a rubber glove, not a hand.  The great masters are famous for their hands (and feet); you can tell an inexperienced painter from her awkward hands.  This year I decided to improve my figure drawing by taking classes, and to kick off my plan I took the Hands and Feet Workshop with David Carter at the Art League School in Alexandria, VA this weekend. 

In the mornings the five students diligently studied bones, muscles, and tendons; in the afternoons, we drew hands and feet from slides and a model who happened to be also the instructor.  The above drawings are results of the workshop.  There is no way one can learn all there is to know about the drawing of hands and feet in one weekend.  But I am happy to report that I no longer have the phobia of these extremities.  As David said, all it takes is knowledge, observation, and practice.