The week isn’t officially over until Wednesday, but I turned in both of my drawings, so I can share early.
This class is a lot tougher than Perspective was. I enjoyed working with a ruler and creating things that were concrete and easier to reproduce because they were based on solid, geometric forms. Freehand drawing, especially of a human subject, is going to be a challenge. You might be cringing at my efforts later on, but I’m determined to share them, no matter how bad they are. Lucky you!
First up is a warm-up exercise of sorts, done with 4 different hardnesses of graphite pencil on charcoal paper (which has an interesting texture to it). This assignment incorporated a number of firsts for me: first time using an easel, first time using multiple values of graphite pencil, first time drawing on charcoal paper and first time using an eraser to pick out highlights in the drawing. I chose to do a couple of leaves from one of my African violet plants. The bottom leaf is supposed to be curling under and out of view, but I don’t think that I successfully captured that. Hopefully, someone in the class will give me some useful feedback.

Second is a more in-depth nature subject, done in vine and compressed charcoals on newsprint. Again, more firsts, as in first time using charcoal and first time drawing on newsprint. Charcoal is a whole different animal and was quite a unique experience. You don’t hold it like a pencil, but rather you (or at least I) grip it with your thumb and 3 fingers. There is a totally different feel to drawing with charcoal, especially on the smooth newsprint. The charcoal glides quite easily and is disturbingly difficult to erase completely. You don’t use a regular plastic eraser, either, but rather a kneaded eraser to lift the charcoal off of the page.
I started with the lower section of my bromeliad plant. There are 3 total stalks to the thing and the primary stalk that I worked from for this drawing is rather tall, with a dead flowering stalk emerging at the top. I just didn’t feel like putting that many hours into the project, hence just drawing a section of the plant.

After living with the drawing for a day and also reading somewhere on the class website where this was referred to as a “project” (whereas the previous was an “exercise”), I decided that the massively unfinished feeling to the drawing wasn’t going to stand up to scrutiny, so I added in the pot to finish it off a little better.

It looks like the whole thing is leaning to the left, for some reason. I think it’s partially because the right line of the pot is obscured by the one leaf. That and, for whatever reason, the fact that the leaves alone look like they are leaning. Really, they are not and if you look at it from the top, you’ll see that the leaves are pretty well balanced and straight. I think it’s just the length of the leaves that threw it off. The right leaves should have been longer.
Oh well, live and learn. This was already my second attempt at the drawing and after meeting with a relative amount of success, I was just not going to mess around with another stab at it. Maybe someday I’ll get ambitious and draw the whole plant?
[Edited to add:] Well, I just couldn’t leave well enough alone. I’m home sick today and the drawing bug apparently has bitten me terribly hard. Either that, or it’s the perfectionist bug. Anyway, after some comments from the professor on my bromeliad drawing, I made one last attempt to finish off the drawing. This is it this time, I swear!
