Ellery is Drawing

[elleryisdrawing]

We've been doing more of the same: arranging objects on our paper in a way we decide we want to draw and then drawing them.

I don't feel like I'm progressing much at this point, especially on the heels of the third drawing, which I felt like I worked on forever, but never reached a point where what I'd made felt or looked good. At the end of that class, though, the teacher said I did really good that day, and I laughed b/c of how much I had hated my work that day. He got it, and explained how that's a common thing.

I'm sure over time I will continue to slowly improve, but I wish I'd see some leaps and bounds somewhere, haha. Looking at the last drawing in this post, the box on the right is super obviously not in correct perspective--how do I not notice things like this while I'm in the middle of drawing it?

Erasing and re-marking and getting values where I want them is very difficult for me to do, as is getting smooth, clean lines. Fine detail? Forget it.

I'm also struggling with the time I have in the class--the vase in that last image went unfinished because of this.

I wonder what the result would be if I tried to set up a thing to draw in the garage, where I could spend a lot of time working on something... Probably still pretty crappy, hahaha.

[elleryisdrawing]

I missed Tuesday's class, but on Thursday a classmate told me we were now working more on composition, and rather than "picking objects and drawing them as we see them," we were instead meant to arrange objects on our paper as we want them to be seen, and then go go in and make a center of attention and stuff.

So I erased what I had already drawn (haha) and started over--I used the same three objects, since I had already placed my seat in a spot where those three objects were easiest to see.

Originally I had thought to make the globe and its continents the center of attention, this was a mistake. I couldn't get detail in the continents that would make it interesting or worth holding attention, so I tried to downplay the contrast between the oceans and continents, but I'm not sure how successful any of it was. I also tried to darken the pot, after having already un-darkened it once, and looking at it now I don't think I got it dark enough. Ah well.

I liked that the curve of the globe "holder thing" "contains" the picture, but I think it might be cooler if that curve actually went outside the frame.

The book was super boring, I could have tried to put more detail in it, but I was afraid an attempt at detail might take attention away from other stuff.

[EDIT] OH, I almost forgot, today the teacher finally said I should be working on better paper. I HAVE FINALLY ARRIVED!

[elleryisdrawing]

The proportions and spacing and stuff are still bad, but I think maybe less bad than last week. I spend more time trying to measure stuff out for my paper, and to some extent it worked, but also there are still lots of places where it's way off.

I got probably 90% done with the vase, and 80%ish done with the urn(?), but the little chest thing I only just started on before time was up.

It's so weird how strikingly obvious the bad proportions are when staring at the picture side by side, but how they remain unseen when I'm sitting in front of the drawing itself.

Ah well, just gotta keep trying :)

[elleryisdrawing]

After a brief break for lectures on perspective, we got back to the drawing.

It's funny how I think I can be doing pretty good and then I look at the image next to the picture and see how lots of stuff is way off.

I need to get better about setting out really good and proper proportions before a drawing, maybe. All of the sketches the teacher does, the first thing he does is say, "how accurate do I need to be? Not very." And so the emphasis is not on creating a measurably-accurate representation of what he is drawing, but instead on making something believable. When we get to our drawings we tend to follow suit: sketching out the prelim measurements without worrying *too much* about them being super accurate. Maybe some day in class he'll ask us to spend more time on that portion, maybe I will do it on my own, who knows.

Every week the teacher walks up to someone and watches them draw and then suggests they move on from newsprint to drawing paper, because their skill has surpassed newsprint. He hasn't said it to me yet :( haha. Hopefully before the semester ends :)

Regardless, I definitely feel improvement, not just from time spent practicing but also from the way this guy teaches, which I hope to write about at some point in the future, but not right now!

[elleryisdrawing]

Another two days, another two drawings.

I am frustrated with my progress. Things are all misshapen and stuff, haha. The teacher will come over and point out that my ellipses are bad in some super obvious manner and I'll think to myself, "I shouldn't do that next time!" But then I do the same thing or something similar the next time.

When drawing, I am frustrated at how hard it is to get detail with my two pieces of charcoal.

And when I am looking at the drawings after the fact, I am frustrated with how obviously wrong they are in so many places, haha. Progress is slow, but that's why you gotta put the time in.

Next week we start perspective, which means less time drawing for a while, sadly. Hopefully when we get back to it I will have improved somewhat, somehow =D

[elleryisdrawing]

More of the same: a single drawing in a single class. I started trying to mess with the texture on the bottom half of the teapot, it looks awful, hahaha. But gotta keep trying things!

[elleryisdrawing]

This time we just did 1 drawing for the class, rather than "the same objects twice."

[elleryisdrawing]

Forgot to take pictures of the actual things I was drawing this time. Again, draw ~3 objects, then draw the same 3 objects over again.

[elleryisdrawing]

I'm back in another Drawing I class*. A couple of nights ago we drew for a "longer" period of time for the first time. The idea was to pick three of the pots in the collection, draw them, and then *do it again*. When doing it the second time, I specifically wanted to make the rim of the middle jug and the lip of the right-most job "cleaner," and I think I did a good job at that.

Had issue with smoothness of value, *identifying* value, setting up proportions, detail, and probably a bunch of other stuff I didn't notice.

* for reasons I may explain later =D

[elleryisdrawing]

What we mostly worked on this week in class. I took an "in progress" shot on this one for whatever reason. I don't remember if our assignment was specifically to do an eraser drawing or not, but that is what I ended up doing.

I am pleased with the result. Though there are still many places where I am still fudging angles and proportions and stuff, as a whole it looks much more accurate than I thought it would going in.

[elleryisdrawing]

Today for about 2 hours in class we drew our teacher in some poses, and "arranged them to be part of the same scene." He did each pose twice, so we alternated. After "the first pass," I thought the one on the left was going to be the awfulest, but after two passes I ended up preferring it.

[elleryisdrawing]

Last few days we did some Ink Wash. I think that is what it's called.

Day 1 we only had like 30 mins left in the class, and the thing I made felt awful.

Day 2 I started over and made a less awful thing, and fulfilled the "start with negative space" requirement, which left me able to try something different for my next drawing, which I also mostly finished in that day. I like it best, though there are certainly places where I'd like to have a "do-over" (especially the ground).

Day 3 I just added some "pen" stuff to the final drawing--I had forgotten that I had a pen available to me.

[elleryisdrawing]

I missed a landscape assignment when I was out of town, so this was me making up for it. I was out of town again, but this time I was in a place ripe with landscapes AND I had my drawing board.

The actual assignment was to draw a landscape that included foreground, midground, and background. It also needed at least one man-made "structure" (hmm... not sure if the court really counts, hopefully the court + the chairs count), and at least three trees. I may have gone overboard on the trees, but I wanted to get the scene at least partially right--which is a funny thing to say given all the other places where I didn't "try to make it right."

"Grass" and "underbrush" were especially hard. The shadowed area beneath the trees on the far left also left me shrugging my shoulders.

I started with the trees and by the time they were done I didn't want to have anything else to do with this drawing, I was so sick of it. So everything else was rushed (the trees were rushed, too, naturally). Actually, before I even got to "drawing my trees" I had put in a lot of work on the drawing:

practicing drawing the same type of trees from a different spot

re-making some "viewfinder Ls" b/c I didn't bring my pair

sketching out a quick thumbnail of what I saw so I could transfer the proportions onto my large sheet of paper using math instead of my stupid eyeballs

Aside from all that prep work which I think was a good idea, another thing I really liked was *starting* with the background and moving my way forward. If I was more consistent in my line values and tones, that would be an effective way to suggest depth. As it stands, it at least meant that trees of the same distance are at least drawn in the same manner, most of the time... I changed the "way" I drew the same type of tree over and over, and ended up happy with none of them.

All told, the picture has a lot of effort put in to it, which is good, but I wish I hadn't fudged some parts, and rushed some parts, and "given up" on some parts--but, I was on vacation, so we should all be impressed that I did any homework at all!

[elleryisdrawing]

Whoops!

This was a perspective drawing, the method for which was:

use L shapes to "frame" a scene

measure the objects as they appear in your frame

transfer those objects onto your paper

It started out well enough, but as I went on I realized it was hard to line up my frame over and over in the right spot, and a number of my objects weren't, themselves, lining up (naturally).

I might have tried to fix this, but I had missed like 4 days already, and so I only really had one night to finish this project, so I just went with what I had, and fudged stuff where it didn't fit, haha.

Some of the other students has some REALLY impressive artwork for this assignment, it was jaw dropping.

[elleryisdrawing]

For this project, we drew an overlapping rectangle and square on our paper, went out and did some "rubbings"in the rectangle, then found a 3x3 section in a magazine that contained letters and pictures, and "enlarged" it to fit into our square (which I think was 9x9).

There was another part of the project that involved adding some physical objects, but I was in San Diego while that was going on and so I didn't do it!

I don't really like the *outcome* of this project, but the actual exercise itself was neat.

[elleryisdrawing]

Ugh, this was the worst.

The actual assignment began with drawing a bunch of objects in our sketchbook "from memory," then we were to go home and arrange these objects in front of us and sit on the floor and draw them not-from-memory.

I had so many issues with this assignment, haha.

First of all, sitting on the ground for long periods of time *sucks*. Especially when you have to keep your position the same.

Secondly, drawing on corrugated cardboard was *dumb* on my part. We WERE supposed to draw in cardboard, but I didn't have any "smooth" cardboard.

Additionally, as you can see, I fudged a lot of the objects. When I'm standing up and staring at a scene it's much easier for me to get a sense of spatial relationships. Here, though, the shoe in the foreground was only a few feet away from where I was sitting on the floor, so when I looked at it my head was at a different angle than when I was looking at the laptop. So at some point I stopped trying to draw the objects in relation to each other, and just draw them by themselves, sometimes, when an object is drawn by itself, and it is composed of straight lines, and you're an amateur artist, it ends up being completely wrong b/c you're just sort of eyeballing it--I'm looking at you, laptop.

The actual assignment was to "use tone and contrast and some other thing to get a sense of depth of field." Charcoal was super hard on this surface, so I don't think I really did anything with tone (except make things darker the closer they were to me... sort of... but not really). And contrast... well... it doesn't seem like that has affected depth of field either, really.

So, as an "exercise in drawing" this was all well and good, if troublesome, but as an actual assignment about depth of field I didn't do very good, haha.

I barely even tried the folds of the jacket, haha.

[elleryisdrawing]

For this project we filled the whole page with charcoal before going in and using the eraser to "draw."

Working up close there were tons of mistakes, putting these up on the wall and backing up, though, they ended up looking pretty ok, haha.

...but also I think I need glasses.

These were both "unfinished," so if anything looks imperfect, there is a chance it's b/c I just didn't get to it yet! Or, there is also a higher chance that it was just imperfect.