Don't get me wrong, I love to make jewelry (I've actually been doing it for almost a decade now) so it's very nice to learn about techniques and medium I have very little experience with. However, think about it as if you were independently wealthy and owned 4 high end sports cars. Sure, you don't really dislike any of them (otherwise you'd be an idiot for spending so much on them), but you have your favorites. Hence, one of those awesome cars is going to be at the bottom of the list.
Right now we're working on a small layered project with brass, copper and nickel. It's mainly been tedious because we have to take 10 different magazine clippings and do 4 design evolutions (each) on top of the simplified tracing of the image itself. If you add that up, it's 10 tracings and 40 drawings. I get the idea of practicing and trying a bunch of different things, but I've already picked the one I want to do, so it's been difficult making myself complete the other 20+ evolutions I have left. No biggy, I plan to make quick work of them tonight.
Once I've completed the first half of my day, I then have to trek back to the car and take a little trip downtown for my two studio classes. The third class of the day is Two Dimensional Design. To my understanding, we will only be working with abstract images (hence the word 'design' in the class name). For example: our first project is the classic 'Black Square Problem'. We were given a list of 6 adjectives and our job is to creatively use 4 black squares to convey the emotion the word evokes. I'm happy with 2 or 3 of my designs so far, but I need to pay that project some extra attention tonight and tomorrow as we are turning it in at the end of class Tuesday.
And finally, once I take a brief one hour break following 2D Design, there is what is already my favorite class. I took a drawing class or two in high school, but it has been so long that I forgot how much I enjoyed honing my talent. Drawing I one is the last class of the day for me and is by far the most enjoyable class. No homework. No Tests. No wordy BS assignments. We are just drawing from life. As my instructor put it, we are learning the art of 'seeing'.
I'll admit I got really annoyed about half way through the blind draw (where you only look at the subject and not at what you are drawing), but that's because I like feedback that comes from looking at what I have done. Not too big of a deal, though, since we only did that for 30 minutes and the class is 2.5 hours long. After that, we were pretty much given free reign to draw anything we wanted in the room. I started by drawing my shoe:
Now, for anyone who might aspire to do still life work, I highly suggest that if your subject is an article of clothing make sure that it is not currently on your body. I had my leg stretched out at this angle for at least one hour before I couldn't take it anymore. My entire ass had fallen asleep and my lower back kind of felt like it was burning.
However, even with the numb butt, I was pretty proud of the improvement you see from one drawing to the other. The shoe on the left was the first attempt. With this one I sort of haphazardly started drawing. Of course I was becoming annoyed with the inaccurate proportions I could see and it is very difficult to effectively remove charcoal from newsprint. So, I started again and did quite a bit more planning before adding detail. Gently sketching out the prominent shapes I saw first allowed for a better skeleton for which to add the shoe details on later.
That's one hour I spent on drawing my foot, but what did I do with the last hour of class? Well, the instructor had set up a still life for the blind draw that consisted of a couple plants, animal skulls and a tussled table cloth. I decided to have some fun with the table cloth:
Now, he only wanted us to do line work, but I, again, was getting bored so I disregarded such instructions and let loose with some shading. I haven't used charcoal in so long that I had forgotten how dynamic the lines and shading can be. Sure, you can't keep a charcoal pencil as needle sharp as a graphite pencil, but when use effectively, charcoal can do what graphite cannot.
To wrap this up I will go ahead and say that I can tell this is going to be an amazing semester. I know this because I have only had two days of class and I'm already chomping at the bit to get back on Tuesday. I guess that means that I might be addicted to art...
That's right, I'm addicted to art. Say what you will, but I need it and there's nothing you can do to keep us apart. Now, hand me a tourniquet so I can shoot up with creativity, 'kay?
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