Art of the Day #4: Go Figure

Tools: charcoal and pencil on paper
Actual drawing time: 10 min.

About:
Taking a break from finishing the James Dean piece for today. This weekend, I'm taking a workshop by a figure painter named Steve Huston.  We spent the day sketching and painting from a live setting with a model.  This is a shot of one of the sketches.

Thoughts:
It frustrates and pleases me to see the result.  I have a vision of how I want the sketches to look like, but they aren't coming out exactly how I want them to yet. I know it comes with practice. I've taken life drawing classes back in college, and have only taken three workshop sessions on my own since I graduated ages and ages ago.  I need a lot more practice to get to the level of drawing that I want to be.   I need to be diligent and patient.  I'm not used to the feel of the medium, charcoal on paper… so part of the struggle comes with learning how to control the charcoal rather than being controlled by it.  I kept getting distracted by the way it felt to make a mark on paper.  I used both a pencil and compressed charcoal. Sometimes, the pencil wouldn't make a mark when I tried to draw on the paper.  It really frustrated me, especially since we are being timed and have only 5 to 10 minutes, and I spent a good minute looking at my pencil trying to figure out what was wrong. (Today is the first day in a looooooong time that I actually sat behind a blank canvas and painted with oil.  We will be painting more tomorrow.)

Tidbit I learned at the workshop: God wants us to succeed!

Thank you.