"Stretching" Week 3

Last week our assignment for Sketchbook Skool was to draw something with wheels - right up my alley.  Earlier in the summer I had taken a photo of this chunky green dump truck just before I went on vacation.  He had been parked in a field right at the end of our neighborhood with a "For Sale" sign in the window.  I wish I had a reason to buy him.  I wanted to go sit in the field and draw him, but it was scorching hot outside, and I am a wimp.  So I took pictures before we went out of town.  I am so glad I did because he was gone when we got back.
The assignment was to draw with an ink pen, using hatching for shading, and adding some color.  I loved doing this one. The second part of the lesson was to draw the same vehicle from a different angle with a different medium and to draw it fast and loose.  I tried to do a digital drawing over and over.  I have done digital work before, but I failed to do anything presentable. So at the last minute I grabbed a brush pen and drew it quickly on the paper. After all my failed attempts on the computer and the iPad I really really understood this truck.  I was able to knock this one out much faster than I expected.  And I actually fell in love with the brush pen.

Big Head People

Last week's assignment for Sketchbook Skool was from Lapin, a French Urban Sketcher who is living in Barcelona.  He taught us to draw big headed people with small bodies.  This was a fun lesson.  We were to draw from a live model.  My husband was my first model.  The results are very funny, but I didn't get his body small enough. For my second attempt I sat in front of a full length mirror and drew myself.  In this drawing I look sort of like Paula Deen .  I wish I were holding a pie or a piece of fried chicken.

Sketchbook Skool Part 2

I started another course at www.sketchbookskool.com 2 weeks ago.  This one is called Stretching and the name describes it perfectly.  We are taking what we know and applying it to new techniques and new ways of thinking and doing.  The first week was with Jonathan Twingely.  Our homework assignment was to draw as much every day as we could - from our imagination, from our dreams, from our life.  THEN we had to cut all the pieces/objects out and glued them onto a piece of paper or to our sketchbook and make something new.  This was so so difficult for me.  Here is a photo of most of the pieces I drew.

I drew my dreams - an old bus, people getting on a bus, chairs, a Vespa, my parents when they were young.  I kept watching the instructional videos and drew the instructor many times because his face was so expressive, and he was so likable.   One day I was uninspired and drew the scissors sitting on my art table.  Then I cut them all out and looked at them for hours and days.  I was uninspired.  I arranged and rearranged and worried and got angry and fretted.  Little by little an idea grew.  I loved the face of the instructor and wanted to tell a story.  This is what I ended up with.

After gluing on the three faces of Jonathan I added a hand to the scissors and attached that then drew the arm, the background blinds and the light.  Then I looked back at my cutout pieces and played around with the words I had also drawn for the assignment and added "mistakes."  

But that is not the whole story, or even the correct story.  I did a larger collage first, hated it, felt it was too much, too busy, and trimmed off some parts of it.  Here was the original:

This lesson was a killer for me.  I don't even know how many hours I spent trying to come up with this arrangement, idea, story.  I worried over it so long that I don't even know how I feel about the final product. But even for the difficulties and the struggles, it was a huge learning process and makes me appreciate what my students go through when I give them an assignment that is difficult for them.