Arnovecchio Workshop wih Sandro Sacchetti (second Part)

Here we are at the second meeting in Arnovecchio for the drawing course. The weather was cloudy and almost rainy that day, but anyway we were able to finish the lesson. We drew from model in wood of mallard, male and female. They were still, so I had more time to refine the work. I used watercolor on a 25x35 (ca) Fabriano paper, and pencils in  my sketchbook for the awkward perspective of the female (about 5x5 cm).

The sketch in pencil

Final painting

And the female one:

From my POV it had more sense the positition of the tail as in the first B&W sketch. but finally it made more sense to modify a bit what I was seeing. This is not good, but hard not for me to do when drawing forsehortened parts. Maybe a solution is to firmly close an eye, and think in terms of form!

Drawing Course 6

Here it is another post about my old drawing course. The exercise is basically the same. We had to make a copy (sorry, can't remember the author), but this time we inked it with fineliner (about 0.1, 0.4, 0.9 diameter). The original is a beautiful etching of a villa:

Drawing course 5

Another lesson from the old course. This lesson was self made, in the sense that I missed the class, and I totally made it without teacher's guide. I took advantages to experiment with carbon pencils and sticks by Cretacolor.It was a more loose and fast copy, but fun anyway. I advise you to change the material you use. It's true that's enough a pencil and a kneaded eraser to explore such a lot of worlds, but even changing can nurture and renew the passion in drawing. Beside the brain is stimulated by new and different possibilities of a different expression.

The original

Drawing Course 4

I'll share today another couple of works I did in my drawing course.

Here it is a portrait from Giovanni Bellini "Men with turban". The reproduction I was copying from was as bad as usual. I think I missed some proportion, some features are off, and the chin is a bit diferent.. anyway, the portrait is something good to train yourself, because the similarity is hard to achive and dipends on the correct placement of every feature and every wrinkle, But initially you can't get lost in details, you have to focus on the main shapes, like the skull, the jaw, the gesture of the neck, the cheekbones, the height of the nose, of the eyes, of the eyebrows, of the mouth, and so on... There are some kind of different approach to drawing. As you can see from the lines on the copy, when you draw from a photo and you have to learn, you can trace some lines that lead you to reconstruct correctly the image. The accuracy of the measure estabilishes the similarity. It can seem like a boring surveying, but it's important when you begin to keep accuracy and patience to train the eye and the end. Even when you have done lot of exercise, you can do sometime this kind of copy to keep the habit. The "original"..

Drawing Course 3

Hallo!! Welcome to the third lesson!! Today another good exercise I made in my first drawing course. You need a pencil, better a couple or three (I had HB, 2B, 6B at that time). Perhaps you can do it also with  mecanical pencils too. And you need time and patience: I think, it took me 6-8 hours to do this, maybe 10. Don't hurry!! Stick on't!!
Another time this is "life size", in the sense that the drawing is the same size of the model. We had copy af an engraving, but I don't remember the author. You could complicate the exercise making the drawing a scale of the model: double time bigger, or smaller, or even a third bigger. This is no fun for me but it forces you to become more acquainted with measuring, and it also sharpen your scaling ability. For me the best part is rendering, so I simplified the drawing part.
Still today I think that I should go back and revise the measuring technique, make some paintaking life drawing measuring everything.. but hardly ever I keep this aim..
I suggest not to go as you can; work middle tones, layer after layer. Usually it's better a light sign than a heavy one. Of course you can go darker then...

Drawing course 2

Here it is the second lesson. Unfortunately, we left life drawing and we began to draw from scruffy copies. But this was exhalting anyway!! And I was able to practice at home.

This is an etching from Giorgio Morandi

Drawing Course 1

Aye!! Today I want to post some very old drawings. To tell the truth... they are the first after a long time. In fact that's the drawing course which turned on the passion for drawing and painting...after the long sleep after the middle school courses. Ahh.. such a sweet time... It was the beginning of 2010. To tell the truth the passion for art was instilled after I took up a course in pottery.. but that's another post.