30 Second Sketches: A Mixture of Excitement and Fear
Tuesday was our first day with a model! It was exciting to be able to see the human form in action and attempt to draw the actual figure. With a quiet confidence, the model mounted the platform in the center of the room and chose her first pose. In the beginning our instructor told us we had 30 seconds to do a quick gesture drawing of each stance. That time seemed quiet reasonable. It is not uncommon to see people sketching in the park, quickly throwing down the ever changing scene in front of them. So when our teacher told us to start I moved my charcoal confidently across the page. The slight oval of the head, the connection of the shoulder, the arch of the arm, TIME! So, apparently 30 seconds goes by a lot faster than expected. A chorus of laughter echoed throughout the room as everyone looked at the meager form on their paper. My drawing (which looked like a cherry with a trampled stem) was a sad first attempt, but we didn't get much time to linger because the model had chosen a new position and the timer had been started again.
This time I had a sense of panicked urgency, but when the 30 seconds was up my second drawing resembled a person chopped off at the waist. We did a number of these and my figure slowly grew (although I always had trouble getting in all four appendages). Finally we upgraded the time to a minute. The intensity of these quick drawings was contagious and the freeness of my line benefitted from my excitement. I look forward to doing these again.
The rest of class for the week was spent cleaning off the skeletons that we will be using to learn the structure of the muscles. Today I will build some of the muscles on the back. I am sure pictures will follow as I have a feeling this skeletor and I will become close friends.
I love your description of our first reactions to gesture drawings. Thirty seconds goes by so much faster than you think it will! I think now that we're a couple days in everyone is getting acclimated to the quick pace.
ReplyDeleteAnnie,
ReplyDeleteI love how you have your blog set up, maybe you can show me how to make my background look at cool as yours! Also I also like how you have your pictures on here. I love looking at your gesture drawings because they do have a nice line weight to your forms that I appreciate. I usually make dark fast lines too soon, so I gotta slow down. We should try to work on the next clay assignment together! Give Julia and I a call =)