Figure Drawing Class: First day at school

YAAY! Just got back from very first drawing class since 2002. Hoorah! I heard about this 10-week class from a woman I talked to a couple of weeks ago about art classes. She suggested this school in Palo Alto because they offer classes with models, which was always my favorite part of art school. Am lucky enough to have WPI foot the bill for my "continuing education." Have never been so giddy about going back to school!

I took some pics of the best work from tonight. Class started with warmup of ten 10-second and ten 30-second poses, then on to some minute-longs, and then some longer poses. Class was small, about 4 or 5 total, and had really great easels. (UGA never was blessed with good easels in its painting department: they had precarious metal frames, with oil-paint-coated hinges, and on several occasions they collapsed onto some poor student during my classes. My painting teachers were always very bitter about the huge percentage of the art school budget that was typically given over to the tech-heavy design school. Anyway, these easels were great.)

I discovered that I couldn't quite remember how to use white conte crayons: more than once, I destroyed a couple of drawings by smearing in some white too soon. But these were the best:


10-second pose



10-second pose



30-second pose



30-second pose



first part of a longer pose: about 30 minutes



long pose: about an hour total. This one was very tough, but I stuck with it. It looks strangely proportioned, but there's still a kind of tense, uncomfortable energy I like about it.

More to come next week!!