After I did the first one, I noticed that the fingers were connected at the edges of the shapes and I hadn't fully mannequinized them, so I tried to do that with the following two. It did help me to better understand the inherent geometry of the hand and try a form that had previously scared me (and still does tbh, but a little less so). :)

Level 1

Level 1

This assignment introduced me to NC Wyeth and Dean Cornwell, who I want to adopt as art parents. I checked out a book from the library on Edward Hopper, and I’m hoping to use some of his works for more notan master study references.

Three value studies. Realized that I tend to make darker values midtones and midtones into darker values when they lay somewhere in between. This was a fun exercise! It also taught me a lot about how the masters spatially organized their paintings, especially Lepage and Rockwell. Really interesting to notice that!

First are the five heads from the development drawings and then five new drawings. Thanks for any feedback! I know I tended to overwork some of them, but it was challenging to avoid doing that. I like the solidity of the second new drawing (of the woman glancing left, so I can see some progress. Thanks!

I enjoyed how quietly meditative this exercise was. It was challenging! I struggled especially once it came to the lighter values. It seemed as if just putting pencil to paper once made the value too dark and somewhat indistinguishable between shades 2 and 3. I also didn't have a 2H so that could be an issue. Overall, it's fun to think about how just little shifts in value can have a big impact!

I finally put my drawings side by side with the reference, which really helped me to see the issues. I have a habit of making the faces too wide and not shaving down the sides enough. When there's a tilt upward, I tend to not make the tilt dramatic enough.

I really like this approach! Easy to remember, not so easy to execute, but I feel myself improving. I think I need to lean into more exaggeration of the angles and curves to get the full effect of the gesture, and also pay more attention to the curvature of the head and neck. I struggled a lot with understanding how to draw the ellipse at the base of the neck to suggest the curve of the torso. I really liked the suggestion to identify the pose by a word and write it next to it. I'm not sure that my sketch communicates those expressions but it helped to create like a mental visual taxonomy of how gesture and expression correspond.