Excited about the success I had at last week’s open studio session at The Plastic Club in Philadelphia, where, for the first time, I used only pencil and tried applying the Bargue techniques I’m learning in my Intro to Pencil Drawing class, I came to this week’s open studio armed, yet again, with only my pencils to see if I can build on my attempts from last week. Knowing that I can’t finish a complete figure drawing using the Bargue methodology in only an hour, I was content knowing this would only be practice to see how much of the figure and the form and cast shadows I could block-in before time was up. I was so pleased with how the drawing was going at the session, that I did something very much frowned upon by life drawing purists – I snapped a photo to complete the drawing at home.
With the model’s permission, I snapped a quick reference photo, because I was excited to try to shade the drawing using the techniques learned in my class. I understand why photos are discouraged – the light and shadow values are captured differently than when drawing from life, you’re drawing in two dimensions instead of three, the viewpoint is different, etc. But, I felt I had blocked in enough of the figure and shadows to just use the reference photo for shading. However, when I started working on the drawing at home, in addition to shading, I became more obsessed with details that I didn’t get the opportunity to work on at the studio.
Using Bargue techniques this time around, I spent more time working on the details of the hands, feet, and face. As I mentioned in a much earlier post about using photos on Croquis Café, it was very liberating having as much time as I wanted to concentrate on those details, which is why, I believe, they turned out much better than usual. I did, however, jump the gun again with some of the shading – there is a lot of “noise” in the shading on the platform because I started with too soft of a pencil. It’s a lot of area to shade, and I just tried taking a short cut with a darker pencil. I should have started with a 2H or harder pencil, shaded the whole area consistently, then keep adding layers on top of that with progressively darker, or softer, pencils until the desired value is reached. Time consuming? Yes. But, much more worth it in the end.
I think this is still very much a work in progress – I hope to keep working on refining the details and shading, and perhaps, by next year this time, I can enter it as a piece to be shown in the annual show at The Plastic Club featuring works created from their open studio workshops.
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