Beginning Drawing Week Six/Last Class

My sketches from our instructor's practice sheets

Today was the last meeting of my Beginning Drawing class at Barnsdall Art Barn.  I missed the first class due to an Easter vacation, and I missed class last week as I was working as a poll clerk for the June election.  So in all I caught six classes of the eight week session.

The assignment for today's class was to bring a mirror or photo in order to draw a portrait.  Our instructor Rolandas had a packet of practice sheets and information about human anatomy drawing.  He also had a still life set up for those that didn't bring anything to draw. 

the still life setup

With a printed out photo of my mom to draw, I smudged the paper with charcoal dust.  After sketching the printed photo paper with guidelines to divide the face into quadrants, I sketched out the general shape of the face and laid in the shape of the eyes, mouth and hairline in pencil but then wasn't sure where to go, especially with the smudged paper, as we were then basically sketching in a negative, erasing rather than drawing.  Rolandas came over to assist, and ended up basically erasing most of what I'd done, then demonstrated how he would have approached a portraiture.  While I appreciated his technique, I felt I needed more time sketching before I was ready to approach an exact likeness.  So I went back to his handouts and spent the rest of the class practicing.

Instructor Rolandas' sketch