Embroidered Collage

Ha!  It looks like fruit, it looks like fruit!  *happy dancing*  Okay, maybe that's going a little over board, but I'm just so thrilled that I (me me me!) drew that picture.

 Backing up a bit  - the picture to the side is my favorite of the contour drawing before real drawings that I did from last time's assignment.  Everything I did, the upside-down drawings and the drawings from life, were a little off, not quite right, but closer than I would have thought I could get without trying.

Tonight we discussed shading.  Amanda set up an old volleyball under a directed light and turned off the overhead in that part of the room.  And she demonstrated for me how she picked which graphite to use where, how to hold the pencil to shade and move it around the contour lines, how to blend with the stub, and how to lift out with the kneaded eraser.  It's like magic, watching that.

The way the drawing was constructed was a revelation to me.  I'd always tried to get everything in, putting in a bit of shading, trying to leave the light areas light.  But this, this is more forgiving because you can work backwards and forwards.  Lay down the graphite, blend it together, pull some of it up, repeat as necessary.  I enjoyed doing it; first on the ball, and then on the fruit.  Though the eraser was harder to knead and work than it looked like when she was doing it!  I need to go buy a stub and kneadable eraser of my own for practicing.

Near the end of the evening we returned to the topic of what do I want to draw.  For use in my other art I want to be able to do architecture and cities and castles.  And for myself I want to do my cats and I would do very much love to do a realistic dragon someday.  Well, that last set Amanda off with enthusiasm!  Seems it's something she like to do as well.  She did a quick sketch of an animal and showed stretching and distortion and how to make it into something else.  She suggested looking at and drawing horses and lizards and bats and spending time with my fantasy art books and trying to see where the artists get it from, maybe making some tracings.  She sent me home with a couple horse photographs to play from. 

I'm kind of viewing the whole thing with trepidation.  It seems like too far to leap and for something that is a personal indulgence to boot.  But I've certainly proved to myself that trying anyway helps in making it work right eventually.  So I'll play a bit before I go back, probably sometime next month.