I’m taking two classes this month and while I introduced you to the observational drawing class in the last post, I haven’t shared about my grisaille watercolor drawing class!
Once again, this class also did a lot to increase my confidence in putting stuff on paper. The teacher is amazing at making drawing so friendly and approachable and overcoming your inner critic! He had great tips for not only how to better see things and translate them to paper, but also tips and tricks related to our art supplies as well.
Some of my favorite liberating takeaways from class are:
• Don’t worry about deviations or distortions, welcome them. This is what comprises your personal drawing style!
• When stuff turns out larger or smaller or gets missed in being part of your sketch, it’s not ‘wrong’ it’s an accurate reflection of what spoke to you (or not!). ERASING & PERFECTION ARE AN ERASURE OF OUR VERY SELVES. These interpretations are biographies of ourselves. How can we not put ourselves in our own drawings?! (I love this, y'all.)
• Pencil lines aren’t a drawing, they are instead a plan for a drawing to be done in ink (amen!)
• It’s not about getting it perfect, it’s about training my eyes to see contours, shadow, and light.
• Don’t be precious and protective of my drawings. This is how I learn and evolve! Try things, mess up, find what works & what I love. This is how evolution works! It takes time to dial it in! Going to extremes with style is how I tune into my own style.
We practiced contour line drawings from our own still lives that we got to make ourselves! Of course mine had all kinds of shells, but also a tincture bottle, a brass duck, a broom, my favorite color (the glass bottle), a candlestick, and grapes. All things that are meaningful to me. But, I’m still very slow and didn’t make it very far in my drawing in class. So here is a detail shot of a mostly finished shell necklace that I am quite proud of and a shell necklace that I started that I was feeling pretty good about and a whelk that I don’t love, but it’s alright.
As class wound down, we mixed our ink-washes and started reviewing the grisaille process, hatching, and shading. We also talked about breaking scenes down into common shapes. I left class equipped with a curiosity to know more about this style of drawing and I'm looking forward to next week's class!
