It's now been a week since my last Ink and Watercolor class. I haven't posted my summary of the class sooner because I fell into an internet hole for a few days in which I did nothing but work on finishing up this website! I've also started an online watercolor course, so that's been keeping me busy as well. But I'm delighted to be sharing this summary with you now, because a lot happened on this last night of class!
The agenda for the class was to take a still-life to completion: 60-second-pencil-plan, contour outlines, ink-wash layers, watercolor layers, and final hatching. I brought the same snail to class wanting to practice drawing it from behind and challenge myself by trying to sort out foreshortening for the first time. The goal was to have the snail appear to be climbing up onto the cassette-tape box.
The infamous tape that gave me such trouble and resulted in the snail's wonky eyes. Also, notice the pencil lines suggesting where the snail should have gone to appear properly grounded. I do love the gorgeous texture on his skin though!
Oh mercy, it seemed like from the beginning it all went off the rails. I thought the cassette tape would be a good exercise in a basic shape (two rectangles) with some added interesting detail (the round and square cut-outs, for example). Boys as I wrong! First off, I once again got befuddled by contours as they relate to holes. Contour lines are something I can stick my pencil-tip behind. I continually draw the wrong side of 'hole' contours because I'm SEEING the line in the back (it was distinct! It was dark and black!) and not the one in the front (which doesn't even appear to be there. It's more like the absence of something!). But the back line, no matter how pronounced, is not a contour. So I had to white out my mistaken back line in the toothed tape-holes and add in the front line. Holes like that get me every time.
I also got hopelessly muddled on keeping my tape-box lines sorted in my head. In my Observational Drawing class, our instructor insisted that we draw all of our shapes through our other shapes, just to make sure we're staying on track and things end up in the right place. At the time he gave me that feedback, I admit I was unsure. But since then I can definitely understand it! It would have helped tremendously in this case. I ended up with a back, top-left corner of a tape box that shouldn't have been there because it lined up incorrectly with the lines it appears to join up with.
The front-edge of the cassette tape actually turned out to be terribly tricky. I got so bogged down with misdrawn lines and made quite a mess of it. So by the time I finally got the cassette to an okay state, I'd quite forgotten about my snail's lovely eye-stalk tentacles. That's why they look so goofy, because I had to work around the tape that I'd already inked in.
So I'm still working on seeing things 'front-to-back.' More often than not, I get carried away by working on the 'next-nearby-thing' rather than assessing my front-lines again. So, in this case, I started with the mushroom (a front-most thing) and the orb (which stood alone), then went on to the tape box (the next-nearby-thing to the mushroom), making sure to not finish all of my lines so as to leave room for the cassette tape and snail. What I failed to catch, however, is that I needed to leave room for my snail's tentacles too.
I must be more careful about keeping an eye on ALL PARTS of my front-most objects, not just the one I start with and not just a portion of the one I'll be getting to next (like leaving room for the snail's head, but not his tentacles). This is a good reminder to keep my image working at all the same rate and not get too bogged down in one area, as my Ob. Drawing instructor was always trying to help remind me. By getting so bogged down in the tape, I lost sight of the snail, which was actually my primary subject and interest in completing this piece.
So everything was off to a terrible start and honestly I felt like a big storm cloud was settling over me. I admit I was grumpy about it! I thought more than once about starting over, but felt like that defied the intent of the class (to let go of perfectionist tendencies and just be in the sketchbook and being flexible with how it all manifests as it goes along). I even pulled out a sheet of tracing paper I had tucked in the back of my book from a former project. But again, it didn't seem in keeping with the intent of the class. So instead, I took notes on the tracing paper about my process and my challenges and resolved to write about it later. Meanwhile, I finished inking and then took a quick break and called Benjamin to fuss about the disastrous consequences on my page. (Sometimes just fussing to Benjamin can help me feel better. He's a very patient person and I'm grateful he let's me fuss! :-D)
I came back in and worked on my ink-washes. I tried really hard to see the tonal qualities. Even though I didn't like the drawing, it was still a great opportunity to practice applying tone. I really applied myself and am largely happy with how that part turned out. I can tell I'm making progress with tone and ink-wash, so that was encouraging! But I decided not to take the drawing into full-color since I was hardly invested in it after so many mishaps during the contour portion.
The second contour-drawing in which I spent more time with my pencil-plan. The snail looks properly grounded here, like he is firmly stuck to the ground while reaching up to climb onto the cassette case. Also, his eyes are properly alert in the direction he is headed!
Instead, I turned the page and started the drawing again. This time I spent more than 60-seconds on my pencil sketch. I used what I learned in my Observational Drawing class and worked harder at forming my shapes. I drew all of my lines through each of the objects to make sure everything lined up. I used some tracing paper to trace my snail. I took a photo of it to have the camera flatten the image for me and laid the tracing-paper over the snail to see where I went wrong.
After trying to sort it out myself, I asked for feedback from my instructor about how I could have made my snail look properly foreshortened (since again, that was the whole point of this piece for me) and he helped me see where I'd made assumptions about what I saw and helped me see what was actually there instead. (You can see those pencil corrections on the first drawing. The snail's body should have been wider on the left side). I used all of that information to inform my second drawing, which I had just enough time to contour and which turned out much better than the first! (I've written more about how I'm finding a happy medium between my two classes here).
Then, I went back and did a little half-hearted hatching and final contours on the original drawing, just to have something to show at the end of the class. Of course it would have been lovely to end class on a high note where I felt like I'd improved wondrously and had a final drawing I was really proud of! But honestly, this feels more authentic anyway. It's an accurate reflection of where I'm at in my learning and the most significant takeaway from this last class in my opinion is that I used my agency to pick and choose what I wanted to get out of that class.
Sometimes the most important thing is to push through the imperfections, but I'd done that all of the previous weeks. That wasn't what I felt like I needed practice on. Instead, I needed to figure out how I could make the best use of my time in that class and so I chose to really focus on dialing in my practice with seeing tone and layering washes and for that to be the sole important purpose of that first piece. I chose to start the drawing over again, discarding the '60-second-rule' for pencil-planning and instead seeing how I could begin to integrate my learning from my two classes to create a better piece. Then, I asked for help in improving the one skill that I'd never practiced before (foreshortening) and couldn't see well on my own.
This to me actually has all the hallmarks of a successful class. Success won't always mean that I end up with a final drawing that I'm proud of. But showing up, problem-solving, knowing how to prioritize what's most important to me, and asking for help when needed are all indicative of much success indeed!
This whole course was wonderful. It gave me the courage to put things on the page. It inspired me to keep my sketchbook on me and take it all over. It introduced me to the Urban Sketchers community. It encouraged me to not over-think it, to cut myself some slack, and to just keep drawing. Truly a successful experience.