Drawing Intensive Workshop at GCA Week 1

Here is my first cast drawing!  I am excited to get to take this workshop taught by Angela Cunningham, Carla Crawford and Colleen Barry. 

Here you can see the progress after the first day: block in using my H pencil to measure a half way point and where my height to width ratio corresponded to the whole and broke down to halves and quarters. Start rough with thick lines and gradually sculpt your lines down with an eraser until it looks as close as possible to what you see.  I recently got this great eraser called a MonoZero eraser from a Japanese bookstore near Bryant Park.  It works like a mechanical pencil and is shaped like a long, thin cylindrical tube.  Works great for thinning those lines down.

The next day I took my kneaded eraser and rolled it across the drawing to lighten my lines.  This makes it easier to add the final, crisp ones.

This is Angela's demonstration to me of how to draw exactly where the line should go after spending a couple days figuring out where things should be.  Once you know for sure, you draw straight little 1/4 inch increments with exact angles for a sharp, precise line. I would probably switch to a 2H pencil for this.

Now you go over the entire drawing again with your razor sharp pencil and begin flattening your shadows.

Pick a mid range value for your shadow areas and try your hardest to shade them in as evenly as possible in little 1/2 inch x 1/2 inch increments.  Color in every little speck of white left and use a kneaded eraser to pull out every little dark dot.  This can take hours. 

Once all your shadows are flattened, begin modeling!