Structure class

 

6-hour drawing with prismacolor colerase pencil on strathmore 400 paper. This is from the evening structure class I'm taking. I think it's slightly wide overall, but oh well. This was our last night with this model, and I'm hoping I can get a little further with the next pose. Pushing beyond this point and getting into the specifics and subtleties of form is somewhere I need to get comfortable existing. They passed around a book of Russian academic drawings last night, and the way those guys bring out all the little intricacies of form is incredibly beautiful.

In this structure class the emphasis is on identifying the major anatomical points (constellation) and sweeping gesture (chief line) of the figure before laying in the contour, whereas the school I attend during the day focuses first on arriving at the gesture by chiseling into the contour from the outside envelope. I like both ways of approaching the drawing, and I think combining them is totally possible. I'm all for using whatever information I can to arrive at a good drawing. I also like drawing big with a smaller instrument. It's easier to arrive at the subtle contours when you can keep a consistently sharp point. Not that you can't do that with charcoal--you will just spend half your time sharpening. But I think I will bring some charcoal pencils to the studio and see if I can make those work in a more precise way.