Stacy Weitz Minch

This has felt like a bit of a rough starts, and seems to be moving really slowly. But I haven't been getting in to work on it much. Things are crazy in the summer--it's hard to keep a set schedule. At this point, I'm still trying to work out the accuracy of the drawing before I really get in there and solidify things.

Beginnings. This is after the first couple of hours. I have a long way to go with this one...

10x10", charcoal, pastel, and graphite on Arches MBM Ingres paper I finished up my first cast drawing on Saturday! I'm excited to get started on the next one (see below). I'm not locked in on this setup yet, just fiddling around and trying to figure out what the best arrangement will be.

Horrible photo quality here, but this is my current cast project in progress. It feels like I'm getting close to the finish, but I need to address the entire drawing, paying special attention to turning the form and giving it a "sculptural" quality. So more specific information as to how the forms turn away/toward the light. The shapes/impression are there. I've heard some people say that they love finishing--it's the funnest part for them. For me, it's the most grueling. I think I see more impressionistically, so finishing is just really difficult and tedious. Starting's the fun part for me.

I spent a few hours working on this cast this afternoon. It was a stormy day and the light was changing a lot. I mostly worked on the upper brow area. It's hard to see how all those forms come together under the brow, especially when I back up--as you can see in the photo the darker values all blur into a big blobby mass from farther back. And then when I'm up close, the angle I view the cast from doesn't match the drawing. So I can get closer to the cast and line the plumb up in the right spot and try to memorize where things should overlap/meet, but I have to commit it to memory and then head back over to my drawing and quickly try to get it down. I guess what I'm saying is I can't stand at my drawing and look at the reference. It's all a memory game, which is a little bit difficult. But I'm trying. The eye needs some work. First it was too small, and now I think I may have overcorrected and made it too big. I probably need to pull in some of the cont...

Very rough block-in of this cast (maybe almost an hour?). This is my first cast drawing, and I was having some trouble setting it up. I have a feeling that I started it all wrong... I'm half expecting to be told to start over, and if so, it's fine. I started out straight sight-size, but the drawing was going to be so small it seemed like rendering all the little shapes in charcoal would be a major pain. So I just drew the top/bottom lines in at life size. I can back up quite a ways and get it to fit sight size, so it might work alright. I don't know. It's kind of weird because the cast is in the back of the shadow box, and if I push my easel up closer, the easel will be in shadow, but if the easel is pulled forward into the light the cast becomes that much smaller in my field of vision... I'm thinking I'll have to do more comparative measuring with this one because even if you do get it into sight size, the measurements will be so small from that far ba...