Drawing Project #1

The semester started on a Tuesday, so my first classes were Drawing and Beginning Ceramics.  I took a pottery class in high school, so I wasn’t too nervous about that class.  Drawing is another story.  Not even my doodles are cute.  As already evidenced by my very loving brother.

My mom, who happened to major in art in college and is pretty talented herself, tried to be encouraging:  

“Don’t worry honey, you have a great sense of style and color.”

Uh, thanks Mom, but the class only uses charcoal.

Project #1: Cézanne Reproduction

You’d think the first day of class would be somewhat easy, right?

Wrong.  My professor gave us this painting that we have to draw ourselves.  Good introduction, huh?

“Still Life with a Ginger Jar and Eggplants”  by Paul Cézanne

The painting’s in color, but my professor gave us a black and white copy that really just looks like a giant grey blob. 

He said to focus on proportion and to use at least five different shades of grey by combining vine charcoal and compressed charcoal. 

Since I’m a very logical person, I figured the best way to start would be to divide the painting into sections.  That way I’d be able to control the proportion better than just freehanding the whole thing.  So I divided it into four corners.

My mom’s advice was to work from left to right so the charcoal doesn’t smudge all over the paper and onto my arm.  But looking at the painting, and the top left corner, I just couldn’t bring myself to start there.  I mean, literally, it’s just different shades and blobs of grey.  So I started with the wine bottle in the middle and worked my way down to the jugs, pears, and various fabrics.

I wish I had taken pictures of my progress, but I only took one of the finished drawing.  I'm not exactly sure how long it took me, probably between 2-3 hours.  My mom was right, though.  I had charcoal all over my hands and arms, and I ended up smudging the bottom of the picture.  Note to self: follow Mom's advice.

Overall, I'm pleased with the end result.  I am unhappy about the pears on the plate, though.  I couldn't really get the shape and size of them down as accurately as I'd hoped.  I also found it challenging to use a lot of different shades of grey.  The vine charcoal and compressed charcoal were so different to use together.  The vine charcoal I could hold as a pencil, but when I smudged it the shade became much lighter than I planned, so I had to go over it multiple times and couldn't get the result that I really wanted.  The compressed charcoal, on the other hand, applied very dark and was hard to lighten.  I used my kneaded eraser and a crafty little tool called a "tortillon" to spread out the charcoal and lighten it a bit.

        Side note: When I was at the art store getting all my supplies for class, I couldn't find the tortillons.  When I asked the sales lady where they were, she said, "They're right next to the charcoal pencils.  They look like little joints."  And she was right.

Tomorrow we take our drawings into class to be critiqued by the professor and other students.  I'm nervous to see how mine stacks up against everyone else's.  I'm just hoping not to be embarrassed.