One of the things which I've realised over the last three weeks is that while drawing can bring a lot of satisfaction it's also a rather lonely process; whenever you're in "the zone" then you really don't want to be disturbed by anyone else. It's not that it's hard to talk but when you're trying to hold an image in your head, before transferring it to paper, it's a fragile state of mind which is easily perturbed. So, anyway, I found out that a taster session for a local art class was taking place tonight and figured that I'd give it a go.
So I contacted the teacher, Gabriela Schutz, and she kindly invited me to her back garden studio along with 6 or 7 other prospective art students. This turned out to be a very cosy, inspiring location and Gabriela made everyone feel very welcome and ready to try their best with the still-life on display. As you might expect people's level of experience varied but we all began with a blank sheet of paper and some loose guidance on how we needed to think about tones and relationships when looking at the group of objects:
To start with I felt most inclined to try and sketch out the key shapes and the way in which they overlapped; the easiest way to achieve this without excessive distortion seemed to be with the x-ray approach. As a result I had some reasonable wireframes in place when we broke for tea and coffee but not a lot of shading or tonal variation - although the placing of the objects and their relative sizes felt about right. After the break I had to push on and in order to achieve a wide range of tone I started on the very darkest areas (around the spherical gourd) with my trusty 6B pencil; this I rather enjoyed as a welcome change from contour drawing.
After this it was a case of choosing one object after another, more or less in order of how dark they appeared, and trying to reproduce the way in which light from the left-hand side played across their surface. As you can see I didn't get to finish but for 2 hours of work I think that I achieved a reasonable amount:
That said with more time I would have brought out some of the highlights, with a rubber, and tried to create smoother tones across the cylindrical surfaces. Also adding shadows, and perhaps the tablecloth, would have worked to make the picture feel more connected - other students went down this path and the result was very effective. What's nice about the session is that Gabriela gave everyone some attention and assistance while they were working and then, at the end, commented on everyone's work to bring out unique elements of success. It turns out that we all achieved something of value and being able to recognise this is a great gift - which is why I've signed up to Gabriela's series of autumn classes!