2B or not 2B

I recently completed my intensive drawing course - which involved every Monday for 5 weeks.  Each day we covered a different aspect, and each day was mentally exhausting - but worth it!

I started off using just an HB pencil, but did progress to using 2B, 4B and 6B.

Each session involved quite a few exercises, but I have only shown one piece from each day, as I don't want you to get too bored!

The first thing we covered was line.  Now this course is all about using the right side of your brain, so for our second exercise we had a Picasso line drawing which we had to up size and copy, but do it upside down.  I was quite amazed at the result.  Here is my effort right side up!

Quite difficult to photograph drawings, so click on each picture to get a better look!

The second topic we covered was negative space.  Again, producing a drawing upside down, but only drawing the negative spaces.  I had no idea what it was looking like right side up, but after shading all the negative spaces I had drawn ...

Next was perspective.  I have always found this tricky, but I was starting to realise the key is only drawing what you actually see; using kebab sticks for getting the angles also really helped.

Here is one of my home work pieces, which involved drawing a corner of a room, in this case my stairs.

Session four concentrated on tone. This was one exercise we did, which was to randomly fold a length of paper, and draw it.

And this was a piece of homework - a rose.

The final session was to draw a still life group and we could choose the subject matter.  Now I don't have much in the way of ornaments or knick-knacks, so decided to raid my craft room and took along some brushes, my bee vase, pots of medium, a brayer, some tubes of paint and a rag.

This took about 5 hours.

I am quite stunned at how far I've come after just 5 days, and that is all down to my teacher. I now feel equipped to develop my painting skills further.

Happy drawing!