This and That—Day Eight

For tonight, I had hoped that we could move on to our next lesson but as I started, I realized that our time would be better served finishing up our unfinished projects—our Teddy Bears and our Lizards.

Through this class we were able to further discuss methods of using charcoal for shading, shadows, highlights and texture (Teddy Bear project). I also had the opportunity to help students work on shading and contour lines for their lizard drawings some using pencil, some ink.

Check out this gorgeous finished bear!

DRAWING FACES

I had an interesting discussion with one student about how to draw men compared to women. How do we make a face look masculine? There are some general things that can make a face look more masculine, but they are stereotypes and are not absolute. These are things like heavier eyebrows, higher hairlines, larger features, thicker neck, square jaw etc.

Because these are features that can vary tremendously between different men and women, my best advice is to practice looking at and trying to draw from photos of men and women. From that, we can build up a library in our mind of chins, eyebrows, noses, lips etc.—which in turn will help us to draw a wonderful variety of people and faces from our imagination.

What do you think?