The class focuses mainly on duplication, which is not exactly what I hoped for because I feel that my weakness is that I tend to be too accurate. I can get all the angles, sizes and shades right, but I wish I could do that with freer strokes and not lose expression due to all the precision. I think I'd rather have an emotionally strong piece than a technically strong one, wouldn't you? That's what I'd like to work on as an artist.
Precision has its place, of course, and I am enjoying the fact that I'm getting faster at being precise. The still life of the bouquet on the chair seemed to materialize under my pencils, which was quite exciting, and let me tell you, it's extremely accurate. (Boringly so?) ...I enjoyed more the white-on-black drawing of the skeleton where I could play with the texture of the skull, and the free-flowing exercises -- drawing tools with squiggles and one-minute model sketches.
I wish I had completed a singular piece to share with you that I really loved, but that doesn't seem to be the nature of this class. The exercises are useful, but as you can see they're not resulting in incredible art. I can't even share all the work with you because some of it we had to copy parts from famous works, magazines and movie stills, so the art is not exactly original. It's kind of strange to do a class again after all this time. In recent years I've been mostly painting and creating purely from my own imagination and ideas.
Do you artists out there have any drawing exercises that you particularly enjoy? Or was there something you learned that helped you branch away from your usual style? I'd be interested to know!
