drawing class

As many of you know, Braeden and I are a huge fans of the local community college continuing ed classes. We recently signed up for a beginning drawing class with our friend Nikki. Our first class was yesterday and it was great! We did some gesturals (which apparently is not a real word and is also known as gesture drawings) and some figure sketching and learned that despite our teacher's best efforts we would not have a nude model in class. What? Nude model? That did not even cross my mind as an option so I'm glad that we are just going to have a shirtless man with apparently amazing musculature—our teacher would not stop talking about how amazing it was—as opposed to a completely nude man with amazing musculature. I think I speak for both me and my 16 year-old neighbor who is in the class when I say that nobody wants to see that: nobody.

Anyway, here are some of the drawing that Braed and I did in our very first class (please keep your negative judgements to yourself, but feel free to share your praise liberally):

This was my first drawing. I liked how his back and top of the arms turned out. This was a 10 minute drawing.

These were a series of "gesturals" which means that the model posed in each of these positions for 30 seconds for us to sketch him. As you can see, sometimes I didn't finish before he moved on to the next pose.

Last 2 gesturals. My favorite of all of them is the one on the right here. Can you tell he's boxing?

This was the last drawing we did in class. We had 25 minutes to do this one. After about 20 minutes I ran out of things to do so I kind of just went over the lines that were already there again and again. Good times.

This is a close up of his face: I was pretty pleased with how it came out. Braeden said it looked the most like him of the ones he could see, so that's cool.

These were some of the gesturals I did for homework. Braeden posed and I sketched him. My favorite is the one in the bottom left because he's looking all coy. Haha. I love him.

This is Braeden's first drawing. Check out that back! Amazing.

Here are his gesturals. Braeden's favorite is the one in the bottom right: the guy was pretending to shoot a bow and arrow.

More of Braeden's gesturals.

Braeden's final drawing. I think he did an amazing job on the torso but we both agree that the head is a bit out of proportion: it happens.

Braeden's gesturals of me. My favorite is the bottom one because I am posing triumphantly with my hands on my hips as if to say, "I am going to bed!" Which, afterward, we did.

I didn't post any of Nikki's sketches because she doesn't live with us so I don't have access to her sketch pad and also she is freaking amazing at drawing and puts us both to shame. Fact.

Regardless, keep posted for more sketches next week!