art class

We've started using watercolors in our drawing class. Yay for more supplies we have to buy! (Sarcasm.) Luckily we already had watercolors and brushes, so we just bummed some paper off of Nikki and we were good to go. Our assignment for this last week was to pick a photocopied line-drawing of a famous painting and make it our own. I picked the one seen below and painted it in purple. I felt pretty good with how it turned out, though I felt like the head I'd painted was much too small. But oh well. The thing about watercolors is that once a mark is on the paper it's on there: you can try to cover it up but you'll always be able to see it right below the surface.

My teacher said he actually preferred mine to the original because he felt like the head was in better proportion in my version. I don't know about that, but I'm glad he liked it.

art class

Drawing class has been surprisingly stressful.

But apparently my drawing is "poetic," "has a definite style" and is "reminiscent of Amedeo Modigliani."

I guess my teachers probably know what they're talking about, but even so I find myself actively fighting off tears of frustration every week as I struggle over my figure drawings. If the class hadn't been so expensive we probably would have stopped going after the first week or two. But it's probably good not to give up, right?

Here are some pictures of my recent attempts (keep in mind we aren't allowed to erase any marks once they've been put on paper):

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):