I’m sorry I’m still being bad about posting regularly.  Life has continued to be difficult, but I won’t go on about that.  We did get to the drawing classes referred to in my last post, though, and we’ve booked for a printmaking class with the second tutor in August.

The March class was Creative Drawing, with Lyn Ebbett.  The description said “for those who think they can’t draw or want to develop their drawing skills”  – I’m in the first category, and DH is in the second. As expected, I was well outside my comfort zone, but that’s why I went to the class.

We started with warm-up exercises.  Lyn had brought a variety of props for us, but she started by giving us each a small object to draw. Mine was a metal button with a complex embossed design, and my drawing was awful, so I’m not posting a picture of that.

Next, she gave us each a physalis fruit like these:

We had to draw our physalis with our non-dominant hands (sorry this one is so faint), with a continuous line (that is, not lifting our pencils off the paper, with our eyes shut (really!!!) and using only straight lines. It was a timed exercise, with only 5 minutes (I think) for each drawing. Click on the following images for bigger versions, as usual:

The next exercise was to tape a marker pen to a 3ft bamboo garden cane, put the drawing paper on the floor, and (standing up) draw the same physalis again. This is my first, and favourite, attempt:

After that, we got to choose our own subject from what she had brought. For some unfathomable reason, I chose a yellow pepper. First we had to draw it with a brush and Indian ink, and then with charcoal. My charcoal one was much better, as you can see:

The final exercise was a still life group. We were able to choose from all the objects Lyn had brought, but some of my favourites had already been taken by the time I got to the table. The photo was taken from a slightly different angle to the view from where I was sitting. Lyn suggested I add the cloth at the left after I’d already started drawing the rest, but I ran out of time … and anyway, I think it was technically beyond me to make it look like a folded cloth. I didn’t finish the pattern on the jar either.

Now, for a treat, here is DH’s final drawing. He chose to use soft pastels instead of pencil. Again, the photo is from a slightly different angle:

So, those were the results of 6 hours or so of hard work and fun. I haven’t scanned the drawings from April’s class, so I’ll post those soon.