Can I get a hand?

While they have their flaws, these are the first hands I've ever drawn that I don't mind people seeing. Hands are HARD!

Vine charcoal = Hell

For those of you who don't know, vine charcoal is just what it sounds like, a burnt stick. Actually, it's pieces of willow stem, around 6" long, that have had their bark pealed and burned in the absence of air. It's soft and crumbly and smeary and just plain hard to deal with. It's also one of the first things that humans ever put their mark on a cave wall with. And now I have to draw with it, for a grade, many grades. I've used charcoal to draw with before, nice clean ground up and formed into a pencil with wood around it and everything. What can I say, I'm evolved, I like my art supplies to be also.

Maybe this wouldn't be such a big deal if I'd ever used this stick of Satan before, but I haven't. I've used graphite, pastel, conte', but no burnt stick. Did I mention it damn well might fall of the paper if you breath on it too hard? That at least makes it easier to erase all the mistakes I'm making since I've never drawn at an easel before now. But that's another whiny rant.

So I offer up this page of ellipses, one of 2 that I did last night, but only 2/3 of what I wanted to get done. And for a really good laugh, it only took me 3 hours to do 2 pages.

Tonight, it's 1 more page of these, then dun dun dun, CUBES!

My first class photo

The mandate was simple,"take a picture of the front door to your home" easy peasy, right? Well, yes and no. Anybody can snap a shot of their door, but how to make it look different, to show a little about you. So this is the shot I decided to go with, I had another that I preferred the quality of light in, but the composition of this one won out in the end. I hope anybody that sees it will understand why.

School's going great, 2 quizzes, 2 perfect scores. Still have some drawings to do, but I've got almost a week to get them done.

One more week

Ok, here we go, T minus one week. Am I ready?

Pencils? Check!

Paper? Check!

$300.00 worth of casts to draw? Oh yeah!

Actually, I'm pretty twitchy with anticipa...........................................tion! Can't wait to finally get to it. I also thought I'd post a pic of my latest creation. Didn't really mean for it to go this far, as I was using cheap paper that wouldn't take the graphite very well. It does however show the things I need to work on, hands and faces! So here it is, 9x12 canson drawing pad, misc 4h to 4b pencils. Taken with my new, oh, did I forget to mention my new camera? Anyway, taken with my new Sony Alpha a200 DSLR w/flash.

Pic ref was something I found on the net with no credit given.

Here we go!

Ok, kids, here we go. Follow along as I slowly devolve from a mild-mannered, middle-aged parts manager, into an art school freshman. Will 50 hour work weeks and 20-30 hours of class and homework turn me into a pimply faced kid, or cause me to Van Gogh my ear?
Pull up a chair, school starts Sept 4!