And now for something completely different!

New semester!

Glenn has been busy preparing two new courses for us online (the man is supposed to be retired????). Those new courses are: Sketching (in the street if possible – taking notes of moving people and things for future paintings, or making small casual works) and Anatomy – but anatomy taught differently from the usual way: most, if not all anatomy teachers teach you what the body is made of, and as a result if someone was to give you a human body in kit form (yuk!) with no manual, you’d have no problem constructing the body, knowing where to plug which muscle, how etc. Glenn is teaching anatomy used as a tool in a drawing – a drawing that is not an écorché diagram. Personally I think he should call this class Applied Anatomy.

Which one am I taking? Both, of course lol! Which one am I going to tell you about in this blog? (as I’ve received quite a few PMs here and on FB asking for a continuation). Well I’m going to talk about Sketching. Why? Well, picture this (if I may quote Sofia from the Golden girls): you are in the street, you notice a fleeting expression on a kid’s face when he sees the ice creams sold in a shop – but you can’t draw it, it’s already too late: the kid has rushed into the ice cream shop! So how do you draw that expression? …. out of memory? Impression? THAT is sketching, that’s the essence of gesture and drawing and I know i’m going to learn a ton through it! Plus Glenn Vilppu is The Master Sketcher: he draws all the time, and I mean ALL the time: during lunch break, classes, chatting with family – I’m ready to bet he draws while taking a bath! lol.

But don’t worry, I’ll also report about anatomy if there is something interesting happening to me, learning-wise 😀

This first sketching week, Glenn has us working in “point to point”, meaning “where is what” in relation to the rest: start drawing the ear of a person sitting in front of you in the bus and, by looking where  his seat is compared to his ear (two ears length below?) you can draw the whole scene just with a self-referenced first line.

Of course…. plan ahead or you’ll end up with an ear on a page and no more space to draw the rest of the bus as planned. 😀

This first week took place as I was away in the south of France, in the middle of nowhere (and I mean it). This was a problem, as in our street, when someone walks by, it’s an event! People come out of their house to say hello and….. chat (this is France!). So I could not stand in the street with a notebook and draw passers-by, first because there were no passers-by and second because after five minutes I would have had at least two elderly neighbours looking over my shoulder and yammering “blablablabla” but not letting me draw them.

I decided to draw some knick-knack that’s on the mantelpiece in the house of my in-laws, and I have to say “point to point” works wonderfully for little cups etc, each of the drawing of the thingies took me one minute or less.

The little landscape I did from the garden, in digital – the wacom companion is ok to draw in the sun, but for colours you can’t trust what your eyes see on the screen. Drawing on the companion is a piece of cake on the other hand.

But I had to draw some people…. I faked it (and told Glenn of course, he would have known anyway). I looked at some pictures on the net (apologies to the photographers, I did not jot down their names and I modified their work a LOT). What I did was this: look at the picture for a minute and a half (watch in hand) then close the page (and lose the name of the photographer…. silly me) and then draw what I remembered, imagining the rest – thus simulating what happens in the street when people pass you by quickly.

Here is the thing:

Glenn’s first reaction was that the green hedge in my little scenery was far too green – beware of green, it’s a tricky colour, particularly in digital, but also in traditional paint.

His second comment was about the cop and fat guy on his left. Glenn had a problem with the way I had “noodled” on the cop and fat guy, in the shadows. The problem was that I remembered mainly the shadows, and so drew them and filled them with pen before going to colour. The result – coloured shadow plus zigzag in black pen, is too much.

He liked the rest, especially the housewives (he spotted at once the fake digital watercolour on them cause the colours were “computer colours” – what an eye he has, lol!)

Just for the record, in Applied Anatomy week one (the head and neck) I seem to be, just as several of my classmates, in a “D’OH” mode, better explained by the sentence: “what the hell does he want?” I felt that the first time I did Composition One and Two, while when I redid the two classes I did a big leap forward, so I’m not worried, plus the two hour chat (weekly) allowed us “Homers”, to ask Glenn to show us what he wanted and what he doesn’t want. He did several demos, patiently answered our questions…. I’m not sure I could put it into words, but I think I understand better. Understanding the application of anatomy on a drawing that is NOT an anatomical diagram is going to be the topic of the whole class for me, and already know I’ll retake it, and I’ll, probably, make a big jump forward again 😀

I am lucky to have a patient teacher who takes the time to tell us to hang in there, that those difficult moments are good things and mean the brain is absorbing new stuff.

Next week more sketching – back in Paris!