At long last, we have arrived at the (unofficial) conclusion of this life drawing series. Undoubtedly, there will be more portraits in the future, but now it is time to look back on not only this portrait’s process, but my overall experience with the art of life drawing.
To begin with, life drawing became to me an excellent way to appreciate the individual beauty of people. The sketching process became a way to slow down and study the person’s face and their unique proportions. There is something truly fascinating in realizing how individually each of us are created.
Secondly, because this class was the first time I had ever seriously used charcoal, it was fascinating to learn how the medium behaved. For example, in this week’s portrait, I drew a girl named Anandiya, one of my classmate’s friends. When creating the background, I used vine charcoal to produce a smooth medium tone, since vine charcoal creates only gray tones instead of black. In contrast, for her hair, I used the flat side of a soft charcoal pencil and compressed charcoal to obtain a rich dark color.
In addition, this week’s session went beyond just capturing the model’s proportions. I intended to capture the essence of her personality as well. I didn’t know Anandiya before the session, but from what interaction I had with her she had a very calm and sweet personality. Oftentimes, while she was posing, a slight smile crept across her face, so I wanted to capture that fleeting moment. In addition, I noticed how the ends of her hair sort of flicked upwards and captured light they otherwise wouldn’t have. I decided to emphasize this by making the layers she had in her hair more visible. She also was wearing a gold cross necklace, and her gaze seemed to look downward at it in contemplation. When she was viewing our portraits, she appreciated that almost all of us had included that symbol. These choices, in addition to the measuring and proportional work I did, helped not just communicate what she looks like, but hopefully who she is on the inside.
A few additional notes I will make include my lighting and shading methods. I sometimes still struggle with making my shading smooth, but this week I attempted to use the scratchy textures to my advantage for an illustrative look, particularly for the model’s fuzzy sweater. As for the lighting, when we did the setup, we ended up placing the light a bit too far behind the model’s head. As a result, the brightest highlights were on top of her head, and the lighting on her face was not particularly strong. However, there was enough to witness the “falloff” in the intensity of the light as it traveled downwards.
Finally, an unexpected lesson I have gained from these weeks would be that perseverance is easier within community. Because most of us couldn’t find a model for the week, we ended up going to the lab on a Sunday evening. It was late, we were tired, and none of us really wanted to be there. However, once we started drawing, we were able to encourage each other and see each other’s work progress, and that provided the energy to keep going. Indeed, throughout each week, whenever I was frustrated with a drawing, I was able to receive both excellent critique and uplifting words, and was able to give those things to others as well.
Learning any new skill is difficult, and art is especially vulnerable, but when you surround yourself with fellow artists who want to see each other succeed, it will always be worth it.
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