"Ceci n'est pas une pipe"

Had the luxury again of attending Paul Geiger's figure drawing session on Wednesday evening. I had a really good drawing session.  Figure drawing will always be my foundation for my drawing technique, and my strong appreciation for the craft. Of course it helps that Paul played excellent music, and provides an awesome environment to draw and that he finds such amazing models!

As always, I'm just drawing shapes: positive and negative. The real person is on the pedestal, I'm just creating an illusion, a representation. Ever heard the phrase by the Belgium artist Magritte "Ceci n'est pas une pipe (This is not a pipe)"? For me to tell you this is a reclining women is a lie.  It's just graphite marks on paper, or better yet, if you're viewing this on your computer, it's just zeros and ones illuminated on your monitor.

Drawing a Portrait With Eye Glasses

Here are two portrait studies from a recent Al Hyter Portrait drawing session. They had an excellent model, she did an excellent job holding her pose and she wore her eye glasses. I love it when portrait models wear a hat, ball caps, jewelry, a pencil on the ear, or eye glasses.  It adds so much more depth to the piece and it often makes it a bigger drawing challenge, that's what i enjoy the most. The best part for me is not the finished piece, it's the drawing process. I finish a drawing in about 20 minutes, then I'm looking forward to starting a new one from a different angle.

Saturday morning portrait artist: The Al Hyter Group

Last Saturday morning, we had a new model at the Al Hyter portrait group.  Her name is Meti and she's from Ethiopia, Africa. Nice person, I enjoyed drawing her portrait.  Meti has beautiful bold eyes, nose, lips, great for portrait drawing.  We especially liked the way Meti draped a yellow shawl over her head, it adds more depth, visual texture.

I created this slide show so you can see the artists that attend the portrait sessions. They are a great bunch! Notice the intense concentration.  I think this is one of the reasons why we attend, it helps us produce good work.