I made two demonstration drawings this week for Portrait Drawing and Drawing 1 classes. Zelda Fitzgerald, F. Scott’s wife, has given me trouble over the years whenever I’ve tried to get her likeness. There’s something mischievous in her expression that promises troubles ahead. Some of my attempts made her doe-eyed and innocent. Others underlined a certain strain of trashiness, an overstatement.
I don’t think that I’ve captured her yet. Her cheek on the left looks too full. The jaw juts a bit too far out over the neck…She may prove persistently elusive.
I also completed a soft vine charcoal rub-out of a cow’s femur. I’ve been trying a variation on my usual technique. I’m chasing tonal shapes, how one patch leads to another, rather than gradually developing broad areas of tones.
The resulting drawing seems scratchier and busier than its calmer, more generalized predecessors. But I’m enjoying the process more. It feels more like a search than an exercise in polishing toward perfection.
I began a self-portrait demo today in my six-hour Saturday class. I taught Drawing 2 a portraiture lesson and wanted to show students how to begin a compressed charcoal self-portrait.
We’re still wearing masks in class and using photos and selfies. In normal times, we would draw each other and look in mirrors.
Steps: I lightly fogged my paper with compressed charcoal; and drew lines with soft vine charcoal to block in basic shapes; and erased highlights; and began to establish shadow shapes. You can see that I didn’t develop the shirt, hair, and forehead very far.
I’m having to fight the urge to slim down my jowls. I tell students to watch out for wishful thinking when they draw themselves. We want to present better-looking versions of ourselves to the world and unknowingly make subtle adjustments. We trim noses, plump lips, enlarge eyes and end up looking like aging movie stars who’ve had too many procedures done.
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