Entry for Dec 28, 2013

(A new year is a really good time to start learning some life drawing skills, or building on what you already have. Saturday afternoons starting Jan. 18,  I teach a 12-week class at the TSA on Figure Draing Basics. You can enroll via this link,and save yourself $25 if you put in the promotional code `winter25'.
And, if you're a prior TSA student, you can get a further discount if you contact the TSA office
directly to register.)

The Christmas bustle was winding down and on the Saturday morning I went over to the Sackville drawing session. Polina was back working, and I was trying a variety of media combinations.  I was interested in the mixing of oil-base pencil shading and black pen line, I wasn't happy with a number of the studies from that day; they looked too awkward.
The top two studies and the bottom one are all on 18 x 24" sheets of Canson Recycled Sketch paper. The top 10-minute  one is just Pitt pen. the next one down is a grey Pentel brushpen line drawing with oil-base pencil shading. The next one is a 15-minute study on 18 x 24" Canson XL Drawing paper with Pitt pen lines and oil-based pencil shading.
The black of a pigment pen is so intense that any pencil - even a more black one - looks washed-out beside it. I was thinking that the gray line might allow for the crispness of pen line but not overpower the pencil. But that is a more time-consuming process as many of the lines would ultimately need strengthening. Pencil shading has its charms, and is finer in texture than Conte or charcoal, but takes a while to lay down, so neither of these pen/pencil combos seem ideal for short time situations.
The second-last study was a little over 20 minutes, done with water-soluble graphite on an 18 x 24" sheet of 90 lb Somerset Book rag paper.  It turned out a bit more `graphic' than I was intending, but it is nice and bold.  The bottom study is just under 10 minutes, back to Pitt calligraphy point pen.