Entry for May 12, 2013

On the prior Sunday, Stefan was at the morning session at the Daniels Spectrum building in Regent Park.  From the top, these are a 5-minute study, a 10-minute one, two 15's and a 20-minute study.  All are done with hard compressed Nobel charcoal on 18 x 24 " sheets of bond and Canson Recycled Sketch paper.

Interested in drawing people? There are three summer opportunities coming up to take short intro life-drawing courses that I'll be teaching.
At the TSA there will be an 8-week Tuesday night class and an 8-week Thursday morning course. Both run July through August. Registration is open, and you can see more details and register online here.
For a shorter more immersive experience, from July 8-12 I'll be teaching a half-day weeklong intensive course at the Avenue Road School of Art. It will run 3 hours each day, form 1:15 - 4:15 Monday-Friday. You can get more details on that course here.)

2nd entry for May 17, 2013

These are a 10-minute study, three 15-minute ones and a 20-minute study at bottom, All are done with hard compressed Nobel charcoal on 18 x 24" sheets of Canson Recycled Sketch paper.

1st entry for May 17, 2013

I was at the TSA's new Dufferin St locale on the Friday for their 6 - 9 p.m session. Natalie was working, lit mainly by the fading daylight through the west-facing window opposite her (behind the drawers).
The diffuse frontal light was  nice to work with, if a little low-level.
These are two 5-minute studies above and three 10-minute ones below, all done with hard compressed Nobel charcoal on 18 x 24" sheets of bond paper.

3rd entry for May 13, 3013

These are a 25-minute study and two 30-40 minute ones below. The in the gallery they use a strong cold LED spotlight which generates fairly harsh shadows.
It is a dramatic effect, and in the last one in particular, Zia was exploiting that in her pose choice.
The top study is 8B woodless graphite pencil on 18 x 24" Canson XL Drawing paper. The lower two are on 18 x 24" sheets of 120lb Maidstone rag paper that was prepared with a loosely blended layer of chalk pastel. The drawing on top is done with a black Prismacolour pencil, whose blackness worked well atop the chalk backgrounds. It was finer-grained than compressed charcoal and darker than graphite , which I have previously tried on this sort of prepared surface. There is also some erasing in the middle back view of Zia, which is always an option with a tonal underlayer.
The looser handling of the smudging makes a nice counterpoint to a more controlled rendering.

2nd entry for May 13, 2013

These are three 5-minute studies above and a 15-minute one below. All are done with an 8B woodless graphite pencil on 18 x 24" sheets of bond paper. The study of Zia's head is about 5" square on the page.

1st entry for May 13, 2013

The Art Gallery of Ontario has weekly drop-in sessions, some of which take place in the galleries. My sweetheart Zia was working for one on the Tuesday afternoon, so I went over to draw her. They have a pencil-only rule for gallery drawing, so these gesture studies are all done with 8B woodless graphite, on 18 x 24" sheets of bond paper.

2nd entry for May 10, 2013

These are 10-minute studies and 15-minute studies, also done with hard compressed charcoal on 18 x 24" sheets of Canson Recycled Sketch paper.