Wednesday, August 16, 2006

FIGURE DRAWING WEEK 9



Well the summer figure drawing is coming to an end, next week is the last open figure lab at DCAD until the middle of next month. Boy I am going to miss it, and Echo and I are already talking about finding alternative sources until the lab starts again after the new semester starts.

Here are tonight's offerings, I felt a lot looser this week and the time seemed to fly, everyone seemed relaxed and was having a good time. Pahl, Catherine, Steve and Jessica all of whom where with us last Saturday for the plien air session were there to draw our ever faithful model Shanna. We've had a good group this summer and the whole show is run in such a great manner by Jane. Jessica is off to RISD in a few weeks and I'll miss her, she was a great student and a good friend, it was a lot of fun to hang and draw with here ouside of class, I am pleased to see her growing as an artist and feel good my teaching has helped.

Echo did a few really super pieces as well this week and you can see them on her BLOG. I can really see her getting better and a lot more confident week by week. I feel here work is less mannerd than mine, less hamperd. Sometimes I am too afarid to make mistakes..which I still do anyway.





a larger version here.

a larger version here.

6 comments:

John Beatty said...

Wow, Mike...these are the best yet...really flowing a lot...nice to see the progress!

I have a local art league that has an open figure drawing class on Tuesday nite I've been meaning to check out...

I think you've inspired me to get back to going to it!

I used to go there back in the 80's!!!

All of these look fantastic!

-JB

Mike Manley said...

Thanks John, I say grab paper, pencil and go at it, nothing better for you as an a artist.

Kelly said...

Great stuff Mike! And yeah, I can see that things were moving nicely for you--no strugging showing in those lines. And the sense of light with the dark backgrounds--sniff--just warms my heart.

John Beatty said...

Mike...is that charcol or soft lead on paper you're using? Or conte on newsprint? Just curious?

-JB

Mike Manley said...

Thanks Kelly. I did feel the flow this week, maybe its just building up from doing it more and more...still not nearly where I want to be, but I feel better about what I'm doing.

Mike Manley said...

John, this is either a nice soft pencil (Generals layout) or a 6B (second from the last drawing, and the gestures), or it was compressed charcoal and conte (the rest of the drawings)on one of those Biggie Sketchpads, the 18 x 24. I had been using newsprint but upgraded as if I do something I like I'd like it to last.

My suggestion is to buy a range of pencils and charcoal and see what works for you. I like being able to use my finger to smear and blend so the medium compressed charcoal is good for that.