This is a continuation of a series of posts. The last two posts were about Shadows and Highlights and Drawing Negative Space.

In the previous two classes we worked on our self-portrait. Last night we had a little celebration and got the chance to spend a little about two hours on something we wanted to draw.  I spend 30 minutes putting some final touches on my self-portrait and then began drawing my youngest daughter’s portrait as a draft image. I wanted to experiment a little drawing her portrait before I jump in with better paper and maybe a change in tactics.  First about the self-portrait:

I’ll let you be the judge of the quality of my portrait. I did learn several important things to take care of in drawing this portrait.

I need to lighten the highlights a lot and darken the shadows. Basically add dynamic range.

I need to put an early image taped to the wall and step back to get perspective.  For example my beard is just not that full. Used to be when I was younger but I keep it short now.

Must keep my hands clean. I would erase an area to give it highlights, only to gray it up again as I moved my hands across the image.

Now for the draft portrait of my daughter. You notice cross hair erasure marks. This was intentional. I wanted to get this one very accurate in terms of proportion and perspective. But being a draft I’m not going to do any more with this image.

I’m going to draw this again 4 times at least.

1) With the typical prepared ground (dark) background like this one but on better and whitter paper.

2) Without any grounding. I will add the shadows and background effect after I get the general features placed on the page.

3 and 4) Using painter X on a Mac laptop with a grounded background and starting plain as well.

I’ll post them on this blog when done.

Summary

This class has been one of the best experiences I have had in exploring my own creative abilities. My drawings before this class were typical stick figured and embarrassing. As I stated in an earlier post, I had always felt that I had artist within me and yet, was yearning to express himself.  I’ve been able to create many things in my life like profitable companies, web sites, high performing teams and and more. But none of these activities felt artistic to me. Now I both know a little about the artist within, I also have a greater appreciation for my other talents that I have been able to exercise through the years.

I will be continuing to practice drawing and may, someday, move to paiting with color or at least electronic painting with Corel Painter and more.

Thanks for all the kind comments (mostly provided privately) that have offered words of encourangment and hope as I made my way through this fantastic journey.  Over the holiday break, I will probably add an epilogue post to this series with final throught. But for now a big thanks to Betty Edwards for her great book - Drwaing on the Right Side of the Brain, and to Nancy our wonderful instructor.

This post is an update to a series of articles on using Betty Edward’s Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain techniques (search for the Book with the same name in Amazon). The previous article was update 10.

Back in October we learned to see the negative space (the space that surrounds an object) as a way to use the right brain.  During those exercises we drew a hard plastic and metal chair over two classes.  My drawing is below. As this one developed I began to see my style and how different my style is from the other class members. I have an engineering background so I wanted to capture the hard lines. One of the class drawings had this chair become much softer. The great part was, all of the negative space chairs turned out wonderful in their own way.

This is when we all knew that we were learning these techniques and had some inherent talent hidden in us for all these years.

Next week I’ll post my self portrait, the final image from the class. Still needs a little work and I’m half pleased with it. My classmates think it is wonderful. I have my doubts. But maybe with a little more work on it I’ll learn to love it.

Update 12 shows my final Self-Portrait and a draft drawing of one of my daughters.

This is a continuation of a series of posts about learning to draw using the Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain concept. The last update was about drawing my first live model profile.

In the last two classes that concluded yesterday, we discussed how the Brain can interpret a small amount of detail and fill in the pieces, giving the viewer the ability to see the image intended by the artist.  Think R-Mode or right brain recognition of the image despite a lack of clear detail.  I’m not sure I said that in a clear way but an example will help.

Gustave Courbet a french realist painter in the 19th century, was known for one of his self-portraits that has informally been called the fisherman.  Note below the use of shadows and highlights and the seemingly small amount of information contained in the drawing. Yet, his self portrait is striking and memorable enough that many people recognize this painting, once they have been exposure to its beauty.

As an exercise in learning to draw with shadows and highlights we created a grounding (a dark shaded rectangle) using graphite and then began to erase and darken as needed. I “copied” Gustave’s famous painting upside down for 20 minutes or so and then flipped it over and added a little more detail. I worked about 10 more minutes and got to the drawing shown below.  When I set out on the exercise, I set a goal to draw as little as I can to see how quickly I could come up with a drawing that resembles the Fisherman. Or at least a drawing that can be recognized as a man in a hat with smoking a pipe.

I’m not sure my drawing look’s anything like Gustave’s but I do think it is a decent drawing given I had 30 minutes total in it, and it is my first highlight and shadow drawing.

At the conclusion of the class we started working on our self portrait. I have included an image of that drawing here for contrast.  This draft was done with about 30 minutes of drawing and a lot of set up time and juggling with the mirror and lighting.  In the next class we will spend 2 to 3 more hours on our self portrait.  So I do expect this to get a lot better. Lets hope so anyway!

I’m really enjoying the class and wish it would never end.  two more classes and then I’m done.  Hope to take the advanced colors class if it is taught in the summer.

The next article in this series is about drawing negative space.

This is a continuation of a series of posts about learning to draw using Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain concept. The last update was the draft version of this profile.

This is the final version of my first live profile. Of all the work I have done in the class so far, this is the drawing I’m most proud of. Within 20 minutes I had a likeness of Bill down on paper and after probably 1 and a half to 2 hours total, I arrived at this drawing.

When I first started drawing Bill my left brain wanted to stop me and kept saying this is too complicated and you don’t know where to begin. But then I was able to quiet the brain down, go to the basic unit of measure concept and mark the position of the back of the eye, the chin and the back of the ear. After that the right brain took over and and Bill started to appear. I’m now a very big supporter of the Drawing On the Right Side of the Brain concept.

All my drawing posts can be viewed here.

On to the Self-Portrait. Yahoo!!!!

The day after I posted this article Lives In the Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear! I got an nice email from a friend that supports the point I was making in the article. When you touch people lives that you come in contact with, in positive ways, it will make a difference. 99+% of the time you’ll never know what has touched the people you come in contact with and how. This is where faith comes in. You just need to believe that you are making a positive impact on others.

But once in a while you may just be lucky enough to hear from the people you have touched as I have. Thank you Martha for this great note and permission to use it in this article:

Hi Eric,
I just wanted to write and thank you. I don’t know if you’ve heard my news that after maternity leave I decided not to come back to UMW as director. Instead, I’ve come back part-time to work on special projects for DTLT.

Coming to this decision has taken a long time, and one of the things that influenced me a lot was our conversations at EDUCAUSE last year. Hearing you talk about the life changes you made, I came away from that conference thinking, “I’m not living the life I’m supposed to be living.” I remember repeating that over and over to myself on the plane ride home. It took a year for me to finally get my act together and make some serious changes, but I can’t tell you what they have meant to me and my family. I’m happier now than I have ever been in my life, and I’m grateful for people like you who have modeled for me the idea that in life we have *choices* about how we live. I think it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that life is just happening to us instead of us making life happen for ourselves.

So, I hope that goes a little way towards elevating you today — you deserve it. In my new found happiness, I’m trying to find more opportunities to tell people what they mean to me and to “pay it forward.” So your recent tweets have resonated with me. For too long, I’ve not believed that I can affect people, and I’m learning that by reaching out I can make a difference. Maybe this will make a small difference in your life today.

Take care of yourself!
Martha

So now go and elevate others. Smile and touch people in positive ways. Be kind and assume positive intent.