What is Drawing? & Drawing From Reference

'If you have mastered the craft of drawing, you are headed in the direction of making good pictures' Albert Dorne

Today we bought in four images and are required to produce at least three observational drawings of each of them for next week. Observational drawing is definitely something I need more practice at, not just to become better at drawing but also to expand my knowledge of the world around me, building up a bank of information from which I can work from intuitively. I need to look at more books and visit the actual sources of the subject matter in order to gain a true understanding of how things work. 

Portrait of a 1920's pilot

Contours of the face - light and shadow - using charcoal as my medium has helped me to revise and correct line work that I found needed to be changed the longer I studied the pilot's face. Observing how light falls on the face has shown me the way that the muscles in the cheeks for example 'link up' and form the placement for the eyes and corners of the mouth - even the slightest change in position affects the overall expression and mood

Mummified human head cross-section

Outlining basic shapes and contours within the skull - light/dark, areas of shade

Old defunct submarine

I tried to focus on the areas of light and shadow cast on the submarine, using ink and charcoal to create bigger more confident lines of dark. I found that having less control over something like ink resulted in me having to be more experimental in the types of marks I made and how I put it down onto the paper. For example I was able to smudge it across the bottom of the submarine where a shadow has been cast.

Full figure image of a salt farm worker

Stan's Cycles Shrewsbury