Drawing with Dad - Session II

This is the second session, see the first session.

Today is my birthday! What better way to spend the day - Dad took me out for sushi, and then we came back to the house to work on our drawings. We worked on developing the block-in for quite a while, then moved into the shading, which is more exciting. But it does reveal mistakes.

As I tell Dad, we have to be disciplined and go back and check the proportions over and over. It's easy to correct them now, but much harder the further we develop the drawing. For example, I found that I'd incorrectly placed the the ankle of the forward leg, and therefore the dramatic twist of the statue's torso was being "unwound". I moved the whole leg to the right by almost half an inch, and the twisting gesture of the pose came back to life.

I'm learning to always be ready to do major surgery to make a drawing as strong as possible. Why be happy with a "sort of right" drawing? Drawing is an investigation, we may as well do what it takes to record the form accurately.

Dad and I are very similar - we focus very intensely and we forget to take breaks. After hours of drawing we look up with a start and realize how late the day has become. We've decided next time we'll set a timer to remind ourselves to take breaks - this particular model does not need any rest, but we do.