We’re still anticipating spring and hard-pressed to find sketching venues that we haven’t visited a dozen times this winter. Celine suggested that we all go to her place for a sketching session and we jumped at the chance, because Celine has a great studio environment and lots of props just waiting to be sketched.
Five of us had a ball sketching, laughing and chatting that day. My first sketch was a small plaster head of what can only be an Irishman. I did it in my conventional manner, using a fountain pen.
For my second sketch I chose a large plaster ear that Celine had hanging on her wall. Only an artists have a plaster ears on their walls and I wanted to take advantage of Celine’s ear. As I started drawing the first couple lines, however, I realized that so much of an ear is defined by soft edges that I decided to take a different approach. I got out a waterbrush that’s filled with very dilute ink and started drawing all the shadow shapes. I used multiple layers to achieve a couple different values. In this way, I blocked in the overall shape of the ear and then I could add some ink lines to emphasize contour and some shapes. I was pretty pleased with this approach and I might find myself doing it more often. Doing this sort of thing is great practice in seeing form. Thanks, Celine, for a great day.