No Days Off

My college classes are spread out over three days of the week, but the work never ends. I went up to the Studio for a few hours in the afternoon yesterday (my internet was down last night so I couldn't post this then) to take advantage of my big work table for some school related projects. One thing was to grade the charcoal drawings that my students turned in last week. It's not that I couldn't grade them at home, but charcoal is messy, so I figure it's best to keep that out of my apartment. However the big project was to do some ink wash drawing for a demonstration. All my students have drawn with pencils before starting my class. Some have worked with charcoal, but even for those who haven't, the procedure is pretty obvious. Most have never worked with ink and brush before, so that's why I make extra preparations.

I teach them to work gradually from light to dark, to build the values with layers of gradually darkening washes. I can show them completed wash drawings (slides and drawings on paper) but that doesn't show the progress. I could demonstrate it in class from start to finish, but that would take up most of the class period. So instead I did the step by step ahead of time. I chose a recent charcoal portrait, picked up last week from the recent show in Belmar, to use as my subject. I used Molly's homemade light table to trace the basic composition with pencil three times in an 18" x 24" pad, the same brand sold at the college's store. I refined the pencil shapes back on my Studio table, and then made three wash drawings in various states of completion. The first was just a layer of very light wash and a few bits of second layer. The second drawing had everything the first did, but then I took the whole thing a step darker, so students will see the white of the paper, a light wash, and some darker areas. The third drawing has all from the first two, but I took it still darker, so that a more full range of value is shown. I photographed the last one at all three states for the eventually online posting, but I'll use the three pages of drawings in class as part of the demonstration.