Drawing Class #6

 

Well, it came- the last class of the current run of drawing classes I have at the JSAC.  I had sent a reminder to my long missing student on Thursday night, and got a reply from her on Friday night.  She was planning to be there.  Didn't say what she would be working on (I had told her she was welcome to bring anything related to the class, as it's been so long since she was there, I had no idea what she had bought), but it seemed like I would finally have two students again.  I had packed one big pad, featuring examples of all the processes worked on this six class cycle, and one prop.  That prop was my mannequin torso, which I store in a dedicated place in the shelving unit I built years ago in the basement to hold my art stuff.

As far as how I acquired the mannequin, that is a story.  Several years ago, back when I worked regularly at the community college, there was another adjunct I got along well with.   It's been long enough that I don't remember her name, but I do remember she had a heavy accent, and a shared office space.  A friend of hers was liquidating a failed clothing store, and she arranged for her to donate all the mannequins to our college- a wide variety that included full standing bodies, torsos with arms and heads, small children, and a few torsos like the one above  One day they all arrived in the office, packaged and marked for the department, except for one that was marked specifically for me.   I decided to take it home, which was probably a good idea, as all those others were gone within two years.  Maybe stolen by students, maybe by faculty (either is possible), but I had mine, and brought it to various classes as I need it.  It would work well for our final class.  

I arrived to find the gate closed, but not locked, and so the alarm was off.   (saved me that trouble)  I brought in all my stuff in two trips, set up my classroom, made sure the air conditioner was on (we are in the middle of a terrible heat wave right now) and readied myself for the day.  My most regular student (who had been to all 5 previous meetings) usually showed up early, but as the start time approached no sign of her.  but my long missing student did come, so at least I wasn't all by myself. I had been informing her of what we were working on all along, and she had bought various materials, and wanted to try them out.  Starting with ink wash.  Not the plan for today, but why not?  I showed her some student examples of ink wash drawings, both first and second day projects, gave her a brief lesson on how the medium worked, and let her start.  She chose not to pencil it first, but just to draw with a very light wash and a thin brush.  

Essentially a line drawing, but done with ink wash, that would become part of the final drawing.   She had never worked with the material before, but was very pleased with the results.  As she should be, since it was a pretty good drawing of the mannequin and the simple shadows over its surface.  But she also wanted to try (and get instructions) for using the chalk pastels  (what she found that seemed to be most like the conte crayon sticks I had asked for, including colors that could be the black and sanguine I requested), but I didn't know exactly what texture would result.  So I showed her student examples of that project, first the true chiaroscuro drawing a student left behind, using green paper, and some kind of black and white medium, then the version I had my students do, using white drawing paper, and sanguine and black crayons.  Once again she was impressed and ready to try it herself.  (she also mentioned really liking the pad of drawing paper I had them buy, how it worked for all the different media we did, but that's why I have them get it)  I advised starting with the sanguine, shading from dark to light as needed, then carefully adding black as needed to create shadows.  Having the student examples to show certainly helped. 

She really liked the sanguine color and how it could be blended on the paper (I showed her how paper towels could help), so she was hesitant to use any black with it, for fear of ruining her reddish-brown drawing.  Then she decided to start a third drawing, using ink wash, and her sanguine, black, and white sticks.  I didn't bother to take a photo of this last one, as it goes beyond anything we planned for the class.  But overall it was pretty good.  Drawing the same subject 3 times probably didn't hurt her rendering skills on these mannequin drawings either.  I had promised in my reminder that if she came back to class, the subject would be something we hadn't done before, and that she would learn some things.  I was right on both counts, so she was happy, except for having missed so many meetings to that point.  I advised her that she should tell the office what kind of schedule she wants to keep (around work and all that) and there would be more classes in the future.  

And that was the two hours.  I packed up my stuff, and though I heard footsteps, I saw no one on the first floor, and there appeared to be no one in the office, so I locked up my classroom, turned off the first floor lights I had put on, left the alarm off (there were some tags hanging), relocked the front door, and headed home in the heat. Back there I found an email from today's missing student, saying an accident at home prevented her from coming and apologizing for missing our last class.  She seemed excited to try the planned process, so it was probably worse for her than me.  However, she saw examples last week, and I explained it all to her, so she should know what to do.