Block head

Here is Block Head. This was a shading exercise showing the contours of the face drawn with three different types of pencils. 

Also notice the sides of the face. This is something artists do all the time that nobody notices. On the right side of the face I wanted to highlight the bones so I put dark next to it. In between the dark I then have to put light. When you do this you then HAVE to do the opposite on the other side. Why?... Because my teacher said so. 

The dark next to light allows you to draw the viewers eyes to where you want them to go.  Dark next to dark keeps the viewer from looking in that area. So most likely your eyes will be drawn to the right side of the drawing because of the larger contrast. 

No pics, but a post

Well none of my art exercises would warrent a picture for you to look at so I just decided to write about them. The next exercise after the pear and stawberry drawing (in which my stawberries look like turnips) was to draw the "positive".

"Positive" exercise - I had a picture of a bunch of bottles of different heights and shapes and I had to draw them all on my sketch pad. Once finished drawing the bottles, I had to draw in all color changes and shawdows on the bottles. This was not a fun exercise

"Negative" drawing exercise - In this drawing we were to draw the space and not the object. In the end you end up having the object drawn, but it's because you've drawn the space around it. Does that make sense? This was also not a fun exercise and was glad my teacher moved me on quickly.

Shading exercise - We were given a face (which looks like one of the statues on Easter Island) and we had to draw the face and then put in all the shading. I really liked this exercise. I'll post this one when I'm done.

These exercises have really helped me understand what's involved in drawing and art. My teacher is contantly saying "there should be a reason behind every stroke of your brush, nothing is arbitrary". Hmmm....sounds like life.