We started off this week in life drawing by dedicating a large amount of time to homework critique. Critiques in this class are really different to anything I’ve come across at ACSA- they are overwhelmingly positive for all involved. A few years ago I would have absolutely repelled against this method; but this year I don’t mind it at all. Maybe I’m getting old and just want people to tell me how great I am and then go home and have a nice cup of tea.

This week’s life drawing studio work was undirected apart from the instructions of “just draw”. Brilliant. This is what second year is about. I chose to do one full body drawing and one torso close up in willow charcoal and marker. I loved that the teacher said to me “your drawing has become much better in the last 5 minutes”, which is a positive way of saying “that was shit before, but I’m on board with the decisions you’ve made to change it”. The student in me always wants to be told of my failings, and I knew that this drawing was shit because I wasn’t being myself. For the teacher to approach me and throw some good juju my way after ditching my shitty ways rocketed my respect-o-meter towards him skyward (and it was already pretty high!).

Then for homework we were to blow up (enlarge) one of our pieces from the week before. I was interested in whether or not I could make the materials that I considered to have the least descriptive potential to be… well… descriptive. Or perhaps just a little less arts and crafts project.

So I chose the friendly chap on the right.

I deliberately didn’t use an embroidery hoop, and had to guess the locations and angles of each stitch, resulting in some reeeeeally way off measurements which ended up being quite visually interesting. I wanted to deliberately fail with this one.

Last week my class seemed to enjoy the back of my drawing just as much as the front; so I decided to add in an easter egg drawing on the parent-child relationship of these two drawings. It’ll be interesting to see if anyone asks to see the back.