Here's some photos from the first ten day class I've ever taught. The first five days was exclusively drawing in black and white from the figure, while the second five days was in oils from both portrait and figure. I wasn't sure if there'd be that many hard core artists to fill such a long class (Susan calls it drawing boot camp), so I was happily surprised to see how many dedicated artists there are out there! Drawing along with the class for the ten days was great practice for Susan and I as well and the constant repetition of all of Mr. Parks' words of wisdom from Life Drawing class helped to remind me to get back to the basics!

This is an example of the quick sketches we did for the first two hours of the drawing portion of the workshop. We started out with three minute poses for a half hour, then five minute poses, then two twenty-five minute poses before starting our long pose for the remaining four hours of the day's class. This sketch above is just vine charcoal on paper.

This is an example of using the side of a piece of vine charcoal to tone the page and then erase out the light patterns with a kneaded eraser.

Here's one of the long poses done with vine charcoal. I used the side of the charcoal to put a slight tone on the entire paper before drawing it in and then erasing out the highlights. Since I spent half the time walking around working with the students in the class, all the long pose demos took me approximately two hours.

Here's one of the long poses done on cold press crescent watercolor board. I first sketched the pose in using the head measuring method to get the proportions right, then I blocked everything in with a bristle brush, ground up charcoal, and water. Once it dried, I then pulled out the highlights with a kneaded eraser, softened areas with my finger, and worked the rest with vine charcoal just like a regular drawing.

Here's a close-up.

This is another brush and water combination drawing that I did after class one day of our awesome model, Cindy!

Here's some of the demos from the second half of the workshop. This backlit pose served to emphasize the lesson of squinting and comparing all your values to your lightest light and darkest dark. I guarantee that when I put down my initial dark tone for the girl's face, there were a lot of people who just didn't understand why I'd made it so dark. By the end of the painting, when I popped in the bright lights on the sides of the face, it made sense, but to make that determination at the start, before any value is even on your canvas for your eye to judge against, you simply have to use the value range on the model and on your palette to solve the problem of that first value to start with.

This demo was a lesson in color harmony. For it I used a limited palette of Ivory Black, Cad Red, Yellow Ochre and White. Since only one of the three primaries is a pure version, you will be forced into a painting with a good color harmony. You don't have to use red as the pure color in the triad -- try using yellow or blue as the pure color and choosing a grayed version of the other two. It will force you into harmonies and mixtures you might not otherwise try. 

Here's a close up that shows the process of working from larger shapes to medium to small shapes. Just think how much less interesting the nose would be if I'd painted in the highlight on the nose or the dark of the nostril in first and then tried to paint around those details. This is why it is so difficult working over a drawing since the tendency is to use a small brush and paint up to all the edges.

I decided to do a demo from a low angle since that can often pose a difficult drawing problem before you really absorb the concept of thinking of things as mere shapes and not of the actual subject you're painting. Notice how all of use when we start out will make a nose much longer when paint from a low angle such as this since our mind has a preconceived idea of how long a nose should be and simply won't accept that it might be almost level with the lower eyelids. Once you are thinking simply of puzzle-piece shapes, and not of an actual face, eye, etc. none of these biases will bother you at all but it is one of the hardest habits to break!

And here's some of the class painting away!

They were all true art-addicts to work this hard for ten days!