Finally Learning "How to Draw"

My final week of term was off to a great start in The National Gallery, and I chose to spend the day in the Rubens room studying from a piece attributed to Van Eyck. I had succeeded once again in sneaking my oil pastels through security, and this time with less pressure from guards, my ability seemed to be warming up:

Study of Van Eyck Painting, Oil Pastel on Primed Paper

I think it just so happened that I had a decent palette of oil pastels to use for this specific painting, but overall I was simply trying to catch the dynamic movement of the composition. Reflecting on my time spent at The National Gallery just makes me wish I broke the rules sooner and got my pastels in earlier haha (National Gallery peeps please don’t ban me).

Can’t Escape Vuillard

My Wednesday core day with Kate Montgomery was … rather funny. Funny because this week our class involved thinking and working like Edouard Vuillard; something I’ve literally been trying to avoid and walk away from since last week's crits. Regardless, a day full of pattern and interiors was right up my street so I spent another day with my gouache and oil pastels:

Oil Pastel on Paper

Throughout the day I also worked casually into my sketchbook combining different poses and referencing some of the manga I’ve been reading recently:

Gouache in Sketchbook

Learning “How to Draw”

For months I have been surrounded by my incredibly talented classmates (see more of their work here) who I learn more and more from every week, but one thing I must admit I envy is the insane level of imaginative drawing some of them possess. At the start of the year, I found it incredibly difficult to work from observation and imagination at the same time; with most of my imagination going into the colour schemes rather than the compositions or any extra elements. For the first time in my final drawing a story class I felt like my “imaginative drawing” muscle was starting to grow:

Gouache and Oil Pastel on Paper

For this piece, I pictured myself as a bird flying around the room observing the model from above, and warped certain elements of the drawing to create a more interesting scene. I also got warmed up in my sketchbook with some more gouache work, and did some smaller experiments with oil pastels:

Sketchbook Study in Gouache and Pencil

Oil Pastel on Paper

And that’s it for my final week! As I write this now, I’m actually already going into my fifth week of Term 3 (ok ok I’m behind forgive me) … so erm, let’s just say I have a lot of content to write and post ~

See you next week! (Don’t forget to sign up to be notified)
Tomas