Terrified or not, I did it! by Liz Saunders

On Tuesday, March 19^th I dragged myself through the door of LucSculpture and Studio to start my Drawing for the Terrified Beginner.  And boy was I terrified;  I actually cried with fear as I drove down Greenwood Avenue.  In the classroom, I held so tightly onto my Starbucks tea, it’s a wonder I didn’t squish the cup and end up with scalding tea all over me and everyone near me.

But Kathy, the instructor, is an absolute gem!  She’s got the biggest smile in the world and is incredibly encouraging.   Unlike my last instructor who basically said “draw this” or “draw that” with no instruction or explanation, Kathy is the exact opposite.  So we started with the basics – the materials.

What fun!  Chalk, conte, pencils, graphite, pastels, hard pastels, greasy this and not so greasy that.  Newsprint, Cartridge paper, paper with bumps that’s good for chalk, expensive paper, cheap paper and everything in between.

Then we did contour drawings to “tighten up” our eyes.  Well this is the silliest thing – you have to draw your fist (or anything else I guess) but the paper is folded over the hand with the pencil so that you can’t actually see what you’re drawing.  Well, no one can be good at that, right?!

Eventually we sketched some simple shapes and learned about putting axes into the sketches to help with proportion and before I knew it the class was over.  But what a difference it makes when you know the steps and the reasons!

This week was completely different.  I was relaxed, we sketched just with pencils, sketching different things:  geometric and organic.  Then we drew organic as geometric  – or vice versa.

I was having great fun until Kathy said “okay, now we’re going to do a still life” and I froze!  She showed us how to block the proportions – figure out the bottom, figure out the sides, etc.  That was okay.  So was drawing the teapot and bottle.  But those flowers?   OMG, there are so many details!  Where to start?  I sat and stared at them and started getting worked up (tears on the way) when she came over and said “just draw a circle where you think this flower is”.  Well that wasn’t too hard and that was it, I was off to the races.  She really liked my lying on its side, squished flower.

So, I’ve done my first still life sketch!  Not in a rush to do another one, although I’m sure Kathy has that in mind for us (did I mention there are only 2 of us in the class?).  Can’t wait to see what next week has in store.

Other random pictures: