Thank you so much!

Thank you!

Thank you! We see these rowboats all the time where I live. It looks like a wonderful way to spend a misty morning.

Tell your friend this rocks.

What a lovely thing to read, thank you! There’s no clever physics here, just copying the photo I took from a bridge one day. I’m just pleased with how well it came out.

Hahaha, I’ll let them know.

Thank you! It didn’t even take very long to draw, maybe an hour?

Ha, I keep running into the picture size upload limit, and end up doing all sorts of circuitous workarounds to reduce the size.

Thanks! The shadows under the oars help. I wasn’t going to add them, but it’s surprising what a difference they made.

Thanks!

Thank you!

She was beautiful beyond words. She was also a giraffe.

This was 35 minutes. It’s unusual we get something so long at these classes. For me nothing is really interesting until it’s at least 20 minutes!

Thank you!

Thank you!

Thank you! Yes, always, but I’m working on leaning less on pencil, especially for detail work, and going directly to ink.

It’s very different from the technical pen I’m used to. Easier to make mistakes, harder to control, prone to big blobs of ink going everywhere, and the ink I use dries much more slowly which is a serious hand-smudging hazard.

That all said, I love that you can get different line qualities with the same tool. It makes what you’re drawing much more expressive.

And there’s also something appealing about the fact that a pen nib will never change or be out of stock or upgraded or updated. It’s just a metal stick with a slot cut in it. It’s cheap, and apart from slow changes in ink technology, essentially eternal.

Thank you! Comments like this are what keep them coming.

I’d offer this. If you’re given ten minutes, don’t work towards having a finished piece in ten minutes. You’ll mistime it, and focus on one detail, and end up with something only half done.

Instead, have something finished in one minute. Even if it’s just a rough pencil layout of the shape of the body: if the clock stops after one minute, you have something finished. Then if you have another minute, refine what you’ve drawn: correct the angle of an arm, make that straight line into a curve. And then you’re finished again. And then refine further, add some shading, and regime further, get those muscles better defined, and so on. And at all points, you could stop working and end up with something you’re happy with.

At least that’s how I do it!

These are brilliant! I try to go life drawing once a week and it’s my favourite part of the week. I love how studious it feels, everyone so focused on the task at hand.