SCVWS Drawing Workshop completed

Sketching exercise in sanguine Conte on white paper

Last night I completed coordination for a three-day workshop for Santa Clara Valley Watercolor Society. My Monday drawing instructor, Robert K. Semans, was the guest artist. Bob is an impressive and successful artist. Drawing seems like it should be simple to learn, but we participants can tell you otherwise. I overheard someone say at the end of the workshop, "I thought I knew how to draw."

The room was set up with four still lifes that would give us practice in the various principles of drawing and gave us ample opportunities to practice measuring using a dowel stick to check our accuracy. We rotated through the four tables during the first two days. We sketched in charcoal and conte. My conte drawing of the basket was my most complete and interesting piece. It was challenging to get different values using the Sanguine, which cannot provide a full range of values.

On the final day, Jane Ferguson, a fine artist herself (take that link to check our her website) and professional model, sat for us until mid-afternoon. I've sketched and painted Jane before and I did one large painting of her that is one of my favorites.

Bob had us do warmups with 5 minute sketches. that really forces you to go for the gesture. Bob demoed how to do that with quick fluid lines.

5 minute sketch

Later we got to do some 25 minute sketches. You can see that Jane is great about changing outfits. The two she selected for the longer poses enabled us to see the underlying body structure.

Jane posed

We sketched for 25 minutes

Our instructor, Bob Semans, demos how to approach a longer pose


Jane's final pose for 25 minutes

My final sketch

Bob did a critique of our last sketch and used the critique as a jumping off point to review some important concepts about drawing from life.