drawing with Phil Sylvester

Since September, I have been taking "Introduction to Drawing" with Phil Sylvester. This week will be our last class and I will miss the Saturday morning adventures at The Drawing Studio!

Most classes had us at our easels drawing while Phil talked about mark making, acceptance, music, quotes from various artists, inspiration, seeing more, feeling more, so that our drawings became a beautiful mixture of the artists' view of the subject and the artists' inner self. 

In this drawing, I was very aware of the beautiful age etched on the subject's face. That awareness led me down a long path inside where I considered my own aging and how I feel about it. It doesn't matter if my feelings come across in this drawing, but the process was very rich because of my willingness to follow my own feelings as I drew.

Two ballpoint pens held together to draw this model. The marks wrapped around the model's figure, down the leg and around the bones as if the marks themselves held the skin tight to muscle and sinew.

Every drawing is an exaggeration. Something is wrong with it. It's not meant to be a photocopy or a mechanical reproduction of the subject. It is this artist looking at that subject and responding to it with marks.

Though I feel a little sad that the class is ending, I am encouraged to draw. To enjoy the process of drawing without fretting about the outcome.

Leonardo Da Vinci Drawings.