I came into this session (5-26-15) basically in a normal mood but after starting to draw furiously I began to get incredibly frustrated with my work; I hated this distortion and couldn't refine anything.
This experience made me think about my current drawing style- I'm almost manic in my search; trying to capture everything as quickly as possible in hopes to capture spontaneity and emotion in the immediacy of the moment. I approached it like a tornado. This even applied to gesture drawings, which I usually hate to do. I just wanted to commit my drawing to paper as quickly as possible.
At this moment I started to realize that this approach was also holding me back from making real revisions and letting my drawings breathe. Half of the time I either finished my drawing in no time or couldn't finish it at all. I felt walled of from revision because everything was done so quickly and drawing became an all or nothing proposition.
The following week (6-2-15) i decided I wanted to take a different approach. I wanted to:
1- start taking gestures more seriously, and
2- draw with a more deliberate hand. I decided to slow down (at least enough to stop my frustration and begin to allow my drawings to evolve)
While these geuture drawings aren't as precious as some of the more skilled/controlled artists who attend they are still mostly proportionate and have a nice lyrical line quality.
This is the drawing I ended up with for our extended pose (1 hour 20 min). While it's not quite as drawmatic or high contrast of some of my other drawings, it felt a lot better to work on. There is also still quite a bit of spontaneity and distortion. I didn't feel like I was racing to finish it and I didn't feel super-frustrated when I got stuck. I just kept in the moment, and calmly drew.
I think during the next session I'd like to work with higher contrast charcoal subtractive work.