my last two nudes

We've had a string of women models in class lately. These are the last two.

Richard (our teacher) got creative with the pose this month, which added a little more interest. He urged me again to do a background, which I tried once before and then stopped doing. I do really like what it added to the drawing.

Almost a miracle

Ok, so that's a bit of an exaggeration. But look what seed-starting indoors has accomplished. It's still May, I live in zone 5, and I have baby tomatoes growing outside. (Having one of the warmest springs on record helped too.)

something completely different

This is from the second art class I'm taking, which is called Outdoor Sketching. The goal is to teach us to do quick studies we can use to inform later work. I'm really struggling in this class because I'm learning to use new materials and techniques. It's very fast-paced. Today, however, I finally produced a piece I liked.

my third self-portrait

I haven't been focusing on portraits; I've been concentrating on the nude figure in class.

But today I felt like seeing if I could draw a reasonable likeness of myself.

The top one is the last self-portrait I did, in July '09.

The bottom one is the one I did today.

The mouth is too low, and I'm annoyed with myself about that. And the shape of the glasses is not consistent from lens to lens. Still, I think what I'm learning from drawing the nude figure is spilling over into other areas too.