Pencil Drawing and Reading

No paintings to share this week as I spent the weekend drawing and reading. I spent most of my weekend reading time with Harold Speed's The Practice and Science of Drawing. I was inspired how he encourages art students to focus on building technical skills of "searching accuracy" found in many academic drawings. So once the technical aspects of art making are firmly under control, the artist can respond with greater freedom and spontaneity when the creative inspiration hits.

Not really feeling like painting I decided to draw instead, deciding to complete some assignments that involve pencil rendering. I feel it is an area that needs some help and over 2009 I want to improve and get more balanced in my skill set. Over the weekend I went through 3 assignments in Ernest W. Watson's Course in pencil sketching: Four books in one.

The assignments seem to be a lot of repeating a drawing 3-4 times, experimenting with rendering techniques and learning with each one. As an asside, I typically do not like drawing delapidated buildings, some people find these quaint, but being an architect I hate seeing buildings not being maintained. Most of the images that are assignments are of falling down and abandoned buildings, so these exercises are really about following through and learning even from situations that may not capture my soul and interest me. Oh well, I did learn a lot with the three windmill drawings above, the lower right hand corner drawing was my last.