[Will Setchell]

I’d echo everyone else and say it’s worth focusing on drawing first for a while – 90% of painting is just drawing after all.

 

I know what you mean about jumping between courses (I’m doing that myself) but the main one I’ve been sticking with is the Russian Academic Drawing. I put all my other projects aside to focus on that for a bit, just watching the odd lecture on other topics to take notes. Recently, however, I got a bit tired of it and really wanted to paint but also practice portrait drawing. Solution – paint a portrait.

 

Bearing in mind it was just something I was doing for fun, I was really surprised at the result. I’ve often felt portraits were too cartoony or a poor likeness in the past, but having done nothing but very accurately draw geometric shapes and casts for months on end, I found I was getting far better results than I’ve ever had from just working on the painting techniques alone.

 

[Will Setchell]

Can’t figure out how to edit, so a new post it is.

 

I decided to call it on this one. A very tough but valuable lesson that I had to restart after a failed first attempt and took multiple rewatching of Iliya’s demo. I think I’ll come back to this once I complete the course, if only out of a sense of perfectionism – I had a lot of issues around the placement of elements in the lower lid on the shadow side and I’m sure some other parts of the drawing are wrong as well, though I tried to let that go a bit otherwise I could have kept fiddling for weeks.

 

 

So yes, an imperfect attempt but hopefully it will help others trying this exercise, if only to show what not to do!

[Will Setchell]

I have to say, this is the hardest section so far for me. Previous experience helped with the earlier parts but the main issue I’ve had is seeing the planes in the photo – I’d imagine its easier in real life.

 

The camera cuts haven’t bothered me so much as I’m not interested in copying along with Ilya- I prefer to watch a section or whole lesson, take notes then try to make the analysis. I’m also fairly sure the angle he sees the cast from is subtly different from the photo meaning copying is even less valuable.  And if the point is to learn the process of analysing planes and defining forms based on that, then I hope I’m taking the right approach.

 

I’ll try up upload a photo when I finish – it’s been a few weeks of sporadic work so far and I’m only starting to move into refining small details.

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