Evening Class in Drawing

I've been feeling the need to get back to basics in drawing again , having withdrawal symptoms from no painting holiday this year or indeed any holiday I could throw myself into sketching mode. So I've signed up for an evening class held at a local school and best of all it's only 5 minutes walk away! I arrived early and was enchanted by all the school art equipment , especially these rather stained brushes. Being the first session, it took a while to go through all the paperwork (health and safety , learning plans etc ) before launching into our first excercise - drawing shells. Typically I chose the most difficult but isn't it gorgeous!

First of all we had to draw the outline without looking at the paper( lots of hysterical laughter during this!) then we could peek , then it was adding in the contours(but still not taking the pencil off the paper) and finally with shading etc.

My drawings seemed to get bigger as I observed more and it was interesting in the group review at the end of the session to see the different approaches people had. It's a real mixed group in both ability and ethnicity so it looks like it will lead to some interesting sessions

The tutor continually moved round making suggestions for improvement - in my case sharpening my pencil to create a more obvious edge between inner and outer surfaces.

I've also signed up for an on-line lino printing course with Dijanne. I think my first cuts might be based on shells.....