Daily composition (May - July, 2020)

I decided to move all the daily compositions into their own post. So far I have done just over 200 daily compositions (not posted all of them), and I really feel the improvements in both my ability to remember and to draw. 

Schedule 13

Half way through! This week, the gesture, blind contour and modelled drawing are overlapped on top of one another using same pose. All these weird exercises that I've been doing suddenly made sense now, and I actually feel I am substantially better than I used to be. Someone said the following in one of the forum threads discussing about the book

"I asked my teacher why more teachers don’t follow the schedule. He said that for the first six months you don’t see results and schools don’t think modern students have the patience to trudge things out for that long before results. In Nicolaides’ time, he said, students didn’t expect instant results."

I would agree with that. I felt that I have improved in the way I see things, but I didn't know what the improvements look like until this week. And on a even happier note, it looks like the exercises would stay pretty much like this week for the rest of the book!

Schedule 12

This week's exercise is mainly an extension to the drapery study last week, except now the drapery is wrapping around a figure. Was chatting to someone on this reddit thread and they mentioned photographing themselves posing for some of the exercises. That is such a fantastic idea. For the drapery-on-figure gesture studies, I set a webcam on video recording, then spend 2 minutes making about 50 poses. Then, I just pause between poses when I am drawing. You also get the added bonus that sometimes the transition between poses create fantastic gesture in the fabric.

I ran out of burnt sienna, so I did the modelled drawing in green. To my surprise, I actually quite liked it. Started doing daily composition from long-memory/imagination this week. It's hard to draw from imagination and I often sit there thinking for 10 min before doing anything. I need to just get on with it. For now, I'll do 1-2 composition from imagination and 3 from recalled memory. 

Schedule 11

This week took me a lot longer than the other weeks. It's a bit of a combination of finding it difficult to sit down and just draw a piece of fabric for such a long period of time, and having the space for the setup. It's definitely a very good exercise and I am happy to say that by the end of it, I am a lot more comfortable with drawing fabric on people (week 12). At the very least, the folding makes some vague sense to me now. Strangely, it is around now that I can start seeing figures as blocks a little better. It could be the few Cambiaso drawings that I have been copying, but I wouldn't be surprised if the mindset involved in week 11 exercises also helped (constantly trying to figure out which plane I am looking at). I wasn't all that happy with either of my long drapery studies - when I overlay the insect trail, many things just looked off, and I cannot trace the folds by just looking at my drawing. I think I would need to come back to this exercise.

I started experimenting with shading in my daily compositions. Marker pens are easy to use, but I am burning through them like nothing. Perhaps I should look into using paint, but I am unsure how newsprint would take up the paint.

Schedule 10

I feel the 2 hour modelled drawing is quite good - it's nice being able to take colours away rather than having the whole thing blending into one giant lump. As per usual, I much prefer the gesture exercises. I had to force myself to plough my way through the modelled drawing. 

I started experimenting adding in shadows in the daily compositions - I feel it really helps ground the person into the scenery. 

Schedule 9

I am not sure if I understood this exercise correctly. From what I could gather, it's sort of like combining gesture with modelled drawing. It's pretty enjoyable. I still find it hard to not get influenced by the light and shadow when I'm doing the modelled drawing

Started exploring using some markers for shading the daily compositions. I quite enjoy the outcome but it really adds time to the schedule. At the moment I take about 15 min for each sketch, but shading would add another 5-10 min to it so I often forgo doing it.

Schedule 8

I struggled through each long modelling session, but the enlarged body part actually look so much more detailed and realistic than I would normally be able to draw. I guess that is the point of the exercise - to spend a lot longer looking and examining something.

I have also started putting all the horizontal and vertical daily compositions on separate pages.