Laocoön and I are becoming good friends--a strong foundation for the looooong relationship that lies ahead. It's hard to believe it's only been a week!

As we approach our 1-week anniversary, the first stage--the block-in--is complete.

Well.. complete-ish. Ted (my crazy instructor who co-hosts the amazing podcast "Suggested Donations") told me to go through and redraw all of the lines as form. Which I thought I was doing but I guess I wasn't. *Sigh*

I guess that means I have one more day, but I'm going to write this post like the block-in is over ;)

Block-In: *The drafting stage of the drawing. The contours of form are clearly and carefully drawn, and the boundaries of the shadows are drawn in as well. The block-in lines will change very little, if at all, throughout the rest of the drawing. *

Correct and Refine for Transfer

Below is a series of photos over the course of Thursday and Friday. There were a few major corrections--the eyes came down, the cheek pushed out on our right, LOTS of hair/beard changes--but the main thing I was trying to do was make the lines cleaner and more descriptive of the form. In my mind it's like this: the drawing is actually the sculpture and I imagine tracing my pencil over the form, and then landing on the edge of the shadow.

After an entire pass over the cast, if I think it needs to be more specific I'll roll over it with the eraser and do it again. Also, I'm not worried about ruining the paper because since I'm using basic drawing paper with the intent of transferring to better paper when the block-in is nailed down.

Here's the progression up to the point of transferring, mostly in H and 2H pencils:

The Transfer

After getting the block-in pretty specific and (hopefully) correct, it's transfer time! I used:

Arches hot-pressed 140lb watercolor paper
Graphite Powder
Paper Towel
Masking Tape
Ball-Point Pen

1) Flip drawing over and rub graphite on the back. When the drawing is placed over the new paper and pressure is put on it, the graphite will "transfer" from the back of the drawing to the new paper. I used the graphite powder from sharpening pencils.

Shaking the graphite powder onto the back of the drawing.

Smearing it around with a paper towel.

No loose powder, but a thorough covering of graphite.

2) Place the original drawing over the new piece of paper. Be very careful to line them up exactly, so the drawing isn't transferred at an angle. I used the side of my drawing board to make sure the paper and drawing were parallel.

Tape the corners down so the drawing doesn't move. I have clips, but I secured the bottom corners with tape.

3) With a ball-point pen, trace over all of your drawing lines. Get a pen that works better than the one I was using... it kept running out of ink and then I couldn't tell where I had already transferred. Grr.

Slow and steady...

The lines are very light, but as long as they're visible, they serve their purpose. Also, light and erasable is better than gouged in--be kind to your paper!

The Final Block-In

Now it's time to take one last pass (or two. or three.) gently and lightly over the lines to make any final corrections. At this point it is very important to clarify the difference between "light" and "shadow."

Light: *Any surface on the cast that is directly hit by the main light source. If the angle the light hits as is very extreme, the area may appear dark, but is still considered light. The "pencil test" may be used in questionable areas. See picture. *

Shadow: *The area on the cast that is not hit directly by the main light source. *

The Pencil Test: This is done by holding a pencil on the cast and seeing if a shadow from the main light source appears. If a shadow is cast, it is considered "light." The place where the shadow from the pencil disappears, is considered "shadow… — **The Pencil Test:** This is done by holding a pencil on the cast and seeing if a shadow from the main light source appears. If a shadow is cast, it is considered "light." The place where the shadow from the pencil disappears, is considered "shadow."

These distinctions are important for the block-in since they determine where the form begins to turn. Here are the last couple progress pics. At this point, the lines are extremely light, so I apologize for the poor image quality.

And there is Mr. Laocoön! ("lay-AH-coo-ahn"... I only point it out because it's so fun to say.) He's not sure how he feels about this level of commitment. I mean... if we move on to the modeling, those block-in lines aren't moving! But it has to happen at some point, so tomorrow begins the grand adventure of finding form... modeling.

I'll let you know how it goes, unless it's really crappy, and then we can all just pretend this never happened :)

Disclaimer: this is not about making a plaster mould of a sculpture.

This is about the strange process of creating a drawing that looks like it's coming out of the paper--not something that looks photographic, but something that looks real.

For anyone who doesn't know, a "cast drawing" is a drawing of a sculpture. The first few years of most traditional art programs involves intensive cast drawing.

Before attending Grand Central Atelier, I had done a number of cast drawings. However, I would see pictures of cast drawings done by GCA students and always wonder... "How did they do that?" Don't get me wrong... I learned a TON from every cast I've drawn, but I could never understand why the Grand Central casts looked like they were hovering off the page.

Well, fast forward a few years and I just finished my second GCA cast, (an "intermediate" cast) and have decided that for my final cast, I want to show some of the process for anyone else who has wondered about what goes on behind the scenes.

My intermediate cast drawing--about 3 months of work. No joke.

Unfortunately, I haven't discovered any gimmicks, contraptions, or magical potions so far (unless spending hundreds of hours stabbing paper with a tiny graphite spear counts.) But I have learned a few things that make these cast drawings different from most other places I've seen.

GCA Cast Drawing:

**This is by no means an authoritative guide to cast drawing, just my own observations and interpretations of what I've picked up so far!

Graphite instead of charcoal.

No particular brand of pencils (I'm currently using blue ones... but sometimes they're teal or green!) My friend Katie used a 4H (THE SAME PENCIL) for her entire final cast (!!!) Some people use HB/2H. I use 4B through 6H because I am a nerd and I like to hold 12 pencils at once.

No background.

It's not that no one cares about backgrounds... it's just irrelevant for the purpose of these drawings: to create a sculpture on paper. Other cast work I've done has been about the way lights falls on an object in an environment. It almost seems like the same thing, but GCA cast drawings are about exploring the object in its purest form, rather than the way light is bouncing in the space and on the object in front of you and hitting your eye, which brings me to--

Conceptual vs. Optical.

When light hits the cast and bounces into your eye, it's taking quite a trip. It has to deal with things like smudgy windows, stains and dirt spots on the cast, and trying to get to your eye without being messed up the the light that's trying to get in your eyes from all the other lamps/lights/windows around the room. Then there's "simultaneous contrast" which means a little shadow in the light area looks extra dark because it's surrounded by light, while the white cast against a super dark background will look extra white. If you put a white piece of paper behind it, you'll usually see that it actually gets a bit darker at the edge, but compared to the inky background, it's hard to see the subtleties. ALL THAT to say... just "drawing what you see" can be tricky business. The approach GCA takes, is to picture how "light-facing" any given surface on the cast is, imagine the same "light-facingness" on a sphere, and make it the corresponding value.

"Flat" Shadows

I like to think of this as the "moon" concept. The shadow areas that are defined during the block-in are filled in with an extremely smooth and even darkish tone (chosen by the artist.) No smudging devices are used!! Straight-up pencil work. I call it the "moon" concept because it's like how you don't see any light in the shadow on the moon. With one primary light source used to conceptualize the form, the shadow areas that are not receiving direct light can be extremely simple without sacrificing the 3D quality of the drawing.

ABT: Always Be Turning

While the shadows are flat, the light areas (anything being hit by the primary light source) have no outlines and no areas of "flat" tone. It's as though you're a tiny spiderman crawling across the cast--you're always moving towards the light or away from the light. "Edges" are just points where we can no longer see the form. Occasionally you go slightly insane and think think you're actually creating something that is hovering off the page.

SO! All of that will be better explained as I progress in my new cast, but it's a decent Cliff's Note's version of the main differences I've noticed between my previous cast experience, and the process at GCA.

Laocoon... My New Best Friend

The "Laocoön and His Sons" original sculpture located in the Vatican. — The "Laocoön and His Sons" original sculpture located in the Vatican.

The cast I chose as my final cast drawing is from the sculpture, "Laocoon and His Sons" (lay-AH-coo-on). According to the ever-reliable wiki, "The figures are near life-size and the group is a little over 6 ft 7 in tall... showing the Trojan priest Laocoön and his sons Antiphantes and Thymbraeus being attacked by sea serpents." From a drawing point of view, it combines larger forms (neck, forehead, cheeks) with LOTS of little hair forms and features. The light is coming from a high window to the right, and I created a black foam core shadow box to get rid of light from elsewhere in the studio.

I wanted it in a very particular position... the hanging string had to be used in interesting ways.

A specifically placed screw holds it at the right angle, and the piece of foam core keeps the screw from harming the plaster.

The other side required a screw as well. I <3 power tools.

Layered foam core keeps the tilt I wanted.

The top of the cast is about 5 inches from the wall.

So after all the technical stuff was out of the way, the drawing was ALMOST ready to begin! The final step before putting pencil to paper, is finding your spot. I decided to sit so I would be looking up at the cast, and the little pieces of masking tape ("Alignment Tape") are in exactly the right spot so they line up with particular places on the cast when I'm sitting in the right spot.

Now to begin.

Materials:

Drawing Board
Strathmore Paper ("24" x 32" I think? For the block-in only. I'll transfer it to better paper later.)
Pencils--4B to 6H, but I worked in HB all day today
Kneaded eraser

This is about 10 minutes in--the drawing is 18" or 20" tall, and the lines are all extremely loose. At this point I'm looking for lines that pick up lots of different points, e.g. a line that runs along the peak of the hair, the side of the face, and the side of the neck. The "gesture."

This is a kneaded eraser--moldable and stretchy. Watch what happens next!

I make it into a rolling pin shape, and then....

Roll it over the drawing. I learned this when I was at Scott Waddell's portrait workshop this summer. Great way to make things lighter and less messy to prepare for more specific shape-finding.