In spring 2022, I worked through most of the videos and exercises from New Masters Academy's traditional Russian academic drawing course. It was largely in graphite, which was a nice medium to learn in.
I was amazed at how sculptural, yet logical, the style of drawing was; lots of plotting lines, erasing, and re-working on the page.
I got too busy before I could finish working through all the human body studies - hence the strange bias towards heads and... feet...
Asaro head with graphite on coarse paper.
After various studies of simple 3D shapes, I had to draw John Asaro's famous planar head sculpture. It was really tricky getting all the proportions right, but it was a great demonstration of shadow shapes.
David's nose, ear, with graphite on coarse paper.
The tutor demonstrated a neat trick for marking shadow terminators; hatch them with varying width to describe the form's roundness.
Skull with graphite on coarse paper.
This study required some blending to get more detail out of the paper. I started using stumps, but somebody recommended I try kitchen towel which gave a more uniform result over larger areas. I was happy about the values on this one, and it felt great finding the outer edges against a dark background.
Early renaissance statue with graphite on coarse paper.
This was a really challenging study that relied on smooth and accurate blending! There's something odd about the lips, but there's always something odd about lips.
Cloth with charcoal on coarse paper.
Cloth was really challenging at first, but soon became pretty methodical. It was a great chance to practice edge control, as there is little else that describes the form.
Hanging cloth with charcoal on coarse paper.
Simplifying the cloth shapes as much as possible helped with the clarity, but I got a bit carried away with the darkest values here.
Feet with graphite on coarse paper.
Feet are weird, but it was a fun challenge trying to get all the toes positioned properly. I was really happy with the realism of these.
Leg anatomy with graphite on smooth paper.
Moving onto smoother paper was a game-changer! I could get way more detail, which I abused to cram multiple studies onto one page.
Arm anatomy with graphite on smooth paper.
I was really happy with the values in this! Keeping the lights cleaner really added realism, but didn't mess with the roundness of the form as I had feared.