Artist Copy Progress: Week 1

Project: Pick a master figure drawing. Copy it. Try and replicate the artist's mark.

Goals this week:

• Figure out the materials used

• Create a grid to transfer the original image to our paper

• Draw the figure lightly to plan proportions

I picked "Aurora" by Francois Boucher. The materials used were brown paper and red and white conte crayon. The paper I picked wasn't an exact match. The color was similar, but the texture was a bit different. To me, the color was more important because the original work used a white crayon for highlights. If I picked a lighter color, the highlights would have been less visible. The gridding process went smoothly. Coach Hall showed us how to crop our paper and put a grid on it without doing any math, which was very useful. The original plan was to divide it into an 8x8 grid. I ended up with a 16x8 grid, because it was easier to get the proportions more precise. I finished drawing the outlines of the figure as well. I started practicing the artist's mark on the scrap of paper I cropped off. The mark is mostly light hatching lines without any harsh shadows or highlights. I might not do well on the replication because I'm naturally heavy handed. Hopefully, I can train my hand to draw lighter for this project.