A new week begins

I've received most favorable instructor comments on the past week's submissions, along with the encouragement to push line quality further. In my last submission with the overlapping leaves, Marcia suggested that I could make the top leaf a bit darker and the bottom leaf a bit lighter. She calls this giving the drawing more "lift".

This week's topic is "Learning to use shape and negative space in drawing." The main goal will be to see and draw the spaces that lie between the subject's components. Those shapes hold as much contour information as the subject itself.

Also introduced is proportion drawing, where one key measurement is used to determine the ratios of the remaining measurements. Simply line up your pencil with the longest measurement and base other measures off this. This is most useful where the support size is different from the subject size and for those times when things just don't seem to shape up well.

The reading assignment is Chapter 3 of Beautiful Botanicals, Pen and Ink, with an optional assignment of Chapter 7 from Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.

There are two required exercises this week:

• Draw a supplied contour drawing upside down.
• Draw a plant using its negative space.

This seems to me to be a freer and looser type week, more about expanding creativity and perception than last week's technical assignments.

I've been spending time simply playing around with pen and ink. Did you know that if you pause for just moments, that the ink will dry right up on your nib? Yep, it takes no time at all! It seems one must keep moving and keep dipping.

Okay, I'm off to start on my upside down drawing. More soon!