Drawing lessons...

I have so much fun giving drawing lessons to friends. Little do they know they are my guinea pigs for proposed PAID lessons to folks I really don't know at all. Someday, it would be nice to pick up some extra cash doing this really fun stuff. This was the drawing I did along with my sweet friend Peggy. It started by sketching in the square of paper I put under the pear, then deciding where in space the pear was sitting. We drew a line noting the highest part, and a horizontal line through it showing the widest, noting that the pear is not equidistant, not by a long shot. Then we drew the contour of the pear around our little cross, in straight lines, between all the little angles. We drew over and over until we had a satisfying outline, then erased back. That eraser was always in the other hand. With some little hatching and cross hatching, we explored the interior of the pear, noting that there are light patches even in the shadowy side, and on the bottom, where the pear reflects the paper. We drew the shadow in contour, then did the hatching and cross-hatching there, seeing that the shadow is deepest under the object. We erased back to lighten the weight of the line where the pear was in the light, and darkened the shadow side. We used a stomp to blend the hatching, and put in all the sweet blemishes. My friend had a wonderful time, got a pretty fair rendering for her first effort, and left feeling like she had learned something. I did, too. I remembered the process and had a wonderful time doing my own drawing, something I have not done for a while. Actually, this whole lesson encompassed about two months of drawing class. I remember doing contour after contour, yearning for the good stuff like shading and modeling to come. That is why my lessons go where they do. Practice then becomes more fun and more rewarding. Back to practice.