I Still Get Surprised

I did my daily drawing practice this morning, which works much better for me. The several evenings, I haven't drawn until right before bedtime, which does not work as well.  I'm fresher in the morning. The challenge always is pushing back all of the things that need to be done in the morning. I end up doing those. On the weekend, there's more time, so after feeding the cats (one of those morning things that can't be pushed back) I drew.

I drew cats. My warm up was trying to copy a cat sketch in the Steinlan Cats book several times. After that I turned to my live models. One of the things that I like about Steinlan's sketches is that he can convey so much with the big picture. Enough of the details are there, but you aren't overwhelmed with them. Given that mindset and, also, from going back and looking at some videos last month's drawing class, I worked on some cat sketches where I really wanted to focus on values, not details. Also, I get a bit overwhelmed and, in truth, sloppy if I try to do an entire cat, so I deliberately focused on a partial cat.

I got lost in this one in the way that makes my brain feel refreshed when I'm done. I become totally involved with capturing the shapes and contours. When I looked down, it was a complete surprise how much this was Ella in that moment of time. So many sketches turn out to be close (or not so close) approximations. When a sketch like this happens, it feels like I've reached out and captured "truth". It sounds a bit silly to write this down, especially since it is only a partial sketch, but that is the feeling that I get when I look at this sketch. Plus, there are not details!!