09-13-2023, 06:37 AM
Hey nice to see your work! The anatomy studies are looking good! I need to get back into that because I'm starting to forget my muscles. With the GCA sphere exercise, we did the exact same thing at my atelier, and yeah it is time consuming. It didn't take too long to do the sphere but the casts and figures afterwards were so slow. I think the good thing about them is that they really dive into the structure and understand the form, not just copying. However, I kinda feel like too much energy is spent on just smooth shading. That's just my experience doing it second hand kinda, though. I actually am probably doing a workshop there next summer if I have the money, because I'm curious about it, too!
I can tell you exactly what they would say about the sphere, though. You need to lock in the shadow shape completely first. Like take really sharp HB pencil and fill in all the white dots of the shadow as dark as the pencil goes without burnishing the paper, and then work out from that when it's completely solid, which like, is really boring but it's not too hard since it's all the same value everywhere. Your shadow is pretty even, but it could definitely be darker and more solid, and then the shading in the light does have a lot of islands of lighter and darker which make the gradation of form not as smooth as GCA drawings would be.
I feel like there's definitely a smarter and less tedious way to draw a ball, so it seems kind of dumb, but then again it is just an exercise so idk maybe it's not.
I can tell you exactly what they would say about the sphere, though. You need to lock in the shadow shape completely first. Like take really sharp HB pencil and fill in all the white dots of the shadow as dark as the pencil goes without burnishing the paper, and then work out from that when it's completely solid, which like, is really boring but it's not too hard since it's all the same value everywhere. Your shadow is pretty even, but it could definitely be darker and more solid, and then the shading in the light does have a lot of islands of lighter and darker which make the gradation of form not as smooth as GCA drawings would be.
I feel like there's definitely a smarter and less tedious way to draw a ball, so it seems kind of dumb, but then again it is just an exercise so idk maybe it's not.