Joseph's shiny new sketchbook

[JosephCow]

Oh yeah, the one I just posted was from life, I didn't take a picture of it though, I forgot. The one from last week was without reference, and it definitely looks less realistic. I decided to study from life for exactly the reason you said, to get away from preconceptions and symbols and see how it actually looks. I think it's kind of funny how such an exercise doesn't always occur to us. I've seen a lot of rock studies over the past couple weeks, and most are tied to doing a course, youtube tutorial, or copying a painting in order to learn specific rock techniques. And I'm among them. I momentarily forgot that you can just look at the real thing, as it's about the most common thing on earth.