A Young Girl and an Older Gentleman

Over the past month I have been working on a long-pose portrait drawing (about 18 hours). Sadly, I did not make much progress and the pose is now over. In short, I am incredibly slow... As my experience grows I hope that I will become faster. However, it seems the more I learn about the methods and practices of the French Academy of the 19th c. the slower my hand moves.

Here is a 3-part progression of the drawing (graphite on Borden & Riley Plate finish bristol paper). There were many more phases between each of these drawings, but these provide a good idea of the snail's pace of my current practice:

Out with the old, in with the new...

Today we started a new long portrait pose of an older gentleman. Here is the first glimpse after a couple hours of drawing:

I am trying out new paper for this one. The drawing is graphite (H), on Fabriano Artistico 300g. So far, I really like the texture and quality of this Italian paper. I struggled with the paper I worked on for the previous drawing (it was just far too slick and had almost no tooth). Since I'm trying to learn how to draw not how to skate, I thought I'd dry a different surface. Lesson of the day: materials matter.