Day One of Drawing Class

Dave is instructing the class about how to position a photographic reference for a study on tone...or value.  

The lesson is about shapes...trying to stop thinking about this as a "hand" and more about a group of "shapes".  Drawing my own left hand.  

After doing a value study of a 2B pencil's range of dark to light...

then we all looked at this photo example and with help from "gridding" of our paper and the photo planned out a copy of the photograph.  Working hard to look and replicate some of the pencil tones.  I switched to a 6B Derwent pencil for the darkest darks.

This was day 1 of a 3-day class.  

We have some suggested homework assignments to read in our text book....Keys to Drawing by Bert Dodson.  And a few exercises that Dave has suggested we try.  Looks like a rainy couple of days up north and so good to be in the studio!  

The book has been around a long time...but has a lot of good information.  Can be purchased used for about $5 plus shipping.