Today we worked on another still life drawing, this time with 3 objects with different shapes.

To do this, we start by deciding how big the drawing should be on the page by visually measuring the height and width of the subject, then marking an area of our page with those boundaries.

Next, we add the largest shapes in just two dimensions. This is always the hardest phase for me. All my measurements seem to change each time I make them, and I struggle to draw straight lines.

Grrr.

I can see out of the corner of my eyes and hear from conversations between the instructor and other students that everyone is way ahead of me. Trying not to panic, I feel discouraged as I see that my initial lines are way off and I keep having to move objects closer to the center. Eventually, I just have to accept my mistakes and start adding a third dimension and then a light source, so that I can add shadows.

When the teacher comes by, she points out even more mistakes that I haven’t seen and I feel even more discouraged. I keep at it, though, and in the end I think my sketch isn’t all that bad.

A very nice fellow student claims, when we put our drawings up for all to see with just 15 minutes left, that, of the three of us drawing the same objects, I have the best toilet paper. Feeling embarrassed, I say, “Well, I have a lot of experience with toilet paper.”

Doing a comparison using layers, I see that I made some of the common mistakes with perspective that I often make. For example, I mentally tilted the table downwards as if I were higher above it than I actually was.

Practice practice practice.