The drawing I'll describe is the final composition for the self portrait of D sitting.

The body is drawn darker than the chair. There is more important to body of the man than the chair. The drawing takes up a majority of the paper. There's very little white space left in the image. He appears to be nude and using the chair to cover himself up and he's crossing his arms and using his left foot to balance himself.

The artist used charcoal, graphite and white paper. The graphite was used to draw the outlines and basic shape of the character, the rest of the image was traced over and touched up with charcoal. Some of the facial expressions are still done in graphite. The chair was not traced over and that's why it's a lot lighter than the body.

The interpretation that I get from the drawing is that of a man who's looking and studying an object outside of the drawing; maybe looking outside his window of his studio loft. Thinking about will happen tomorrow or the day after. There's a look of uncertainty and doubt in his face and his arms crossed the way they are adds to the feeling of wariness.

I want to say that I learned a great deal from this drawing. The use of graphite to sketch out the drawing and than go over with charcoal was really nice. Also, I saw that you don't have to make everything dark. Leaving the chair in its sketch graphite state adds more emphasis to the body and reduces the chair to a prop and not part of the drawing. So next time I draw something similar to this I'll try to use these 2 techniques that I learned.

I felt pretty good about the process once I (think I) figured out what we had to do. My last drawing (the 30 minute drawing) started getting a bit off of proportions. I think I was getting tired and I could see what was wrong, I just couldn't fix it (in the time frame). I think maybe I need to schedule small breaks into the process so that I don't basically draw straight through from the first 1 minute warm-up through to the last 30 minute final drawing.

From now on your critiques cannot start with a compliment. That means no more "That looks great" or "Your drawing blows me away."

I am making this rule because the comments are too shallow. You are not getting into observation or analysis or interpretation of the works. Just saying something is good or bad and then giving your advice is OK as far as it goes. But I would not be fair to you unless I demand a more professional level of communication. My job is to make you the best prepared you can be for your creative career! So here is what to do for the rest of the semester:

1. Start with an observation. Describe the drawing as a whole composition. The 4 edges of the page are the edges of the composition. Pretend you are describing the drawing to someone on a phone, a phone without a camera. This forces designers to see each element of a drawing as part of the composition. A skull floating on a white paper is a skull bounded by 4 defining lines forming a rectangle. How big is the skull compared to the rectangle and what is happening in the  space around the skull?  This helps you to see the figure and the ground in your drawing and if the drawing is part of a design you must consider other elements to be added.

2. Analyze how the artist created the drawing. Make note of the artist's materials, techniques and the results. Analysis is a way to learn from other artists. Some people call it reverse engineering. Answer the question, "How did the artist do that?"

3. Interpret. Give the drawing a name and talk about the story it tells. If the drawing is a sketchy pelvis then the story may be that the artist didn't put in much time into the drawing. If the skull has a dark background maybe the story is a halloween or ghost story, if the skull is floating on a white page then the drawing may be viewed as a clinical study ready for some medical text to be added. Say what the story is to you and why you interpret the drawing this way. There are no right or wrong interpretations. Interpretation provides the artist with the knowledge of how other people see the work. Seeing your work from the outside is essential when you are a professional. Clients and bosses judge your work and won't pay you for it if it doesn't deliver the right message.

4. Summarize: What did you learn from this drawing? What advice would you give to the artist based on your observation, analysis, and interpretation? Summarizing helps other members of your team, in this case, the team is the whole class, know your overall conclusions about the work based on your observation, analysis, and interpretation.

I'm gonna miss this.....

I love this class and have really fallen in love with drawing the human figure. I know I have improved quite a bit but I could improve some more. For my final I took a sheet of paper and drew the arm muscles right over-top of my draft! I think that helped me alot. I really appreciate your caring as much as you do for the subject. Alot of online teachers copy/paste responses and do not put forth any extra effort by providing us links and videos to learn from. I just wanted to say I appreciate it and will continue to draw the human figure........