Day 40: 2012 - portrait drawing class first session

Decided to get back to drawing again....it's been a very long time with what all's been happening around this house since last Spring.  Signed up to take a course from Terry Kelly, a Pasadena artist I got to know because of his participation in the Arlington Garden Artist Event.  His oil paintings of the Garden sold quickly - wonderful small works. 

He alerted a group of people to the fact that he would like to teach a portrait class, at night, for 10 weeks and I "took a flyer" as we say.  I hate night classes!

So, off I trudged to work with charcoal, an unfamiliar medium, and to work with a person who really knew how to draw portraits.  We were told to bring calipers to measure.........whoops! 

That's getting serious folks!

Here/s the model:

Here are my "starts" to drawing and then Terry stepped in and offered up some help, thank goodness

 

Discussions about putting in the darkest darks......

 

Started head too high on the page, oh well........

 

Trying to teach me how to do the shadow under the nose.....

And here's my final version after Terry helped me.