Takaka drawing class
I’m currently in the South Island. I left my laptop and Wacom tablet behind - I needed a break from them. Too long I spent working on the laptop, not getting much done. When I return it will be fresh.
I do have a A4 visual diary that I am planning to fill up on my trip. So far I’ve mostly just drawn 3d figures from imagination. On Saturday me and my Uncle Donald attended a drawing class. Portraits was the focus. I spent two hours drawing portraits of my Uncle. The tutor - Kare had exercises for the class to do. Many of these exercise I had done before - such as blind contour drawings - and drawing with your opposite hand. One I hadn’t explored before was creating using the media to create planes of the face - darker for deep and lighter for forward. This was interesting - rather then looking at the light and dark look for where areas come forward. This is something from the class I’ll take away and experiment further.
The final drawing of the drawing class. I had drawn Donald several times and wanted to include someone else in the drawing. The woman beside Donald is a regular for the drawing class. I decided to include her into the drawing. Here she is drawing the person oposite her. 
The exercise for this was looking at the planes - darker for closer and lighter for further. It was a exercise I hadn’t explored before so great to give it a go. 
This was spose to be one continious line. I tried my best to keep the line going but may have forgotten at times and taken my pencil off the page slightly. People commented in the nose. 
Blind contor drawing. Tried to add some colored pencil in there as well! Instead of just doing the portrait I wanted to include areas of the shirt as well.
I worked on this further afterwards, adding color and tone to areas. I know Dan is a big fan of this - keeping some areas loose and going in tighter in other areas.
The town I’m staying is Takaka. The hills are inspiring, tomorrow I’ll get out and the landscapes in the area. No point being stuck inside with Freeview and dialup Internet.
On Wednesday there is a life drawing class - 15 dollars for three hours. I haven’t had the chance to do any life drawing for a LONG time. 15 is quite expensive compared to the cheap 5 dollars at Vincents but what can I do!