The process of participating in an Atelier setting was a learning curve. I have not been in this type of serious studio setting since I was in college more than 18 years ago. I am an artist that enjoys art in a more natural form and don’t like being confined to certain rules and regulations in my art. The whole reason I began to create art in the first place was for me to feel free from the rules and demands that were binding me at the time. Even today, if I am feeling stressed out and need some time to relax and “zone out” I choose to grab a pencil, no special type, and some paper, it could be a scratch piece, and I will doodle, sketch and draw until my stress decreases. I found that this studio setting and all the rules proved challenging for me as an artist due to the rules and strictness of its intention. Did I enjoy the process? Maybe for the fact of it being something new that I haven’t been taught before. However, as an artist that enjoys more free type work, I really struggled. I know that all artists are different and there are some that really enjoy the rigor associated with creating a drawing the looks EXACTLY like what they are looking at. That artist isn’t me. I have always figured that Van Gogh and Monet are more my “homies.” There is always an awareness of what they were looking at in their work, but with the freedom of lots of colors, and lots of paint. Perhaps it is that I consider myself more of a painter than a drawer. I feel more at ease with the rules of painting, so stepping outside of this comfort zone was harder for me.
So if I were going to do a reflection and overview of the course, I will need to understand that my frustrations mentioned above are strictly only my own frustrations as an artist and does not reflect the overall feelings of the course itself. To begin with, what I did enjoy is setting up a space for my still life that remained constant throughout the drawing process. I purchase one of the fold up cloth buckets that you can use in shelving units (so I can reuse it), and turned it on its side. Target had a clip on light that was in their “cheap bucket area” as you walk in the front doors, so I used that as my lighting source. I placed the entire still life on a table in my living room right in front of a glider chair that I sat in rocking my babies years ago. So needless to say, I felt like I was in a happy place and felt good about my set-up. Then came the videos. I watched eagerly as the instructor placed every line, and more lines, and more lines, moving ever so slow. I know why she was moving slowly and understand the idea of it, but focusing on a slow moving hand for long periods of time was exhausting! I was eager to get started myself. So I set up my Notional Space Box, and began to place the lines, and found myself moving at a much faster pace than what she had done. I know she has been trained much longer in this than I, but it left me wondering why hers took so long to set up and mine less?? I also couldn’t help but think about my students that have severe focus issues and how they would handle that part of the drawing. Don’t get me wrong, I do understand the need to be precise and ensure that lines are getting placed in the proper positions and by doing this you are setting your drawing up for success later on as you move through the process. However, I also couldn’t help wondering how that would translate to some of my students, since that is why I am taking this course. I must say that I did enjoy watching how she blocked in the drawing and began the shading. I like the idea of starting with one tone and layering that tone to make it darker, and pulling the color into the white slowly in order to make a more even tone. I couldn’t wait to get started on that process, and did find myself enjoying that portion of the drawing itself. I did notice the “blotchiness” that happens in some sections of the charcoal, and I tried to correct some of my issues, but was unsuccessful in cleaning those up. She used her kneaded eraser to touch and pull out some of the shade, but my eraser was not pulling mine out as much as hers was. The final drawing is definitely better than my pre-drawing, but I still feel there is more work and practice to be done in order for me to say that “I’ve got it!”
Overall, I did enjoy the process of learning something new. There were bits and pieces that I found extremely frustrating, but tried to power-through. Overall, I feel like I definitely have a better understanding of Observational Drawing and the Atelier drawing techniques. The reason why I took this course was to have a better understanding of this so that I can teach my students better, so with that said, I do feel like I learned a great deal from this series and will definitely have some take-aways to bring back to my classroom.