As the title says, we were to draw our hand this week.  I had some fun and did the Vulcan “Live long and prosper” hand sign.  Funny thing is, I can only do it with my left hand:

At first thought, I was overwhelmed to think about which room to draw.  There is so much going on in every room of our house.  Then I got it – draw the Foyer!

To put it nicely, our home decor would be “eclectic”, except for the foyer.  DH’s grandfather was an antiques dealer in Rome.  He grew up amongst real European antiques, and now has a slight aversion to it.  So, when we got back to the States, and I happened on this mirror/console in an antique store, I loved it, but wasn’t sure he would like it.  I took him to see it, and he replied “if it sings to you, get it”. So, I did, and it now graces our foyer.  It is flanked by four Canaletto prints that belonged to his grandfather (I did not attempt to sketch those).

We are having an art show blog hop to feature some of the work we have accomplished in our drawing lab thus far.  I joined Jeannie’s Drawing Lab 2011 class a couple of weeks late, so I decided to do the two assignments I missed. I believe the first week was to draw a cat, and the second week, a bird.

When I was young, we had a couple of calico cats:

When we lived in Australia, the Kookaburras were all around us. I think their calls more than anything made me feel that I was in fact, living down under: 

And here is my gallery of some of my favorite work from the drawing lab assignments:

I am really enjoying the drawing lab.  I took oil painting lessons as a child in fourth grade with my then best friend, Linda.  It was only for about a year, but  I have very fond memories of it.

Here is the rest of the blog hop list of participants to visit:

Kim’s blog
Dagi’s blog
Linda’s blog  ***YOU ARE HERE***
Marsha’s blog
Grace’s blog

Jeannie’s Blog  Our Instructor

This weeks assignment was on learning by tracing.   Well, something like that.  We were to find an Old Master drawing and trace it,  then do another one, hand sketched.  I chose a drawing of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza by Honore Daumier:

DH thinks Sancho looks like a penguin :-).  You can click on the image for a larger version.

Continuous line drawing is unbroken from the beginning to the end. The drawing implement stays in uninterrupted contact with the surface of the paper during the entire length of the drawing . I saw  a  photo of a bulldog  in a magazine and thought it would make a good subject for this assignment:

This week’s assignment was fun! We were to select two of our favorite artists, and draw two gift cards, one in black and white and the other  in color. I have a number of artists that I like, but two in particular came to mind. Zuzana Chalupova was a Slovak naive artist from Serbia, and Ivan Rabuzin was a Croatian naive artist. I love their work for their simplicity, innocence, lightheartedness, playfulness, and color. Here are my efforts based on their work:

And here are example works from the actual artists:

In nature, everything you see, be it animate, inanimate, man-made, or organic, can be described with geometrical shapes.  This weeks assignment was to take a family photo, identify the shapes, then draw on paper. We were to draw the geometric shapes with a sharpie, then sketch the picture. Since the rest of the family is a bit blog shy, I took a photo of two subjects who generally do not object to being “models”, our dogs Koko & Hiro. Here is my sketch and the original photo (it’s a good thing they can’t voice their opinions ;-)):

I found this weeks assignment quite amusing – I should have known how to do this properly back in High School :-).  We were to choose a signature, turn it upside down (so our brains would think and see things differently) and then draw what we saw.  I chose John Hancock’s signature – how original!  The upper signature is the original, and the lower one is mine (maybe if I used a quill and ink, it would have looked even better):

The assignment for this week was to use our non-dominant hand, and draw a person, place or thing and give it a name based on how you feel.  I am right handed, so I used my left hand, and drew what came to my mind immediately: My Family/Love/Contentment. Non-dominant hand drawing and writing is supposed to be childlike; I think I hit the nail on the head: 

For this week, our assignment was to draw a pencil sketch using shading techniques. The hardest part of this lab was choosing what to draw. I decided to draw a pencil that I had readily on hand. I’m quite pleased with my efforts – I just wouldn’t mind having some assignments that involve color for a change:

This weeks drawing assignment was “Negative Spaces”. This one was hard for me to do. Drawing in negative spaces requires looking at and drawing the surroundings of your subject, not the subject itself. The hard part was that we were not supposed to draw any outlines. When I began this class, I decided no matter the results, I was going to post my work. So, here it is. I added some fun altered art type frames to distract from my less than stellar work(L-R: orange, goblet, sunglasses):

This week’s drawing assignment was Word Art. We were to start with the first letter of our name, and stack the rest in whatever fashion with block letters. We were then to fill in the gaps with doodle. So, here it is, 3 x LINDA: