First Year Fall: Drawing I

This is a backdated entry, written in my senior year while working as a Course Assistant for Drawing I a second time. While working with beginner drawers again, I've been thinking back on how I started drawing myself.

Working on the final was fun since everyone else would be in the studio at odd hours. I believe this photo was taken at like one or two in the morning. Good times.

At the time of writing this, at least, Drawing I is one of the few required courses to become an Art Studio major at Wesleyan. The course covers the fundamentals of observational drawing, with a heavy focus on the figure.

I enjoyed learning from Professor Kate TenEyck during the afternoon session I took. I also had a really cool TA. She always wore black wool longcoats to class.

During one of my favorite classes of the semester we drew skeletons for the whole session using white conte on black paper. Mine was unfinished since I showed up to class a bit late that day. Still had fun nonetheless.

Two and a half hours is an extremely long time for a studio course, but I saw it as a time to relax and drop out of the rest of my life on campus. Loading up on STEM courses that fall made the rest of my academic life stressful, so having an art course on the other side of campus was a relief.

The biggest takeaway from the course was figuring out how to start and end projects. When I started drawing more seriously in high school, I struggled with something I like to call ‘endless practice’. I would fill sketchbooks to the brim and never share any of my work. Having someone tell you when to begin and end a project was extremely helpful in keeping pace.

A portrait I made closer to the end of the course. Our professor began letting us use color which helped us experiment with how we put value down on the page.

The course was extremely linear. The best thing I made for the class was the final, a 1:1 scale nude portrait (a ‘Drawing I Tradition,’ they say…).

I was lucky to have Professor Ten Eyck, since she took the assignment and made it her own. Traditionally, students used a large mirror and completed a scale drawing in charcoal while naked (kinda weird lol).

Instead, Ten Eyck let us work from photos and made nudity optional. She also let us use color and had us stylize our work after a famous artist.

I made my final portrait using dry pastels, in the style of Caravaggio (I was listening to a lot of Westside Gunn at the time lol) and had way more fun than I expected.

Overall, I enjoyed the course, but I think that’s mostly because I had a really great professor teaching it. I still highly recommend it to any Wes students who haven’t taken it.

My Drawing I Final was a self portrait made using dry pastels. The composition was inspired by the works of Caravaggio. The actual piece was about 8 feet tall in person.