That other time I got to use oil pastels

Messersmith also used our student fees to buy us all oil-pastel sets. I have to say my last semester at school was one of the few times I didn't see my student fees just go to waste (because I didn't actually see anything come from me getting charged an additional $75 or whatever to take a class). Anyway, that is neither here nor there. Oil pastels were so much fun to work with. You can get a real painterly quality out of them, without the frustration of mixing and applying paints! All the mixing is done right on the paper, and just felt so much more active and involved than any time I have ever painted.

This one I remember not being incredibly happy with. Mostly because of my placement of the figure on the paper, and I wrestled a lot with some proportion. But I love the color in this one. I remember when I finally had enough of this drawing, I took the blue pastel, and started doing this scribbles near the crotch, and along the contour of the torso. However this act of frustration managed to warm up all the other colors I had put down, and really reminds me of flesh. Really fleshy flesh.

Here is another I was a little more happy with. However I didn't quite get that warmth of the flesh like in the last one. I remember he was using a neon green light on her back, hence the neon green on the sides. So much fun.

I can't remember if I decided to draw her face, or if Messersmith instructed us to do so because we were all glossing over the face in the full body drawings. Again, this one has some problems with proportion, and the eyes look terrible. However, I love the color. This time I used more of a green to make the darks rather than blue.

I managed to find my oil pastels from that class today going through all my stuff to find anything decent to shoot. Can't wait to use them again.

-Jason

The time I got to draw on black paper

Another reason I really enjoyed Messersmith's class was that rather than focus on how to properly draw the figure, it was more about how to use different materials to draw the figure. Before his class I had only really worked with charcoal, pencil, and ink for figure drawing. He used out student fees to get some black paper and instructed us to get some colored pencils. He also used red and green lights as a light source rather than just a regular bulb.

We did warm-ups drawing each other.

Maybe a 15-20 minute pose?

Yea I know I'm a slacker what with all these incomplete drawings. But like I said before, I have a problem focusing on one area rather than working the whole drawing. I think I have gotten better at it, because I at least consciously think of it now, but as you can see, I suffered from this all the way to my last semester in school. Still had fun though.

-Jason