In art class, I had to draw and shade a wooden giraffe. And the wood was all polished and smooth, so there were a whole bunch of reflections and stuff, making it even harder to draw.
The basic shapes and outline weren’t bad. My art classmates have such a hard time drawing basic shapes, but it’s really quite easy. Just a few circles here, a few squares there, outline the entire thing, and BAM! You’ve got the exterior of your subject.
But I hate shading. Shading and coloring. They add so many more dimensions, but it takes so long. Plus, I use the traditional mediums like charcoal and graphite, so if you place one finger on your drawing, it smears the whole thing. Then you have to use the clay eraser and start over, and my eraser isn’t that good, so I just smear my drawing even more.
My friend, A (Not A.Z.), whom I was carpooling with, finished about twenty minutes before I did, so while I was still working on the body and bum of the giraffe, she was pacing around, urging me to finish as quickly as possible. So I had to rush the rest of my drawing, and so the legs and body looked less complete than the head and neck. In fact, the body and legs just kind of got smooshed together because I didn’t have time to make sure I darken some lines in so that you could tell the two apart. I couldn’t do anything about it, though. A was so impatient. Art takes time, Miss Hare.
I felt like taking all of the giraffe animal crackers and biting their heads off. Too bad the bowl of animal crackers my art teacher set down for us didn’t have any giraffes. I know because I rifled through the entire thing.
Overall, though, the giraffe wasn’t too frustrating to draw.
Next week, however, my teacher wants me to draw naked men and their muscles. Without the skin. In full charcoal. Now THAT’S going to be one irritating piece to draw. I’ve already saw the pictures. The men looked like they were on steroids, and they had, like, 500 bulging muscle sections in each arm. Good thing I don’t have to draw their you-know-what. Their massively huge thigh muscles pretty much covered that part.
And now my parents tell me that tomorrow I’m going to Chinese school to take art classes. My sketching teacher teaches there, so we don’t have to waste Thursday evening away driving to his house and back for drawing classes.
Yes, I have two drawing teachers: one on Saturday, and one on Sunday. Mrs. P is the one who teaches on Saturday (Which is today), and she lets us draw watercolor paintings and work with charcoal, graphite, etc. even though most of us don’t have basic outline sketching knowledge. However, lately, we’ve moved away from watercolors and sponge paintings and started sketching still life in black and white mediums.
My other teacher, who teaches on Sundays at the Chinese school, teaches basic sketching, so basic that we started from basic 3D shapes like cubes and spheres. That’s how all artists start out, but I’ve been drawing those shapes the whole entire summer. I’m pretty sure I’m ready for something else now, especially since in Ms. P’s class I’ve finished drawing a bunch of animals and am moving on to people art (See above about masculine guy).
Two more days until school starts. I can’t wait to go back to school (because staying at home is so boring), but I’m not exactly looking forward to waking up at 5:45 AM. School starts at 7:20 AM, but six and seven is rush hour, so we gotta leave home before 6:30.
