Channeling Morandi -- I wish

Last week's drawing exercises had to do with light and shadow, and on a beautiful warm morning I took my sketchbook outside to enjoy the bright sun.  I found a white bottle and an oversize white cup and posed them on the deck railing, then drew them from three different angles to capture different shadow patterns.

I'm learning a lot from this class, and a lot of it is not what I expected to learn.  In these drawings, for instance, I learned that while Giorgio Morandi can make wonderful still lifes by putting his pottery against a white wall, I don't think I can.  I still need to figure out how to give some kind of background effect, if only to let the shadows fall on something and to better delineate the edge of the white bottle.  Or maybe I just need to draw that edge with a heavier line.

I think the two most important things I'm getting out of it are a knowledge of the different tools available, and a confidence with holding them.  The specific lessons about where the ears go and how to measure distances with your outstretched pencil are harder to assimilate and perhaps in the long run less crucial.

I don't expect my drawing career to be stellar; what I do want is to become more confident with a pencil or pen in my hand.  I want to make marks (probably not realistic sketches, given my past history) that look authentic and have character and ideally, are MINE.  My drawings are improving with practice -- no surprise there -- but I'm particularly happy that it no longer seems terrifying to pick up the pencil and make lines in the sketchbook.  I'm even feeling better about having a sketchbook at all!