I worked on some quick five minute gesture drawings today from my reference photos with lithographic rubbing ink to think through a little more concretely how I might want to proceed. The lithographic rubbing ink is great because it behaves very similarly to the etching ink, but I never have to wait for it to dry the way I do with the etching ink. The rubbing ink is dark and thick, like a stick of tar; I love the intensity of the marks its able to make. I then use a Mars plastic eraser to move the rubbing ink around on the drawing. In the final drawings, I would smear the etching ink across the Dura-Lar to achieve the same affect.
I had mentioned a few posts back that I wanted to get back to life drawing, so that’s what I’m going to do: twice a month, I’m going to have a figure drawing session just to keep myself drawing and back into shape. It’s ironic because I spend practically every day working with a model in classes I teach, and yet it’s been years since I’ve had the chance to sit down and work from life with the figure. Both my undergraduate and graduate experience was extremely loaded with life drawing, and in many ways I think I’ve avoided it for the past few years because it became overkill after a while. My priority is to get more “exercise” with drawing, to keep myself sharp and alert with drawing and the figure. I have no intent whatsoever to create “good” drawings, it would be all about the pure experience of just drawing, drawing without any goal in mind, drawing without any expectations.