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First Line First
For the last few weeks I've immersed myself in Lon Haverly's book, "You Can Draw", and I've got to say it's been a real eye opener for me. I don't mean this post to be a book review, so I'm not going to say too much about that aspect of it. Like a lot of us I've been following Lon's posts, so I had an inkling of his methods, but the book goes into a lot more detail (As well as Lon's unique views on art in general and other topics. A good read, aside from the drawing instruction.).
The drawing I'm posting here is the first one that I have managed to do in the pure "Line First" method: every line stays as it goes down, no erasures. I've had an incredibly hard time doing this; not because the instructions are unclear, but because it's so radically different than the way I've always done things. This drawing is a "copy" of one of Lon's drawings in the book, a charcoal I believe. I propped up the book about 4' away from me and drew it as though I had a live subject in front of me, except that I tried to follow the line schema in the source drawing. I used a Dixon Ticonderoga1388-2 Soft pencil, with the wood cut back to leave 5/8" of lead exposed and sanded to a chisel point. The size of the drawing is about 7 1/2" high by 5"wide. The drawing in the book is about 6 1/2" x 4".
Whereas Lon does these things from a live model in about 6 min., it took me about 3 1/2 times that to do this one. Every time I started a line I felt like a pro golfer lining up a long putt in the U.S. Open! Every time I stopped I realized I'd missed the cup! Well, I obviously bogied the hole, but the experience is strangely liberating and I find myself getting hooked on this method. So I thought I'd post this one to find out what others think, and if anyone else is trying "Line First". Maybe this should be posted under "Old Master Copies"?
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