Little sad girl ...

A couple of weeks back I was hunting for some pictures to put in a slide deck at office, and I came across a picture of a sad little girl. The photo was in black and white, and I was quite caught up with the effect ...and the expression on the girl's face.

I set about trying to capture this using charcoal and graphite pencils.
First cut I used an A4 sized drawing paper and started to sketch the outline ...somehow that did not come out alright, and the paper size seemed a little cramped ....so I trashed that and started out with a slightly larger size. This is a quarter of the regular 'chart paper'.
I drew the outline first with a 'H' pencil and checked if the proportions were right. (I usually verify my outline by asking someone else to have a look at it - this time it was my mom. Having another person look at it , gives a different perspective and helps you catch some minor missing details - my mom pointed out that I had drawn the hands leaner ..and they needed to be a little plumpy !)

I did the second round of checking - looking at the reflection of the sketch in the mirror. This is useful technique to catch some very obvious flaws ! This helped me correct the size and tilt of the head. (children's head to body proportions are different from adults...)

Then I tried the third trick ..which is to leave the sketch as it was, and returned to check it after 4-5 hours. It looked satisfactory, and now I proceeded to fill in the details.

I identified the brightest areas in the photo and shaded those with a 'H' and blended in with a paper. Now I started to shade the slightly darker areas with a charcoal pencil ...but using rough lines and then blending in. Once the entire figure was shaded, I started to darken the shadow areas. and the frills on the dress.
At every stage I checked with the mirror !

I had done with the neck and body, and the head was yet to be complete...
I drew an outline of the eyes , nose and mouth. The mouth took quite a few attempts to get it right...the chubbiness of the cheeks had to show !!
Once done, I did the hair with charcoal and completed the face.
Satisfied with what I saw , I checked again with my mom, the mirror and took a digital photo of this. The photo made another few minor missing details obvious, such as a shade missing here or a frill having no shadow...After the finishing touches, here is how the sad little girl turned out to be !

I did this in 3 hours, across 2 days.

The re-discovery of the easel

It is now 2 weeks since I started the drawing classes at my apartment. 5 children so far and loads of fun.
For the past 2 classes I was dependent on the card tables setup at my apartment clubhouse. the 5 children could use it - there was ample space, but it was a little too high and no so convenient. More over I am expecting another 3-5 children to join the classes, so the table itself would not be sufficient.

I started to first think on the lines of buying new tables. But the issue with that was I would have to find a place to keep it in the clubhouse or at my home. If at home I'll have to carry the table every week for the classes. None of this seemed practical.

After long drawn thought I decided that the best way forward was to get easels. This had a few advantages - one, they would be carried easily from home. Even if I had to keep them in the clubhouse itself, they would not occupy too much space. More importantly, I could place them such that the children would not have to cram together, and that also meant they would not be able to keep talking to each other all the time :)

So, having settled on the easel idea, the next was the cost. Some of the professional ones found in the market cost anywhere between Rs 1000 to Rs 3000. This was too much of an investment to make at this point.

I now decided to design my own easel ! After brainstorming the idea with my father, we both decided on a design - a simple "H" shaped structure

The other key thing was that the angle should be adjustable; a board (on which paper can be clipped) must have support,; and the height at which the board can be fixed must also be adjustable.

With these in mind, we decided to go for "slotted angle bars" for the structure.

We finally tracked down a place near home that supplied these slotted angle bars, and while trying out the design - we refined it to an "A" shaped structure that can be slanted against the wall. The horizontal bar in the "A" can be adjusted to any height.

For the board itself for now we have used canvas boards (although hardboard wood is what is still on the cards)

The result was a simple easel that fit my needs, was very cost effective, and offered a lot of flexibility in design, very usable (the children liked it and used it easily too), and was very quickly assembled.

Now the easel is now counted as my (and my father's) art piece too :)