January's Figure Drawing Workshop: Reddi-arts Jax

I finished up a figure drawing workshop I was hosting here a few weeks ago, and was waiting for the attendees to send me their work before posting.

They're starting to trickle in now, so I decided it would be a good time tack up some results. This was a great class with 5 very talented students. Everyone seemed to get a lot out of the principles I was trying to impart. Some of these ideas were totally new to them.

I'm going to post a random sampling, in no particular order (gestures, negative space, line weight, straight & curved drawings, and planar studies). BTW, if you took the class, and you haven't already sent me your drawings, please do so and I'll put them up.
Also, I'll be hosting another one of these at the end of June/beginning of May, so if you're interested in joining, please call Jim at Reddi-arts for details.

Here's part of an email I just received from one of the attendees:

"it's been a great help looking at negative shapes, looking at gesture, structure, etc, in the beginning stages of laying out my drawings. One class period in particular, I switched from my old habits of formulating the basis for an image, and then switched over to some concepts from class, and I got MUCH farther in the drawing MUCH quicker. I'd have to say that the drawing was more accurate as well, and I took a conscious note of the negative spaces and their shapes. I haven't gotten bold enough to create a drawing with bleeds... BUT! My marks have been freeing up. Ever since your workshop, and looking at Enrique's drawings vs my illustrative/graphic ones, I've wondered about that phenomenon. How does one go about creating a drawing that looks like "a drawing" and not like "an illustration." It's an elusive thing to me, and not something I quite understand. I read through a lot of the Experimental Drawing book, and especially the parts about drawing lots of marks, erasing, drawing again, erasing, and really not caring about keeping things all tight and crisp. Result: "a drawing" of a skull. This just happened yesterday. (The drawing is on my big newsprint pad that stays at school, so I don't have a photograph to show.) However, old habits seem to die hard, so I'll need to continue reminding myself of these different approaches. Thank you again for the workshop."