I have sorely neglected my drawing skills for a few years and have been working on improving them again. I've always had a hard time with noses, I understand the concept of the shapes but how to actually render them properly has eluded me. I can make a passable attempt but I find them difficult and distracting (particularly how nostrils are shaped and shaded) from the rest of my portrait so I was very excited to see how this class might help these concepts click in my brain.

The Nose Knows - image 1 - student project

These are a couple of sketches from January when I decided to start drawing again, as a reference.

The Nose Knows - image 2 - student project

The left page was my warm up and I realised that I hate using this book with pencil because the paper is so rough and I have to press the pencil pretty hard to be able to see the marks. I prefer a light hand when sketching. I switched to pen and played with cross-hatching to create shadow and form.

The Nose Knows - image 3 - student project

Then I decided to re-watch the section on shape variations and play (left page). For my final (right page), I looked for a reference with a straight-on view because I find nostrils to be most difficult for me to figure out in that aspect. I could have noodled on this drawing for days, slowly building up tones and shadow, but I stopped myself after an hour because I was getting too sucked into the other parts of the face and the nose is focus.

I really enjoyed how Arleesha described "carving out" shapes and demonstrated the geometric concepts and building an organic form through them. I've read so many "how to draw..." books and am familiar with the idea, but it hasn't really clicked until now with her skilful showing of how to put that theory into practice.

I intend to revisit this class in a few months and see how I've improved.

Syren Lush

Mixed Media Artist

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