Field Trip to the Rodin Museum

In Drawing Class on Thursday, we went on a field trip to the Rodin Museum to draw the sculpture. We worked in pencil and focused specifically on The Burghers of Calais (One of Auguste Rodin's most well know sculptures). I had been to the Rodin Museum once before on College Day.

David Noyes suggested I block in large areas of value and then go back into those with smaller areas of value. The images above show this technique. He wanted us to focus on using value (not line) to describe the form. The one on the left is more finished. We had to leave before I could complete the one on the right. David encouraged me to go back to the Rodin museum often to draw the sculpture. He said I would learn a lot about drawing that way.

David Noyes also warned me to be careful not to get too concerned with getting things accurate, because I could lose the element of my own personal voice in the art. He says this is a problem he often encounters with students who had a lot of academic training (academic in the art sense; drawing lots of still lives for accuracy and taking many art classes). They are trained to become render-ers but they don't have their own voice. He says it can be more stimulating to the artist and viewer if the artist puts their own interpretation on what they are seeing.