I’ve been absolutely loving Paul Missal’s drawing class at PNCA. Paul has that great Midwestern character — he just oozes relaxed professionalism — that reminds me of some of the teachers I had in high school. Why not? He actually lived in my hometown of Chardon, OH for a couple of years back in the 1970s.
When we’re not talking maple syrup, Paul has his class approach drawing in a painterly way. We’ve done lots of experiments to learn to draw with expression, which has not always been easy for me. But tonight he landed on something I could really get into: drawing with scribbles.
We started by holding three pencils in each hand and blocking out the volume of our model simultaneously with our left and right hands in a mess of lines. Then, we would scribble back through with an eraser to break them up. We slowly built up lights and darks, losing pencils along the way.
Paul said it was a good method for “breaking the preciousness of the paper.” See, he’s my kind of artist.
