Rachel 8/14/10

This morning i went to an event hosted by the Ackland Art Museum in Chapel Hill, called "Drawing in the Galleries."

Basically, it's a two-hour event (10am-noon) that's essentially an informal drawing class, and it's free. You show up at 10am with your paper and dry medium of choice--pencils, crayons, etc.--and are given a folding chair and ushered to a particular focus artwork. The host explains a bit about the work of art, its history and relevance with respect to the exhibition as a whole, and then off we go, drawing however you wish for the next two hours. I guess you wouldn't have to do the focus work if you didn't want to, but it was cool to draw right along with the 8-10 other people there.

So today's work was a part of the exhibit Fortune Smiles: the Tyche Foundation Gift--it was a 14th-century statue of Bishamonten, one of four guardian deities in Buddhist tradition.

The statue is monochromatic--all black--though at one point it was painted brightly. He held a staff at one point (now lost) in his right hand and holds a stupa in his left hand. He was standing on a struggling creature who represented the demon of Ignorance, but i didn't have room for him on the page, and wanted my piece to be more like a costume design rendering for a character called "Bishamonten" than a depiction of the statue itself.

This sketch was done with colored pencils and regular pencil, over the two-hour session. When the session stopped, i stopped, though i think for stage i'd go back and do a final black ink layer of outlines and some shadow-hatching.

I think the most challenging thing about doing this sketch was trying to figure out what layers of his attire matched up--what part of the bottom were the sleeves attached to, which were part of the suit of armor, etc., since the source piece was all one color. I think it's pretty clear though--i could generate a pieces list for this character based on this sketch now. It'd be something like this:

• Armor: gorget/pauldrons
  
• Tabard
  
• Long robe with pointed sleeves
  
• Belt with mask-like buckle
  
• Sash and overdrape
  
• Tiered-blousant trousers
  
• Turned-up-toe shoes
  
• Burning halo of fire

Lots of cool crafts for Bishamonten here! :D

It was a really cool event and i will definitely be going back for future sessions! I may also go sometime when they are not having the formal event, to see whether i can just sit and draw some other artworks in a similar fashion. It was great to draw from a source other than a photograph!