The initial block-in

1. Envelope - Start with straight think lines. This will give you room for later adjustments with proportions and straight lines are easier for us to measure.

2. Big Shapes - Break your subject up into three to five simple shapes.

3. Measure - Measure your subject to find your vertical half and then find quarters. This will be what you use to measure the rest of your subject to get correct proportions. If needed you can break it further into eighths.

4. Angels, Allignment and Animals - In this step you're going to make sure that your angels and allignments are correct. This is where the thick lines come in handy. You can start to erase what's not needed to start refining your block-in. Use other angels to compare against. You want to ensure that your block-in is as accurate as possible before moving on. The animals was difficult for me, but basically your taking your simple shapes and finding a particular animal that the shapes look like. This helps you to really look at the form with new eyes and simplify the shapes. This exercise didn't quite work for me.

Shadow side was filled in right away with no adjusting. You start with the actual value of your shadow side. No building up.

Rendering form

1. Gradation - Go from point A, the furthest point away from the light to point B, highest form light, NOT THE HIGHLIGHT. This has been one of my faults.

2. Planes - Build your planes as if your subject were covered with little tiles. This is going to take some getting used to. This was pretty difficult for me being that I'm used to a more optical way of seeing vice a conceptual.

3. Marble - What I took from this was that this was a sort of refining stage. You have to basically feel as if you're rolling a marble over the form. This will help you refine any values that are further away or closer to the light source.

All in all it was a great workshop and I learned a lot. Some of this I will take with me and some I'll modify, but I do think that all I learned will help improve my drawing significantly. Also, these are my notes and not the exact words of Angela Cunningham. I've regurgitated a lot of this in my own words. Feel free to take from it what you will. Hope that it's been informative.