I was supposed to draw the outline of a chair, the point being that I was drawing the negative spaces, not the chair itself. I hated it. I tried with a fairly complicated dining chair and became irritated. I then tried again and thought I was getting somewhere. I identified the shape I wanted to start with, then went on to the next shape, then the outline of two legs – but then I couldn’t do negative bits without noticing the chair itself because the width of the rungs had to be put in and it was harder to manage than drawing the chair would have been. I struggled for a bit longer and gave up. Nothing to show, I wiped it off.

Betty suggested a chair that has lots of interesting detail but I can’t do that. I’ll try later or tomorrow with a much simpler chair and see if I can find something to succeed at, or at least to find engaging. I’m right back to feeling as I did for the first few lessons and I need to find a way to shift my outlook. This, along with the difficulty of transferring a sketch from the glass to the paper (as I mentioned yesterday) has to be thought through and solved, or else I’m not going to make any further progress. It’s actually worse than at the start, because it was boring as well as difficult, which I suppose is my left brain taking over.

Right, okay, I think (from writing this) that I have to start with looking for shapes within objects. Draw a single interesting shape without worrying about carrying on to the whole space-around-the-object. Just fragments until I get practised enough to feel some confidence. But not today, I’m not in the mood and it will not go well.