Finding the Bed Bug Line
Artist Carl Samson has been teaching me to look for the "bed bug line" when viewing or drawing a portrait. Bed bugs don't like the light and will do whatever they can to avoid it, so one determines the bed bug line by drawing the overall flat shape of what's in shadow vs. what's in the light. Easier said than done! I've been at it for hours today and haven't quite gotten it yet but I'm making progress. How do I know? Because now I'm seeing the bed bug line on actors' faces when I watch TV!!

When I have tried to draw faces or heads in the past, I've tried to draw all the values, from 1-10. This is a totally different approach: kind of like drawing only value 7 in flat shapes. Then going into the light areas and adding the halftones from 1-6.9. Maybe pulling out a little of the light in the value 7 and darkening some of it to 8, 9 and 10.

Today was my third out of eight classes with Carl. Some of the things learned that I'm trying to apply to my own work are as follows:

• Triangulating: correctly positioning key elements like eyes, nose, ears, chin, mouth in reference to two other points

• Modeling via lost and found edges on the bed bug line to create form, before modeling in values, which was all I did in the past

I know from teaching people to use software that we don't master new skills just by watching and listening. When someone shows and tells us what to do, we have to try it ourselves and then practice, practice, practice to really get it. Spending so many hours teaching each week, it's poetic justice for me to be the student practicing this for hours and still not coming close to what my teacher can do quickly and easily, almost as second nature. This experience should help me develop more patience with my own students, while learning to look and see in a new and different way, better than ever before.