After finding that tulips with their bulbs still attached do not droop and bend like cut tulips do: The petals fall but the stems, like the leaves, do not change their position. The leaves withered and went brown but the stems didn't move. Had I been working in colour I might have pulled the drawing off but as I was working in ink the drawing looked static like a row of erect soldiers. I was also being ambitious thinking I could pull off my grand idea.
After Diane's advice I decided to go back to the original idea of juxtapositioning objects that related to the original drawings. Not being very happy with the result I did an abstract image of myself. Giving myself the freedom to just draw without restraint resulted in a drawing was a lot more content with.
Diane and Catherine invited me to join their Thursday night drawing group, 10 days ago, where I did one of my best drawing, also I'm pleased with the 2 minute gestural drawing I did that night.

These are a few of the images from my last project: the ones I am happiest with. Now for the next project Diane suggested I go vertically aways from these images. Vis: an object I own that relates to all or some of the portrait images. At the time I was quite emotionally exhausted from looking at old photographs of long dead and departed loved ones thus did not want to go and revisit these images again so soon. I did, though, want to explore the passing of time which these images were exposing.
I decided I wanted to attempt to show time passing in one image. My next objective therefore is "Using what I accomplished in the past few weeks I want to explore my sense of the permanence of remembered time and of the disintegration of the moment we think of as being permanent. Doing this by observing a living object change as it ages and dies." (proposal sent to Diane.)Nice piece of pretentious artspeak.
This is the image I want to use as my starting point. Tulips in a vase going from freshness to decay.

With William Kitteridge as my inspiration I didn't see a problem. Ha. The tulips I chose lost their petals and the leaves faded but the stems did not droop or change their position.

Back to the drawing board.

I'm now back in class studying with Diane Olivier again and feeling inspiration and motivation returning. After the first project of 24 drawings in two weeks the left side of my brain had no time to interrupt and judge what I was producing. Diane requested a written synopses of what I wanted to do with this first project to which I answered; "My theme will be autobiographical. I am going to draw objects I own so that I can work from objects and not only photograph's. I expect I will be using pastels but as of this moment I am not 100% sure that is the way I want to go. So it might end up a mixed medium piece."
I ended up using mainly photographs from my past and no object. It was a mostly painful experience living and interpreting my past. After beginning with portraits of myself as I child, in charcoal, it developed into a chronological exploration of where I came from to where I will go, adding pastels, sepia ink ink wash with white gesso and white and gray conte. On the whole successful with a few very good drawing coming out of it. I also learn I have to play appropriate music while I work. Therefore most of the drawing I consider good are associated with music.
If you you would like to see the whole series go to
http://web.me.com/johnwmhull/intermediate_drawing/Drawing_2-5-10.html