In the first life drawing class I took we were required to do a series of master studies. I don't remember who the original artist was that this is copied from. When I am able to look it up again I'll edit this entry to include the information.

View Forgotten Master Study

This is a copy of a drawing originally by Pablo Picasso, one of his student works. This drawing gets held up a lot by artists that hate abstract work, they point to this as the reason every kid on deviantart should spend their first ten or fifteen years of drawing doing nothing but painstakingly rendered figurative work, because 'picasso had to learn the rules before he broke them.' While I also agree that there is a lot to be said for learning foundational skills, I tend to see the argument used as a smokescreen for people who don't really appreciate modern (and postmodern, and contemporary) artwork to take a big dump on it.

Also, this is one of the rare drawings I had to do in charcoal that I didn't wind up just hating to bits. I can't stand using charcoal, it's easily my single least favorite drawing medium. In later classes I started using watercolor extensively, and refused to touch charcoal at all, my rationale being that there wasn't much point in using a medium in the classroom that I knew I'd never use again outside the classroom.

View After Picasso

Another master study, whom the original artist was I do not recall.

View Forgotten Master Study 2