Just finished teaching a 3-week “Drawing for Non-Majors” winter intensive at USF: an assignment that I sometimes give students is to do a plein air charcoal drawing of some corner of campus, and to then bring this back in to the studio to heighten with ink and other media.

My class was tiny this term, so I had a little bit more down-time to actually take on the assignment myself. This, a fairly quick 19 x 24 study of the corner of Fromm Hall, as seen from the cafe tables in the main plaza:

Since I was still on duty as instructor, I didn’t have a huge amount of time to spend on it, but it was still good fun: the problem with getting too set in one’s way as an artist, or to feel constantly obligated to one’s agenda or artist statement, is that it’s surprisingly easy to forget the simple joy of just sitting down to do a dumb observational drawing. Big reminder to just draw for sheer pleasure. Hello.