Fall Portrait Drawing Class

Starting in October, I will be teaching a portrait drawing class. Sunday Mornings 10 am to 12 :30. We will be working in black and white, concentrating on our observation and rendering skills. Class will be open to beginners thru advanced level artists. Dates and location to be announced soon.

Working from the model, Week 6

Roger McNew was our model today. We started class with a discussion about creativity. We reviewed the steps and skills we have covered over the past 5 weeks. We commented that even when you know a basic principle, you can think about it in a new way. We also talked about critiquing your own work as a skill to improve. One solid way to do that is to stand back from your work. You can see what is happening by getting a little bit farther away, arms length or 4 or 5 feet, even better. Another good critiquing tool is to use a hand mirror or compact. By looking at the image in reverse, you can easily see any trouble spots.
This has been a wonderful class, lots of great drawings and learning. This will be my last winter class. All this hard work drawing will make painting and working on loction much easier. Coming for summer, painting workshops! We will go out on location and paint the beautiful San Juan Islands. 2 day workshops will be July 17& 18 and Sept. 11 & 12. I will be working in oils, all medium welcome.

Consolidating Ideas about Space

We talked about numerous traditional ways to create space in a drawing: overlap, diminishing size, change of marks, varying horizons, vanishing point perspective, edges, soft and hard edges, contrasts, high and low contrasts, ariel perspective, and finally what happens with color and distance. Luckily we had a beautiful morning to go outside and put some of these concepts into practice. It was exciting to see people try new idea and see good results. Seeing angles in vanishing point perspective is challenging, we used a handy yellow straw to help us see what subtle angle variations were happening in roof lines.
Sophie Marinkovitch showed her wonderful illustrated story, Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear now on youtube!

Consolidating ideas about Space, Week 5

More drawing from our sunny sunday morning

Week 4, Tricks to Put it All Together

Today was very exciting at our drawing class. We had the antique store to ourselves, and used it for rendering still life drawings. We continued our talk about shadows, revisiting the ideas of cast shadows, form shadows, core shadows and reflected light. We looked at Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring painting as a classic study in light and form. We revisited the concept of negative space, that being the key to having a drawing "lock in".....We used our viewfinders to see shapes around the antique store, not things, but interesting shapes. One final concept, we talked about rhythm in a drawing or painting.

Week 4, Part 2

We explored how to make an ellipse, which is difficult to do free-hand....Nice ellipses today!

Week 3 Seeing Values

Everyone got thrown into the deep end of the pool today and did just fine. We were lucky to have a terrific model today, local sculptor, Bert Fox. Today's lesson started with a talk about making a value chart, 1 to 10 values, as a way for artist to talk about lights and darks.We looked at a variety of artists approach to light and shadows, everyone from Vermeer, Rembrant, Degas, Chardin, and many others.
We talked about 2 different linds of shadows, Cast Shadows, and Form Shadows. Cast shadows we can see under the nose, or on a table. Form shadows we can see as a form turns away from the light, typically on a cheek. We talked about the kinds of edges shadows have, soft and hard edges and where we see them. With all that in mind, we launched into drawing from our model. Everyone really did a good job, seeing shadow shapes, and not getting to hung up in details.....Each pose was between 5 and 10 minutes long.

Week 3 Seeing Values, Lights and Darks Part 2

More great drawings from today:

Week 2, Demystifying PERSPECTIVE and other helpful art tools

Today we looked at several things that help in observational drawing. The first was scaling, that is using a "unit of measure" to measure the bigger whole. An example would be to measure with your arm held straight out and a pencil, the height of a lamp shade, from top to bottom edge. That would be one unit of measure. Next determine how many units from the lamp shade to the floor. This concept, either vertically or measuring horizontally,that is, across the form, can help put things in proportion to each other. A classic example is the head considered to be 1/8 of the body, or the hand as measure for horses. It is similar to laying a grid across in front of your eyes.
The next thing we talked about is determining angles. We looked at vertical lines, being very consistent in an interior space. Then we started to examine horizontal lines. This introduced our main lesson on perspective. First we defined the 3 kinds of perspective: 1 point, 2 point, 3 point and saw examples of each kind. Even though a lot of this information is very traditional, I showed 2 situations where perspective is very useful for portrait and landscape artists. In viewing the head especially a 3/4 view, we see the head as a cube. the eye line, nose and mouth line will all relate to a vanishing point, as will the placement of the ear. I showed an example of 2 point perspective, that helps to create a flat surface, such as a field or water surface. Finally we learned that vanishing points do not have to be on the page. Sometimes they are way off the page. We looked at some paintings and determined what kind of perspective the artist was using. We saw situations where one painting could have multiple vanishing points, all helping to control the space.
Please enjoy our excellent perspective drawings today. Everyone did a great job looking a difficult angles, determining what was happening, and figured out how to put them down on paper. Sometimes it was hard to believe what our eyes were telling us. It helps to have a few tricks up our sleeves to double check where things are.

More Perspective Drawings from Week 2

Our homework project this week is to do a perspective drawing at home, either interior, or outside, or both.

Homework projects from Week One

Great job everyone, lively lines and good compositions. The idea was to pick 3 or 4 objects, either the same one, from different points of view or a group of related objects and overlay them, concentrating on line and contour as the primary descriptive elements.

Week One, Starting with the Figure

We had a wonderful model this week to start our 2009 Sunday drawing class. Shannon brought her costume from a play she just preformed in. We talked first about different figurative approaches during the last 100 years. We started drawing with quick poses, looking for the overall gesture. We saw how we can use measuring points, such as the shoulders, knees or elbows, to compare side to side what is happening. We talked about drawing inside of the figure, and drawing outside the figure, or the negative shapes. Everyone really saw negative shapes, especially in a pose where the hands were on the hips, and a "hole" was created under the arm. We talked about setting the figure in an environment, and how just one line could not only indicate an environment, but contribute to the liveliness of the lines. We saw how a linear line works next to a curved line. Finally, we talked about different kinds of tools that people like to draw with, each one having it's own special characteristics.