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.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
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!
Sunday, February 8, 2009
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!
Sunday, February 1, 2009
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
