Art with Cynthia

1.    Review & Homework:  Last week  we discussed gesture drawing and experimented with charcoal... Gesture is just one useful tool for starting a drawing, especially one with lots of variation of form, as in a human body or an animal. You can also use contour outlines, and negative space drawings, or any combination. b.     Animal drawing:  Your homework was to do thumbnails and start a first draft for this drawing, and experiment with texture- how far did you get? 1)     Did you do thumbnails to decide on the composition? 2)     Did you try a gesture? How did it work for you? 2.     Negative space drawing: a.     Drawings have 2 kinds of space, the positive (the object), and the negative (the background).  One basic skill of drawing is to see the negative spaces. b.     When we draw or paint, we tend to concentrate on the subject and ignore the negative space aro...

-Need vine charcoal (soft), charcoal and drawing pencils, white pencil, kneaded eraser, sketch paper, spray fixative, good quality largish photo- preferably black and white 1. Review & Homework: a. Last week we discussed expressive drawing and experimented with ink and brush... What do you think creates expression in your drawings? b. Still life drawing: You were asked to express a feeling of order and simplicity with these drawings. How successful do you think you were? 1) How did you decide on the shapes to emphasize and how to do it? 2) How did you think about what kind of lines to make? 2. Review Gesture: a. In the Beginning class you learned that one basic skill of drawing is to see the form of things. Form in drawing refers to the 3-dimensional bulk of what you are drawing- the height, width, and depth. In drawing we translate the 3-dimentional form into 2-dimentional shapes. b. Gesture drawing is a loose kind of sketching or scribbling that attempts to quickly ca...

1. Review & Homework: a. Last week we discussed composition and principles of design, specifically emphasis and simplicity... review: 1) Emphasis: Decide which part you want to draw most attention to, and which will be secondary points of interest that help to move the eye around. -The dominant element, or focal point, is the part with the greatest visual weight, that attracts the eye first. -You can emphasize a part with bolder lines, darkened shapes, or more textural marks. -Usually best to put the focal point in a "sweet spot", not the center and not too close to the edge: 2) Simplicity: Leave out unimportant details that don't add to the meaning of your picture, in order to emphasize what is important. Consider the inclusion of each thing based on the contribution it makes to the overall design. Much of the beauty and skill in good artwork comes with learning what to leave out. b. Homework: I asked you to draw at least 1 more composition of your veggies. How did y...

1. Design Introduction: This month we will continue to draw from life and photos, and we will use some new tools. We'll do some more expressive (less realistic) drawings; Also, we will do more study of composition. a. Still life- I asked you to collect 3 to 5 vegetables with interesting shapes and set up a still life, preferably with a blank background behind it. Ideally, your still life will have some form of natural light or a good lamp nearby. The light source doesn’t have to shine directly on the center of your objects. Light coming from one side can make for an interesting sketch too. b. Homework- And I asked you to make at least one blind contour drawing of your arrangement - A blind contour is a good warm up, to bypass the L-brain idea of "how to draw vegetables" and go to R-brain seeing the shapes and curves. c. Review- Some concepts we covered last time are: 1) Contours (the edges of things.) 2) Form (the 3-dimensional bulk of what you are drawing translated int...

Composition is the way you arrange the parts of your picture on the page. Artists work to arrange the parts (lines, shapes, colors, and textures) on the page so that they will grab the viewer’s attention and keep the eye moving all around.  When you begin to work with composition you step away from rendering exactly what you see, and begin to make artistic decisions about what you want to express, and how. The process of composing the picture is called design , a process of selection, simplification, distortion, and rearranging.  Artists use "principles of design" to make decisions about how to arrange the parts of a drawing. Some of these include: Variety:  Using different shapes, lines, colors, and textures to create interest. Harmony: Using similar shapes, lines, colors, and textures to help the design hold together.  Unity:  Organizing the parts of a design so they work together.  Simplicity: Eliminating parts in order to create better unity. Balan...

  For our first project next week, we will work on a still life of vegetables. I'd like you to prepare this week: Collect 3 to 5 vegetables with interesting shapes. You can use all the same shapes, or a variety - whatever grabs your fancy. Choose veggies that won't wilt unless you want to replace them several times. Set up your still life someplace where it can sit for a while without being moved, preferably with a blank background behind it. Arrange it anyway you want. Ideally, your still life will have some form of natural light or a good lamp nearby. The light source doesn’t have to shine directly on the center of your objects. Light coming from one side can make for an interesting sketch too. Make at least one blind contour drawing of your arrangement before next Tuesday's class. You might want to do several, rearranging the veggies each time to try different compositions. (For a review of blind contour see the Review post) A blind contour line drawing is a good warm u...