Notes from Tuesday, September 27

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 around the subject. Learning to see and consider the negative space helps us understand how to translate 3-D forms into 2-D drawings. It helps us see the correct shape and size of the positive objects, and how to place them in space. Concentrating on the abstract shapes formed around the animal takes your mind off trying to get the animal ‘right’. It's another good way to access right-brain seeing. And drawing the negative shapes is often easier than drawing the actual object.

c.   Negative space drawing:

• Use gesture again, but this time draw only the spaces around the animal. 
• Don't outline the edges- rather, scribble in the space up to the edges.
• Just as before, use light strokes for the first layer, then darker as you get surer of the forms.
• Try to see the shapes of the spaces as abstract angles and curves (like you did with the faces and vases exercise), or as jig-saw puzzle pieces. 

3.   Blind Contour drawing: Now go in and add a blind contour inside your negative space.

4.   Discuss Composition and Final drawing

a.   Consider emphasis, simplicity, variety and harmony:

1)   Variety: Using different shapes, lines, colors, and textures to create interest.

2)   Harmony: Using similar shapes, lines, colors, and textures to help the design hold together. 

3)   You will need to decide if you want to lean towards one or the other, to express the character of the animal you are drawing, or your own feelings.

b.   Final Drawing:

1)   Choose one composition and do largish gesture with charcoal on sketch paper: Notice that the shadows and highlights on an animal are created by the muscle and bone contours. Leave the lightest areas white paper, and build up background areas by blending charcoal to the correct tone.

2)   Go back in and add outlines where needed, and texture of the fur with a charcoal and / or white pencil: Demonstrate different textural marks to try:

5.   Introduce tree drawing:

a. Our next project is a tree drawing with pencil, pen, charcoal, or brush. Take or find photos of tree that are close enough to see the texture of the tree.

b.   Draw thumbnails to plan a simple composition focusing on the tree trunk, but have interest in the positive and negative spaces. Try both a negative space drawing and a blind contour drawing.

c.   To believably draw a tree, you need to:

1)   First outline the shape of the trunk and branches.

2)   Next look at the value patterns underneath the texture. You can see them better if you squint your eyes and blur the details. Outline the different value areas.

3)   Bark texture is indicated by using marks that imitate bark shape and a suggestion of texture that our mind interprets. You don’t have to draw the texture in great detail but use the stokes that convey the feeling.

d.   Check out this web site: https://pendrawings.me/how-to-draw-tree-trunks/

6.   Homework: Do your thumbnails and start a first draft for this drawing- experiment with texture.