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Notes from Tuesday, September 8

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 into shapes.)
3) Negative space (the background area around the objects.)
4) Perspective (how things are placed in space).
5) And gradations of value in forms and in shadows.

d. Still life drawing is an easy way to work on seeing and drawing contours, shadows, and negative space; also an easy way to work out the composition.

e. Composition is the way you arrange the parts of your picture (lines, shapes, colors, and textures) on the page. 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. Some goals of composition are to grab the viewer’s attention, keep the eye moving all around, and to express a particular mood or feeling.
1) The process of composing the picture is called design.
2) Artists use "principles of design" to make decisions about how to arrange the parts of the drawing.

g. I'm going to make it easy for you this time and say that we are all going to express a feeling of order and simplicity with these drawings. We will work towards doing an ink drawing on rice paper that has a "zen" feel.

h. Principles of Design: See the next post for a list, but here are the two we will focus on this week-

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.

2. Thumbnails: Thumbnails are small drawings (3x3-inches) that help you to figure out your composition and resolve the design, so you don’t have to make big changes later. Make thumbnail sketches to get lots of ideas on paper, and visually brainstorm without obsessing.

1) Make at least 4 thumbnail sketches- rearrange still life each time if you want.
2) Your goal is to emphasize a focal point, and create interesting positive and negative spaces. Let yourself be guided by intuition; there is more logic to intuition than one might think.

3. Semi-blind contour line drawing: Choose favorite composition and redraw on large paper with a simplified contour drawing:

1) Stay in the same position so you don't see the veggies from different angles.
2) Keep your eyes mostly on the veggies, but glance at the paper to adjust the placement and proportion, seeing it like a jigsaw puzzle. (How long one part is in relation to another, how the angles fit together, where the overlap of occurs...).

3) Use measurement to get the proportions correct. Hold your pencil upright at arm's length. Choose one shape as a "unit", from the top of the pencil to your thumb. Measure all other shapes and negative spaces in comparison to that unit. Remember that you can change proportions in order to emphasize or simplify.
4) Add in shadows under vegies with contour lines, shaded with hatch marks. You can do the same for strong shadows on the veggies. Think about shadows as an element you can change to simplify or emphasize.

4. Homework:
a. Draw at least 1 more composition of your veggies this week. Next week we will do a brush and ink drawing on rice paper.
b. If you want to meet face-to-face between now and then, give me a call!
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