Designing a Mandala, or Kaleidoscope, is a perfect culmination exercise to practice all your skills with lines, shapes, and patterns. You’ll need a paper, pencil, compass, and ruler for this. 1. Start by finding the center point on your paper. Using the compass, draw a circle in pencil to nearly fill the page. […]
Do you love coloring books? Adult coloring books are very popular right now. And I admit there is a wonderful meditative calmness that comes with coloring. But… there is nothing in those images and designs that you can’t draw yourself! And there is so much more enjoyment and satisfaction in a design that’s […]
Here’s a warm-up exercise to practice drawing all the different ways to make a line look and feel. On a piece of 80 lb paper, draw several shapes. Make them different sizes, overlap them, and have at least one go off the page. Next, with a fine tip Sharpie, fill in each of the shapes […]
A blank piece of paper staring back at you is SO intimidating!! Where do you start? What if you’re wrong? Relax, breathe. The basic building blocks of drawing are simply LINES and SHAPES. That’s all. Every drawing begins with a line. Start with a dot . . . the shortest LINE you can make. […]
“My line drawing is the purest and most direct translation of my emotions” Henri Matisse What shall our philosophy of Drawing be? Just as every other field of study has one, drawing is the necessary “base and core” for all Art. Through its clarity and simplicity the viewer can experience the artist’s ideas […]
I sat down today to “play” with my new set of Derwent sketching pencils. I tested the pencils’ range by using light to heavy pressure in my scale. You can see the difference using a “H”, or harder core compares to the “B” pencils, or the softer cores. After looking at how they each performed, […]
A friend of mine, who wants to start drawing, asked me why the sketching pencils have numbers and letters on them. Those are what’s called a Graphite Grading Scale. The scale is a code to tell the hardness and blackness of each pencil. Simply put, the number next to an “H” relays the hardness of the core. The […]
It must be a “Twin” thing. Ryan, Reese and I were working on 1 point perspective drawings. The girls were each drawing their houses independently, but when they were finished we discovered their fences matched up perfectly!!! They had inadvertently created JOINED properties!!i
“If we could talk to the animals, learn their languages, maybe get an animal degree….” Dr. Dolittle. Animals are pure of consciousness, no ego, no ulterior motives. They speak a language that is inclusive. The bird speaks the same as the sky, the leaves, and the trees. A tiger speaks as the jungle. If we […]
Explore several different drawing media and learn beginning to more advanced drawing techniques in this series. Participants will experience new techniques and complete an original art work during each session. The sessions are designed to be taken sequentially, as the skills build upon each other. However students can join on a “one time” basis as […]