the drawing machine: July 2012

DRAWINGS

This was part of my sketchbook for a class on composition, It was an extremely helpful class. This was an example of central location composition. Much of the curriculum included the famous Andrew Loomis examples from his collection of books on how to draw, paint, and compose images successfully.

So many errors in drawing props and objects and all goes back to getting the basics downs, drawing elipses properly. Still practicing ;)

These two were part of my perspective of the human figure studies. Well I'm sure once I get anatomy in my head I will ace drawing figures later on.

PAINTING IN OIL

In class working hard!

Here is a technique that introduced us to painting in oil and seeing tonal values and changes. The two above were darker than the set up. It was direct painting using a method outlined by Hawthorn. where you find the center tonal values of the major groups. As we found the correct tones we moved onto finding what was next and spreading about the painting bit by bit, ever analyzing each stroke. This trains the eye and later will come as second nature. I felt it was tedious, but very helpful in the end.

Here is how far I got on this piece, overall I learned so much from it and it really helped me to develop my sense of tone, I had gone back and lightened the entire piece.

This was a quick warm and cool oil study done in the same dot by dot fashion as the tonal study. This time we were learning about warm and cool. Using only Titanium White, Cadmium Red Light, and Prussian/Pthalo Blue, we moved across our studies analyzing the warmth of light and coolness of shadows. But also learned that sometimes light is cool and shadows can be warm. At the same time keeping tones in mind. after this we moved onto a larger colour oil study on canvas.

Unfortunately I thought I had a picture of mine but I just realized I don't.

I can tell you I had much difficulty with it though. But much less than if we just jumped into colour.

Many of the studies are unfinished, and I believe the actual learning process was emphasized as most important. Seeing that you are learning it, and taking time to put care in something rather than finish up quickly and have it be technically incorrect and not taking much away from the experience.

STUDIES ON TONED PAPER WITH CONTE AND WILLOW CHARCOAL

A copy of Albrecht Durer's 'Study of a Drapery' on grey tone Canson mi-tients paper with black and white conte.

Tonal bag study.

Part one of drapery study.

Finished Drapery Study.

I hated drapery in this class, however, like anything that is exceedingly difficult I knew I was about to change how I saw things. I was right, because I've done a drapery study since and loved studying the folds and soft shadows.