Content

"Terry" by JRJ

"self-portrait" by JRJ

Drawing in Sketchbooks will give you a chance to record visual images that you will not see or understand as well, any other way. Take the time to draw something in detail and you learn a great deal about it. Put that into a drawing, and you record that experience now for yourself, and for posterity. Look at that drawing ten years from now and you remember and relive that experience. Besides doing it for yourself, your children's children will thank you for making and keeping sketchbooks.

Color is usually limited to the painting classes: oil, acrylic and watercolor. In drawing, color begins with conte crayon and colored paper. Color can be used as a value or to represent local color - either or both can be used, but the single requirement is consistency. If it is used as a value substitute, it should be used for every instance of that same value in the drawing. If just local color, it should be limited to that use. Combining uses can make for confusion - confusion in understanding the drawing. It is possible to use it to do both things, but small variations or inconsistencies stand out.

Seeing


"Ballet" by JRJ

I will now give you a secret to drawing - do this and you will make a quantum leap in the quality of your work.
1. Gesture - use gesture to establish proportion and scale, refine it to make a contour drawing,
2. Value - carefully create dark value areas, make a tone in those areas and smooth it with a chamois,
3. Erase - use an eraser to refine edges and make highlight marks in the darker value areas - use it for texture as well -
4. Detail - at the last, add detail and line work to 'finish' the drawing. Learn to use the eraser as much as you use the mark making implements.

Learn to use the chamois to erase texture and stroke, and the dirty chamois to add tone. Do this precisely and watch the quality of your work change. These are not discrete or linear directions - they overlap, and are subject to doing multiple times in a single drawing, but the sequence and process is the same.

Spatial Drawing

Using atmospheric perspective, means being aware of the change in contrast and detail as objects move farther away, or as parts of objects are farther away from us. They are more gray and indistinct. This works on a small scale as well as a larger landscape scale.

1 - 40 minute drawing -- Composition gesture, value / mass building, then detail - a fully developed drawing. Be conscious of the sequence form, and make the drawing interesting. Start with the same setup - class room interior, make a fully developed drawing to illustrate your control and knowledge of perspective.

Footnotes:

Bibliography - Edward Hopper -- by Edward Hopper, Lloyd Goodrich
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (Volume 1) by Leonardo Da Vinci
Michelangelo Life Drawings by Michelangelo Buonarroti
Old Master Life Drawings: 44 Plates by James Spero (Editor)
Links - ArtLex Art Dictionary: http://www.artlex.com/
Donato Giancola: http://www.donatoart.com/galframeset.html
Life Drawing site: http://figuredrawings.com/lifedrawings.html