| Bonus
'how-to-do-it'
"Twister" byJRJ |
Establish
a standard for line weight in your drawing and make it consistent
through-out the work. Shadow is represented by heavy line, highlight
is represented by a light line and breaks in the line are used for
sharp corners or the brightest highlight. Get used to 'line speed'.
The actual and apparent speed of your hand moving can make a line
that tells what the object looks like: Not just light, but also fast.
Not just dark, but slow. |
Line
Drawing
Paolo Ucello perspective drawing of a chalice
Lee Bontecou Soot drawing
|
Beginning
student drawings tend to be "light, tenuous, and small".
A simple solution is the rule of thirds: one third white, one third
gray, one third black. Drawings done this way will demonstrate the
merit of "dark, assertive and large". You can see what
the drawings are, from across the room.
I
try to make the painting or drawing 'read' at three distinct distances:
From across the room the large graphic impact is a simple design
or composition. At a middle range, it begins to take form and there
is a change of recognition. Then up close - another recognition
stage occurs as the viewer sees what I was saying in the entire
work, including details. It almost tells a story. If you can do
this in your work, it will catch the interest of the viewer and
keep it all the way to a close viewing. That viewer won't lose interest
at least until after they have seen the details of the work.
Narrative
and Iconography
There
are many ways to create and reasons for making a drawing: One is
making a drawing that tells a story, most of what is called "realism"
tells a story about its subject. This is sometimes called "narrative"
especially when the story is most important. A second type of image
making is iconography. The image becomes a thing with a life of
its own apart from subject or narrative. This is common among images
that incorporate intense design elements. Religious icons are objects
of veneration directly related to subject matter. Pieces of jewelry
are iconic artifacts due to their design and intrinsic content with
little regard to subject matter. |
| Spatial
Drawing
"Critiquel" by JRJ
|
Last
time, I used the term "activating the space". A term that
means simply putting something in the negative space around the
objects we draw, to make the negative as interesting as the positive
or object space. We tend to concentrate on line speed and weight
as it relates to the object, and ignore the surroundings and background,
but they are legitimate targets of interest for our drawing. Learn
to use what you have in front of you, to see and see again.
Now
is a good time to begin the process of seeing well. For a beginning
drawing student that means: look at the set up, look again for the
details you didn't see to begin with, look a third time to see how
this image or collection of objects relates to you. This third part
will be the hardest to understand and make work. It is enough for
now that you think about these three levels and start trying to
applying them to your "process of seeing". |
| In
Class assignments |
Draw
10 small boxes in charcoal to show the steps between white and black.
Chiaroscuro
is the Italian word (it means light/dark) for putting this gray
scale ability into practice. Draw a cardboard box and match the
gray scale you see.
|
| Homework
Assignment |
Assignment
in addition to weekly sketchbook drawings:
Do a single
"Drawing of a Bowl". We will display these
next week.[use either iconography or narrative]. |
| Footnotes:
|
Links at the
bottom of the page include email and web address for class notes
if you miss a class and need to get the notes.
|
| Bibliography |
Book source:
optional textbook "Experimental Drawing" by Kaupelis
additional text "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain"
by Betty Edwards
|
| Links |
There
are sites online that provides an interactive display of how one and
two point perspective is supposed to work. http://www.mste.uiuc.edu/m2t2/geometry/perspective/
, a discussion of perspective drawing:
http://mathforum.org/sum95/math_and/perspective/perspect.html |
| |
Materials
Sources: Utrecht Art Materials, Dakota Art, Dan Smith
Inc., UW Bookstore
Book Sources:
Library, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com, UW Bookstore,
Used book stores in Tacoma or Seattle. |
 |
Links:
for class notes www.jonraderjarvis.com/classes.htm
and email contact address jrj@jonraderjarvis.com
© 2006 Jon Rader Jarvis, all rights reserved |
