Monday Morning Art School: how important is drawing, anyway?
Drawing is the grammar of art, and color is art’s vocabulary. As with language, we learn them both intuitively and intentionally.
Step 2: The Value Drawing
How to practice drawing (when you don’t feel talented)
Drawing is not a magic trick—it’s a series of steps like long division or attaching a sleeve to a dress. Anyone willing to put in the time can learn it.
Monday Morning Art School: what do you use for drawing?
What tools do you love for drawing, and why?
Monday Morning Art School: drawing realistic clouds
Clouds have volume and are subject to the rules of perspective. Clouds over Whiteface Mountain, oil on canvasboard, available. Clouds are not flat. The same perspective rules that apply to objects on the ground also apply to objects in the air. We are sometimes misled about that because clouds that appear to be almost overhead are, …
Continue reading “Monday Morning Art School: drawing realistic clouds”
Monday Morning Art School: drawing the human hand
Hands are worth mastering because they speak about our experiences and character. Study of a Woman’s Hands, 1490, charcoal and silverpoint, Leonardo da Vinci, courtesy Royal Collection, London I wish I’d had the opportunity to study with one of the comic book greats like Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko. They had a gift for compressing …
Continue reading “Monday Morning Art School: drawing the human hand”
You can’t abstract if you can’t draw
Try reducing one of these paintings to a notan, and you’ll realize just how much drawing underpins this seeming simplicity. Plein air painting by Tara Will, courtesy of the artist. “Why are you teaching us self-portrait?” a student recently asked me. The human face is the most demanding subject to draw, because very slight errors …
Monday Morning Art School: Draw a face, yours or others
Have trouble drawing people? Here’s a way to get a good likeness in a hurry. Robbie, by Carol L. Douglas We’re going to be doing self-portraits in my classes during the next two weeks. We’ll be using mirrors, but this is a technique that works with pictures of yourself or others, from the live model or …
Continue reading “Monday Morning Art School: Draw a face, yours or others”
The four steps of landscape drawing
Being technically accurate frees up your subconscious mind to analyze and interpret what you see. Main Street, Owls Head, 16X20, oil on gessoboard, $1623 unframed. Observation I once took an artist on a long loop to see all my favorite painting sites here in midcoast Maine. “But there’s nothing to paint,” she wailed. She was …
Monday Morning Art School: when you lose your drawing
You do a lovely underpainting and you lose it in the top layers. Why does that happen? Fog Bank, by Carol L. Douglas. This will be on display at Maine Farmland Trust Gallery later this month. The human mind loves complex, irrational space divisions. The same mind perversely regularizes what it paints and draws. A …
Continue reading “Monday Morning Art School: when you lose your drawing”