Drawing
Scroll down for a series of videos in order transcribing slide shows and demos from a basic drawing class that I teach. Students might find these movies useful to preview and review subjects before and after class. The videos might be edited and re-uploaded for greater clarity from time to time.
Scroll down for a series of videos in order transcribing slide shows and demos from a basic drawing class that I teach. Students might find these movies useful to preview and review subjects before and after class. The videos might be edited and re-uploaded for greater clarity from time to time.
Basic Drawing Introduction And Outcomes briefly outlines the wonder of the beginning of the visual universe that will be revealed as you learn to draw, and like the actual universe, the visual one is capable of expansion through inflation with continued effort and practice. This little intro suggests looking inclusively at drawing as an aesthetic art form, a practical design tool, and a device to enhance perception and suggests how the drawing basics might continue to be refined through practice to increasing degrees of complexity for as long as you continue to pursue visual art. Basic drawing skills might remain essentially the same throughout time and space but they can be scaled up enormously as your abilities grow with practice. The basic drawing skills are a starting point for the most valuable of all art credentials; the ability to draw excellently. This ability to draw is an earned commodity currency unlike the purchased fiat currency of paper certificates, and redeeming it's value can only be done by demonstrating competency. To have spent the extraordinary amounts of time and effort to actually draw with excellence indicates that you have also taken extraordinary amounts of time to study the world of substance, matter and form around you with with an intensity that is probably un-matchable by any other means.
Optional Online Videos Of Interest For Browsing:
Feel free to casually browse/scan these videos prior to class to prime yourself for the notion of drawing, modelling and describing form for practical and perceptual purposes.
Worldbuilder by Bruce Branit suggests how technology might actually bring tactile hands on skills to the forefront of visual arts again. The imaginary 'program' that the characters are immersed in through virtual reality is very little than the common freely available SketchUp 3D program. Kind of corny but not dissimilar to more dystopian scenarios conjured up in the television series Black Mirror! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzFpg271sm8&t=9s
Professional Sculpting in Virtual Reality shows recent example of modelling in virtual reality and again suggests how tactile modelling and drawing might again become because of technology. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pf8sKAuzR0k
Blind Painter Sergei Mann. This BBC clip showcases a painter who became blind but who can still see his creations; not as they are but as he imagines them. Of great interest is how he uses 'points' on his canvas created with stick-tack to help orient him in both actual and imaginary space. This video is fascinating and worth a view in and of itself, but it's something we might to allude to in class when we discuss and apply drawing basics. www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Blind+painter+Sergie+mann
Materials in which we look at basic drawing supplies that you can purchase and use in this actual or virtual drawing course.
Materials in which we look at basic drawing supplies that you can purchase and use in this actual or virtual drawing course.
Drawing Position And Materials For Working At Home In An Online Course. If you are taking the Drawing The Basics course online this video shows an...adequate...well, not so bad after all...drawing position at a kitchen table that might keep you alert and will allow you to measure angles and proportions correctly. We also look at the surprisingly few number of materials that you will require.
Drawing As A Perceptual Tool acknowledges the usual reasons for drawing, as an art form and practical design tool, and proceeds to further suggest how drawing might also be thought of as a perceptual tool for focused attention in a world of visual chaos. I suggest that the ubiquity of the camera might also have become an impediment to seeing clearly.
The Prisoner In A Dark Room is you. This video continues to explore perception in relation to drawing in a thought experiment to make us aware of how we don't necessarily use just our eyes for seeing.
A Dollar For Your Thoughts questions visual memory as we continue to look at drawing and perception.
Face The Changes outlines more on perception and how we are often quite blind to changes in the visual world.
Eye Movements suggests that despite having an eye like a camera we don't see like a camera as we continue to look at possible perceptual assumptions related to vision.
Spot The Difference further suggests how little we actually notice visually and perceptually and suggests that the intense visual focus of observational drawing is a way to both see more, comprehend the nature of what we see better, and develop an enhanced general attention for things visual. It is suggested that the ability to draw well is the most valuable credential for being a visual artist.
Measuring Of Angles And Proportions Description is a demonstration in which describing this drawing method is attempted.
Arriving With Materials And Setting Up To Draw is a breezy introduction to best ways to set up at a drawing session, whether it is one of my classes, someone else's class, drawing or painting in the out of doors, or drop in life drawing. The best drawing position is illustrated, with two other ways, and slouching at a desk with you paper flat before you is decried. There is also a brief show of materials.
Measuring Angles And Proportions From A Sight Sized Projection And Drawing is demonstrated from the point of view of the person drawing and attention is paid to shutting one eye during observations of the subject.
Measuring Of Angles And Proportions in which we look at measuring of angles and proportions from an imaginary projection beside our easel and scaling what we see up to more appropriately fill our page.
Measuring Angles and Proportions Two in which measuring angles and proportions are demonstrated from the point of view of the artist.
Ellipses; a method of drawing them with a degree of accuracy.
Optional Videos For Perspective (For Viewing Or Reviewing Before Or After Watching The Videos Below, Or After Perspective Class).
Stanley Kubrick One Point Perspective. Or, single point perspective; something we shall study in class. A camera cannot exhibit actual single point perspective as we shall see, but film directors can come close to suggesting it and using it as a powerful devise in their visual art. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2yqw7qGrgU
Tarantino From Below. A series of scenes from Quentin Tarantino films shot from a 'worms eye view' from below which suggest the three point perspectives that we shall be studying in class. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCaM-JhkipE
Wes Anderson From Above. A series of scenes from Wes Anderson films shot from a 'birds eye view' which flattens perspective and creates a pleasing 'graphic' effect. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeKfUcoUg0g
Boardwalk Empire VFX Breakdowns. Shows scenes from the television series how how they are composited together and how attention to correct perspective integrates all the various elements. As well this video shows how an astonishing amount of what we see in 'live action' film is actually painted, digitally rendered or filmed elsewhere and incorporated into the finished scene. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFHKwaW4Um8&t=3s
Introduction To Perspective in which we review some basic perspective projections and see how they might be applied. We look at parallel/isometric, single point and two point perspectives.
Parallel Projections and One-Point, Two Point, Three Point Linear Perspective Grids. In this video which we have a brief look at parallel projections and then look more closely at at how to set up grids for one, two and three point perspective as well as an aside on a fourth vanishing point and curvilinear perspective.
Perspective Grids Demonstration in which we look at how to draw a box in parallel and two point perspective.
Examples Of The Use Of Perspective One, in which we see how the basic drawing concept of perspective can be applied in visual art, film and photography.
Examples Of The Use Of Perspective Two, in which look at more examples of how the basic drawing concept of perspective can be applied to visual art, architecture, film and photography.
Drawing Inside The Box looks as using the box as both a module for constructing more complex forms and as a framework for constructing forms. As well it is suggested the more we draw the more we develop our own more complex, nuanced and organic modules for constructing and understanding form.
Drawing Inside The Box Demonstration of the concepts of using a box as a framework to build form within, both in an observational drawing in which angles and proportions are measured, and in a drawing constructed on a perspective grid.
Light And Shade Describing Form (Part One). We look at some basic concepts of shading, of describing form with light and shade, and how they are applied in painting, theater, film, animation and photography.
Light And Shade Describing Form (Part Two). Continuing to look at concepts and examples of the use of light and shade on form in art and visual media as well as examples of it's absence.
Exercises In Light And Shade in which we look at how to render objects in class or at home using the effects of light and shade to describe form. We also take a look at some examples of how light often, even generally, fails to illuminate the eyes of a subject, in order to emphasize the careful observation required for lighting your subjects.
Exercises In Rendering Light And Shade Two. More demonstrations of rendering with light and shade and example of how concepts are applied to the strange world of shiny and transparent objects.
Drawing The Skeleton. A look at drawing the skeleton; in whole, much like considering a figure; and in parts, looking at individual components for creating an inner inventory of biomorphic shapes.
Life Drawing; The Ghost Recognizes The Shell. Reviews the value of observational drawing from life and surveys life drawing exercises. Generally only one class in Drawing: The Basics is devoted to life drawing, however, I'm flexible to the needs of students. The first time I offered this class to a small group of online students the interest in drawing the human form was high and we spent several classes dealing with the human form.
Abridged Life Drawing Demonstration. Using an online life drawing site I draw a couple of gestures and a five minute pose while rambling incessantly about the nature of drawing from life.
Aerial (Atmospheric) Perspective. A look at the effects of atmosphere and suspended aerosols and particulates on depth perception in observation, painting and film.
Intro to a chin colle workshop.
Demo of pulling a print on an intaglio press.