The ‘Get Smart Create Art’ drawing workshops (13th and 16th of April 2015) were not so much about the end product, but about learning the basics through to more advanced concepts of drawing, giving students the ability to draw with confidence and expression, even at the expense of precision.
Below are some of the exercises the students performed, feel free to attempt some or all yourself. There are no right or wrongs, and always remember, every mind is unique, no-one else can draw exactly like you!
Experiments with Willow ad Compressed Charcoal
Trying new techniques of holding the charcoal to experiment with lines, pressure, shading, rubbing back, blending, different mark making techniques etc.
Blind Contour Drawing – Drawing your own hand
Blind means without looking at your paper while drawing with total concentration on the subject you are drawing. This problem is designed to improve your visual concentration. You will begin to understand the importance of being able to concentrate on what you are seeing. Do not worry about good drawing, distortion or mistakes in your drawing.
The exercise is to help you begin to see what is actually in front of you and not from memory or what you think you see. It takes so much concentration to do the exercise that you will find you will be very tired or you may have a headache after you have completed it.
Contour Drawing – Hat Rack (White Charcoal on black paper)
Measuring objects and observation – Cross back chair
Judging the angles, using your pencil/ charcoal stick as an aid, hold it vertically about 30cm in front of your eyes then tilt it left or right until it lines up with the object in front of you. Holding that angle, move the pencil down to the relevant area of your drawing.
Judging proportions, your pencil can also be used as a ruler. Measure the length of the object as it appears along your pencil and mark the length with your thumb. That measurement can then be used to check the relative lengths of other lines.
Gesture Action- drawing the human figure (2 mins for each pose)
The key to gesture drawing is action not consistent line and remember , you are not drawing the details of hands, feet, facial expression, hair, and clothes. To start, you focus on getting the correct proportions and angles of the head shoulders, hips, arms and legs. Once you start getting these lines in place you then lead into building up your drawing to create a sense of energy . The idea of a gesture drawing is to capture the models essential gesture, movement, volume, weight, and energy in the drawing. The drawing should be bold and quickly drawn. To achieve this you must draw from the shoulder, use your whole body, and experiment with different lines for example thick, thin, broad, heavy light etc. This physical and energetic approach to drawing creates beautiful expressive drawings with elegant lines and gestures.
Discussion of 2d & 3d shapes. Negative Space drawing – Still life chair.
The negative spaces/ shapes are the shapes and spaces around and between what you are drawing. It takes skill to see these accurately, but will help your drawing enormously. Whatever drawings you do from observation, drawing the negative spaces accurately will improve the accuracy of your drawing.
Drawings are more likely to be geometrically abstract, an artwork that does not depict a person, place or thing in the natural world.
Wire Drawing
Similar to contour line drawing, using armature wire, we will create line drawings from a previous drawing. Explore with the wire rather than feeling that there is only one way to do it.
Still Life drawing
Still life, white & black charcoal on neutral paper. Using combination of techniques learned thus far, but looking at shading and highlights by using black charcoal for dark shadows and white charcoal for highlights to create a volume (3d effect).
