Betsey MacDonald: It's Our Nature to Draw! - 5 Week Drawing class (All Levels Welcome!)

Description:

Drawing is the foundation of all the visual arts plus it’s a beautiful, expressive art form on its own. I believe that the best way to learn about something is to really see it by drawing it. Since it’s our nature to be curious about the natural forms around us, that’s what we’ll draw. We’ll draw bones, leaves, milkweed, garlics and anything I find that’s interesting. We’ll start with graphite for blind and modified contour drawings then move on to value studies for the first two sessions. Then we’ll switch to vine charcoal for our skulls by first setting a ground and then use a subtractive approach by drawing with an eraser. We’ll then complete our dramatic charcoal studies by focusing on the finer details. We’ll also use black ink and fine point sharpies with wash and watercolor. Through drawing, we’ll learn to really look at some of the incredibly designed life forms that share our world!

Objectives:

• Have fun learning to draw!
• Improve observational skills through drawing from life 
• Use line and value to render objects in light and shadow
• Practice the art of contour line drawing and learn to “see”
• Acquire skills for drawing with both graphite, charcoal and ink
• Creatively render natural objects and learn how value can create form
• Observe, critique and discuss student work
• Gain a greater appreciation of the wonder all around us

Materials student will need to provide:

Pencils, 2B, 4B and 6B, erasers, rubber and kneaded and mixed media paper or heavy paper that can take abuse, for the first two classes. We’ll talk about what else to bring for the other classes but if you have it we’ll be using vine charcoal and charcoal sticks, tortillons (blending stomps), extra fine and fine sharpie, black India ink with a quill pen and a couple of watercolor brushes.

Betsey MacDonald Bio