Description:
I LOVE to draw! It’s meditative. It teaches me to better see and understand my subject. It forces me to think about value and how I can create the illusion of 3-dimensional form on a 2-dimensional surface just using different grays. It simplifies my composition choices. It requires few materials! Degas said, “If I could have had my own way, I would have confined myself to black and white.”
In this class, we’ll confine ourselves to black and white but with a constant eye toward how our discoveries can be translated into color for our future paintings. We’ll draw to complete finished, quality pieces. We’ll use simple graphite, tortillons and erasers to create powerful, intriguing drawings. We’ll do one still life of our favorite, interesting variety of objects and one drawing from our own photos.
As artists, we all want to improve our painting but we’re not all willing to draw! I firmly believe that drawing is the foundation of all visual art and through drawing we will keep our curiosity fresh and learn to get to the core of our subjects.
Objectives:
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Learn to really see and get to the core of your subject
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Understand what a full range of value means and how it can improve your drawing
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Acquire skills with a pencil and eraser
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Learn about additive and subtractive (reductive) drawing
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Become comfortable using an eraser to draw
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Develop an appreciation of graphite drawing as a finished quality piece
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Creatively draw from our own photos
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Determine which photos may be a useful reference and what to change when using a photo
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Transfer photos to paper in several ways
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Observe, critique and discuss student work and master drawings
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Really push a drawing to completion
Materials student will need to provide: Variety of graphite pencils, 2B, 4B, 6B, mechanical pencil, tortillons, erasers, smooth heavy paper ( Bristol Board, 140 hot press watercolor pad, any drawing paper that can take a beating). Several interesting objects, neutral color, varied materials: a bell jar, crystal, iron toys, scissors, tools, kitchen stuff, eggs, flatware, whatever! A few black and white photos: trees, pets, hands…..be creative!
Materials provided by instructor: I will bring my own supplies to share for experimenting and some photos as well
Betsey MacDonald Bio
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