Introduction to Drawing – Ten Sessions

Description

Drawing Techniques

Introduction:

In this short introductory video, LFAS Director Ann Witheridge discusses what this course will cover, how to best utilize the course offerings, and the central goal of the course: to teach the grammar of painting and seeing through the tool and practice of drawing. This video also introduces you to the long tradition of the atelier and collaborative learning, inviting participants to engage with the digital offerings as if they were in a studio–learning from ‘masters,’ but also from each other. 

Unit 1: Setting up

In the first session, LFAS tutor Michael begins by helping you create a simple studio setting: how to create proper lighting, how to use simple tools you may already have in your home, and what specific materials you’ll need to acquire to get started. After covering the wide range of pencils, putty, erasers, and papers you can work with, the session dives into the foundational skill of mark making. Offering detailed instructions and exercises to accompany each skill, Michael will talk you through integral skills including creating straight and curved lines, creating a value scale, and learning pencil and eraser control, pressure, and positioning. 

Unit 2: Proportion and Composition

In the second session, you will build on your mark making skills as you practice creating accurate proportion and composition. After defining the concepts, Michael will discuss how to use anchor lines, set the size and position of your drawing, and how to develop your eye’s ability to gauge correct proportions. Importance will be placed on fluidly assessing and editing your lines as you hone your skills, and ensuring your proportions are correct before adding detail. Multiple exercises will be offered to help you practice translating the proportions of everyday objects into your sketchbook.

Unit 3: Gesture and Perspective

In the third session, you will turn towards gesture, rhythm and perspective as you begin to set up for a composition involving multiple objects. The session will define these concepts, and explore how they can help you create a set-up that is visually interesting and flows. After designing your still life, you will begin with abstraction and methodically move towards detail, along the way utilizing your accruing skills of mark making, assessing for proportion, using anchor lines, and evaluating composition. 

Unit 4: Mass and Values

In the fourth session, you will move away from lines towards value patterns, and an exploration of how light interacts with objects. The session will walk you through creating a still life set-up with strong contrast, giving you tips on where to position your light to create the desired mix of lights and darks. You will then practice the same set of steps you have been learning, but this time you will begin to create a two-tone drawing, honing in on the light and dark shapes and beginning to block in your shadows. The session will emphasize the importance of simplifying and unifying value patterns, and will offer you multiple exercises to continue to practice this essential skill. 

Unit 5: Edges and Accents 

In the fifth session, you will focus on the important skill of accurately representing the edges of both objects and their shadow shapes. The session will begin by defining the four types of edges – soft, hard, firm, and lost – and then help you learn to evaluate the edges you are seeing in real life and translate them to the page. This will help hone your ability to understand value changes, and will push your capacity for accurately reflecting values within a value range.

Unit 6: Toned Paper & Chalk 

In the sixth session, you will continue to work with simple value ranges, now focusing on using toned paper to create a midtone. The session will discuss the benefits of toned paper, and teach you how to use it to increase general tonal harmony and ground your value relationships. Moving through the same technical process you have been diligently honing, you will start by working near the tone of the paper and then gently moving towards more contrasting values. This session will end by teaching you how to add highlights to your increasingly complex composition, and leave you with some exercises to explore over the course of the week!

Unit 7: Toned Paper & Colour

In the seventh session, you will finally foray into colour! You will introduce colour slowly, starting with your big shadow and light shapes and then building colour on top. Working to create colour harmony, you will experiment with introducing different colour values and variances, and begin to understand the essential difference between values and colours. This session will emphasize the subtlety of learning to work with colour, the value of stepping away from your work to observe the larger work, and the possibilities of using colour to create harmony across your piece.

Unit 8: Extending Colour

In the eighth session, you will begin to extend your use of colour. Unlike your last session, your set up for this drawing will encourage using objects with wide colour variance, or creating increasing contrast between objects and backgrounds. As you push your skills to work with objects with distinctly different colours, you will practice evenly building up your colours while constantly editing and maintaining accurate value relationships, and will work to effectively utilize colour to create harmony across the piece. 

Unit 9: Drawing Step Stages

In this ninth session, you will put all of your skills into action as you create three different drawings of a single composition. Your first will focus on the proportion and line work stage; the second on blocking in shadows and 2-value compositions; and the third on colour. Through repetition–working from life each time–you will continue to hone your skills, while also getting the opportunity to reflect on the different stages of your drawing, and notice how returning to the same object and composition begins to train your eye and hand.

Unit 10: Final Drawing: Modelling Up

In this final session, you are going to draw the same subject twice. For each drawing, you will think intentionally about where you want the viewer to look, ultimately designing two different compositions that uniquely engage the eye. This session’s emphasis on attention, focus, and focal points–whether related to saturation, edges, or composition–will encourage you to explore how we are each drawn to notice and represent our visual world differently, and will ultimately offer new creative possibilities for your work.

Conclusion

In this final video, Ann will offer you an opportunity to look back through the methods you have studied and celebrate the skills you have gained. Offering practical suggestions for how to continue your learning and what sorts of daily exercises might be of benefit, this final video will encourage you to incorporate simple drawing practice not only into your daily life, but into the way you see the visual world.