the last of the portforlios

Cheers to you all. I certainly hope that you are enjoying the much deserved break from the semester. I am writing because portfolios need to be picked up from my studio. I understand that folks are out of town, but you haven't picked up your portfolios by january 15th, they will be discarded.

sorry to be a wet blanket

wanda

PORTFLIO PICKUPS

Hi all and cheers to you all this holiday season. Just a reminder that your portfolios are still in my studio and I need to get those out of there so that I can get back to work, as well as return your materials to you. I will be at CSB on Friday all day from 10am till 5pm, so that is the next opportunity you will have to pick these up from me.

cheers
wanda

WHAT TO BRING TO CLASS THIS WEEK!

I would like you all to bring in clear magazine tear outs of faces, hands, that sort of thing, with good contrast and detail. we will be using them in class this week. Also, you do NOT need to bring in your large newswprint pads, just your sketchbooks.

see you at 2:50

The Opening

Thank you to the students from tuesday's drawing fundamentals class for attending the opening reception of "The Black Madonna" at Union theological seminary in NYC last night. It was great fun for me to share some of my work with you all and to take you to what may have been a very new experience.

I look forward to being able to do that again with you all soon. I recommend picking up or subscribing to Time Out New York magazine. there you canfind listings of all things happening in NYC including artist talks, gallery receptions, lecture series and more!

have a great day and see you all in class today!
cheers

My MISTAKE

For my Tuesday class! WE WILL BE GOING TO THE OPENING AFTER ALL! PLEASE MEET ME IN THE CLASSROOM AT OUR 2:50 Timeslot. we will leave as soon as everyone shows up. the opening is from 5-8pm on 121st street and Broadway at Union Theological Seminary (James Chapel)

see you all there.

Round trip train tickets are $17.50

Negative Space

In this week's lessons we will be addressing Negative space, the space BETWEEN things, or easier still, the space that exists around things.
Here are some images to help familiarize you...




Negative space is a key component to interesting overall designing of your picture.
Happy drawing!

Homework

As part of the excercise for this week (draped fabric), the weekend homework is to draw your bed. please use your 18x24" good sketch paper. You are free to use any of these mediums : Charcoal, ink or conte crayon.
Be creative. remember: the assignment is about DRAPED FABRIC!!

What we've covered thus far

Hell you all. this is just to recap what we've been up to so far:

Contour Drawing
Controlled Contour Drawing
Composition
Gesture Drawing
Pictoral Plane
Perspective
Tone Studies
Self portraiture with a room interior (this was a homework assignment that has already been critiqued in class)

The Homeworks thusfar are the following:

Sketch book work
Self Portrait (contour line in INK set within an environment)
Home still life (controlled contour) with three selected shapes that are to be toned. one dark, one solid black and one light tone


Upcoming Lessons:
Draping (drawing draped fabric from observation)
Negative space
Copying from the masters
drawing upside down from a photograph. (begin compiling a collection f magazine clippings you can use as source material for this project

Keep checking up on the blog for more information regarding this class

Suggested supplemental reading
Drawing for Dummies
A Guide to Drawingby Daniel Mendelowits
Drawing from the Right Side of the Brain
Art and Fear

Planes

Since we are learning to draw. we need to understand that objects exist in space. To illustrate on a 2D surface what we see in 3D we need to understand the picture plane.
There are three planes, a foreground midground and background. Keeping that in mind, we need to always consider that things in the background recede and things in the foreground become more prominant. Tone is one way to make things have the illusion of moving forward or receding in space. How things are placed and paying attention to how things overlap one another is another way to help us create the illusion of a third dimension in our drawings. There are also directional cues that we need to pay close attention to that we can use as guides in further understanding and creating believable images.

we will be working on tone and shading next class

please be prepared with hard boiled eggs to do tonal studies

what we've covered so far

Here's a little review of what we've covered in class so far. I would also recommend picking up this book to further your understanding and to supplement what we are learning in the classroom.

"Drawing to See" by Nathan Goldstein and Harriet Fishman
Contour Drawing:

Contour drawing is essential to this class as it trains you in hand/eye coordination. It forces you to slow down and more accurately record what your eye is actually looking at.

Exercises: Contour drawings of still life set ups, drawings of our own hands and drawings of fellow students in the classroom, including the surrounding environment.



Tone:

Understanding how light lands on a surface is one way to begin to understand how they exist in space. Translating light and dark into tones on paper further strengthens that understanding.

Excercise: Tonal studies of still life set up, tonal rendering of hard boiled eggs.



Homework Assignments thusfar

Contour Drawing of yourself in an environment (drawn from life, not a photograph)

Drawing what you see PT2

This is the most important thing that I can think of when it comes to learning the very fundamentals of drawing. It is about trusting what your eyes see. Moreover it is about remaining somewhat objective with how you look at what you are going to be interpretting. In remaining objective you will be able to take cues from what is directly in front of you to determine angles and space. Remaining somewhat objective about what you are looking at will also help take some of the pressure off of "how badly" you think you draw and make you think more about how sharply honed your eyes are to really "see"what is in front of you.

Artists to look at

This blog is to help further you along in your drawing education. I thought you might want to take a closer look at some artists that are exceptional drawers. It is my hope that you will find them as exciting to look at as I do, and I hope that you will use this as a spring board for your own research into artists.

You are also invited to the Slide Library to further your research while on campus. The slide library is located on the second floor, room 206


Here are some people for you to check out:
Henri Toulousse Lautrec
Kathe Kollwitz
Albrecht Durer
Egon Schiele
MC Escher