The Drawing Studio: Drawing Fundamentals I, Week 8

To expand my drawing skills, I'm taking a class at the Drawing Studio, an artist cooperative here in Tucson. This is a series of posts outlining what we are doing in the class, week by week.

Week eight was the last week. During this class we tried our hand at figure drawing. Each person in the class took turns posing for 10 minutes as the rest of the class drew them.

Here are the best ones:

The Drawing Studio: Drawing Fundamentals I, Week 7

To expand my drawing skills, I'm taking a class at the Drawing Studio, an artist cooperative here in Tucson. This is a series of posts outlining what we are doing in the class, week by week.

For week seven, we drew draped cloth. Using our sticks, we drew the outline of the cloth's shape. Then, we used the concepts we learned from our value class to fill in the details of the cloth.

This one was different for me in that I did not use charcoal. I only used graphite pencil to do this drawing.

The Drawing Studio: Drawing Fundamentals I, Week 6

To expand my drawing skills, I'm taking a class at the Drawing Studio, an artist cooperative here in Tucson. This is a series of posts outlining what we are doing in the class, week by week.

Week six expanded the subject of perspective. Rather than drawing boxes, however, this time, we drew the interior of rooms. To do this, we used one point perspective, where walls that do not face the viewer straight on all go to a single vanishing point. We still used our measuring stick to get the proportions of things, though.

The Drawing Studio: Drawing Fundamentals I, Week 5

To expand my drawing skills, I'm taking a class at the Drawing Studio, an artist cooperative here in Tucson. This is a series of posts outlining what we are doing in the class, week by week.

Week five introduced us the the subject of perspective. Unlike the perspective techniques that we learned in High School, one or two point perspective, we learned how to measure perspective using our measuring stick.

To draw a cube shape, we labeled the hypothetical corner points with with letters and found the points like this:

1. Find AB.
2. Find the distance from AB to CD.
3. Find point D on line AB.
4. Compare AB's length to CD. (One face complete)
5. Find distance of line EF from AB.
6. Find point F on line AB.
7. Compare length of EF to AB. (Second face complete)
8. Find point G on line AE.

The Drawing Studio: Drawing Fundamentals I, Week 4

To expand my drawing skills, I'm taking a class at the Drawing Studio, an artist cooperative here in Tucson. This is a series of posts outlining what we are doing in the class, week by week.

For week four, we drew plants. We started out doing quick thumbnails of various plants. We then settled in for a long drawing. The idea was to give just enough detail to indicate what kind of plant it was, but not so much detail that we got bogged down.

Long leafy plant thumbnail.	Aloe Vera thumbnail.
A two hour study of a plant in pencil and charcoal. 18"x24". This particular plant was a cactus with big curly leaves on top.

The Drawing Studio: Drawing Fundamentals I, Week 3

To expand my drawing skills, I'm taking a class at the Drawing Studio, an artist cooperative here in Tucson. This is a series of posts outlining what we are doing in the class, week by week.

For week three, we were introduced to a new topic: value. We started out drawing a strip with five boxes. We then attempted to fill in those boxes with charcoal shading, going from light to dark. After we completed that, we did the same thing with seven boxes.

Once we completed our shaded boxes, we went on to a still life drawing. Like the week before, we sketched out the still life using a stick to measure proportions. After that, we shaded our drawings, using our shaded boxes as a guide.

A five step charcoal gradation.	A seven step charcoal gradation.
A two and half hour still life in charcoal and pencil. 18" x 24".

The Drawing Studio: Drawing Fundamentals I, Week 2

To expand my drawing skills, I'm taking a class at the Drawing Studio, an artist cooperative here in Tucson. This is a series of posts outlining what we are doing in the class, week by week.

This week we expanded what we worked on the week before, outlining shapes as best we could. This time, however, we tried something new: We held up a stick at arms length, trying to measure the proportions of the objects we were drawing. The items were painted white so that we would be sure to only draw the outline.

Outline of a wine bottle.

Outline of another wine bottle.

The Drawing Studio: Drawing Fundamentals I, Week 1

To expand my drawing skills, I'm taking a class at the Drawing Studio, an artist cooperative here in Tucson. This is a series of posts outlining what we are doing in the class, week by week.

The first class we were introduced to the teacher, Deb Steinberg. We then began our studies by outlining shapes, such as circles and squares, trying to get them as perfect as we could. We then moved on to more advanced shapes, such as garden tools, scissors, and kitchen implements. The idea was to do the outline only, trying to get the shape as perfect as possible.

Attempt to make the perfect circle.	Kitchen tool.
Scissors. I got in trouble for drawing the interior of the scissors.	Garden tool.

Murano In Acrylic

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This is a five hour study of the buildings in Murano (an island near Venice) in acrylic on 15" x 11" paper.

Rainbow Bridge In Acrylic

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This was a two hour landscape study in acrylic on 15" x 11" paper. It was my second acrylic painting in twenty years.

Sedona Landscape In Acrylic

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This was a two hour landscape study in acrylic on 15" x 11" paper. It was my first acrylic painting in twenty years.

Pencil Study of My Foot