class news

It's a rainy, dark October day, so I thought it would be a good time to upload some photos of what's been going on at the studio lately! A couple weeks ago the drawing classes explored Positive and Negative Spaces... the shapes that are formed by the figure and the background. I made up different worksheets for the kids to see and copy the negative shapes...

Being able to see the shapes that are formed around your subject gives you an advantage when you are arranging a composition... if those shapes are interesting, then the whole picture becomes more interesting to look at.

Then we moved on the next week to Perspective and Proportion. I taught them sighting with their pencils-- looking at the verticals, horizontals and angles inside the room. They picked a corner to draw. I was amazed at how well they saw extreme perspectives! They also used their pencils to sight size comparisons-- the door is twice as long as it is wide (1:2). A lot of times teachers try to teach kids the technical methods of one-point or two-point perspective, but really their brains aren't ready to use those tricks to apply to what they see in real life. Sighting is just learning to see and compare. We don't trust our eyesight and that's a huge hurdle to becoming good at drawing!

I have been having a great time watching the progress in my watercolor class! It is always fun to see the variety of styles when people pick up the paint and explore for the first time. We always laugh at the huge differences in color and application even though they are using the exact same three or four colors! I'm so proud of how they are jumping in to learn!

This past Tuesday we braved the wind and chilly air to paint outdoors. We picked a view of a farm and surrounding trees to learn to mix a good variety of greens and also to paint atmosphere and perspective in landscapes. This is really hard stuff!

This week in my drawing classes, we are exploring varieties of texture in our lines. I gave them a photo of an animal (the furrier, the better for this) and they split it up into four segments. In the first they were asked to do it as a line drawing with a variety of wide (dark) lines and thin (light) lines...like our contour drawings we did the first week. In the second box, they practiced using hatching to create the lines and values. The third box, they used cross-hatching which is very similar. The fourth box uses scribbles to create lines and areas of grays and darks. I thoroughly enjoyed this lesson myself, but I think it was slightly difficult for the class on Wed. I'm anxious to see how Saturday's class goes. I think kids work better for me on the weekends because they haven't had to sit through a whole day of school and they seem to be more relaxed about trying new things.

I have something to share with you in my next post... off to take some photos!

~ B.