2/6/15 Basic Drawing

Today's Class- Today we continued our study of line, doing exercises in gesture drawing and negative space, both of which are helpful in the still life process.  

How to make this up-  Students did three exercises today.  First I put together a display involving flexible young bamboo shoots, and had everyone draw it in a continuously diminishing number of lines, forcing students to reduce the subject to the most essential gestures.  Second, I put an old wooden chair in the center of the room, and had everyone draw negative spaces- only the empty shapes found between pieces of wood.  Third, I set up a still life of an assortment of large bottles, a practical application of using negative space in a still life drawing.  The specific instructions and student examples from previous semesters can be found here.

These are portfolio exercises and must be made up by the 1st half portfolio collection to receive full credit.

Homework- Gather four bottles of similar size (four wine bottles, four soda bottles, four perfume bottles, etc) and place in the center of a table at near eye level.  In your small sketchbook, do a pencil line drawing of the set up using a full page, paying attention to bottle size, shape, and location, using negative space to help with the process.  Without touching the bottles, move yourself to a different location/viewpoint and draw it on a second page.  Then two more positions and two more drawings, for a total of 4 pages of bottle drawings.  (an alternative is to have the four bottles on a tray or something else rigid and rotate the whole tray between drawings, so that bottles maintain relative position to each other, but your view is different each time)

For next class 2/13/15-  We will continue with line, with a focus on perspective, the idea of representing three dimensional objects and spaces on a two dimensional page in such a way as to make clear to the viewer true size, orientation, and location of the subject relative to the viewing position.  Bring your 18" x 24" pad, pencils and eraser.  I'll provide the subject.