4/24/15 Basic Drawing

Today's Class-  Today we continued our use of red and black conte crayons, this time together in the same drawing, allowing the benefits of the warm tones of the red along with the intense darks that can be achieved with black.  This is based on the idea behind the Renaissance developments of chiaroscuro drawing and chiaroscuro woodcut.  Chiaroscuro drawing starts with a paper with a medium value (can be colorful or neutral) already in the paper.  The artist lets the color of the paper act as the medium value tones, and adds white (pastel, conte, chalk) to create the lights in the image, and black (conte, charcoal, etc) to create the darks.  However, it does require the artist to acquire large sheets of color paper, which can be hard to find and expensive.  So we are using the white paper from our pads, and drawing medium values with the red crayon, and dark values with the black.  Below is an example from a previous semester.

How to make this up-  Once again, all students were there today, so everyone should be caught up.  However, if you'd like a reminder of what we did, to mark the occasion of our last meeting before the final drawing, I broke out the mannequins and cast body parts, a subject between still life and figure drawing.  For the first half of class I set up two mannequins and had everyone choose one to draw, combining the red and black crayons.  Those mannequins were also available for the second half, but I also put out assemblages of other body part related objects, the most popular of which were the headless baby and hands combo, and the encounter between a squirrel and a human head and arm (see below).

Homework- For our last homework of the semester, we are going back to the beginning, and shoes.  Find two different shoes.  Draw one of them on a page in your sketchbook, a full value rendering (including shadows, textures, etc) using both the red and black conte crayon. Then draw the second shoe (same deal) with the red and black crayon on a second page in your sketchbook.  Total of two pages.

For next class 5/1/15- We will be doing our Final Drawing of the semester.  I'll set up a still life, a mix of things you've seen before and some new things, but nothing you can't handle.  You will have the entire 3.5 hour class period to work on it if you want it.  You will have the choice of any of our value based mediums- charcoal (vine, compressed, or both), ink wash, or conte crayon (red, black, or both).  Bring your 18" x 24" pad, medium of choice, erasers, and any related materials that you might need (brushes for ink, spray fixative for charcoal, etc).  I will also go over the list of drawings expected for the portfolio review that will happen at our last class meeting on May 8th.