"Learning is the beginning of wealth. Learning is the beginning of health. Learning is the beginning of spirituality. Searching and learning is where the miracle process all begins." ~ Jim Rohn
Sept. 12 - 14th, 2008 WORKSHOP - Day One
WARM UP EXERCISE
I started today's lessons with a warm up exercise I came up with at the spur of the moment. Holding the pencil like a wand, I encouraged students to use their whole arm and wrist while making various scribbles on their paper. Everyone seemed to agree that this helped them to loosen up for the sketching to follow.
TWO MINUTE GESTURES
I have some wood bird carvings and decided to use them as models for our two minute gesture sketches. After the allotted time was up, each person turned their bird clockwise a quarter of a turn. Each participant did a dozen sketches, three birds, four views each.
BLIND CONTOUR DRAWING
This is a wonderful exercise that I haven't done in a long time. None of the students had ever done a blind contour. This teaches hand eye coordination. You can't look down at your paper while you are drawing. You must only look at the subject while the pencil is moving. This trains you to caress the object with your eyes. After this exercise, students followed along with handouts as we went on to drawing a hummingbird from my Six Steps to Sensational Sketches Demo.
MONOTONE VALUE PAINTING
After lunch break, we did a value painting of a lighthouse. I explained WET-IN-WET techniques on painting skies, grass, water and buildings. Here is my demo painting.
"If you get into the habit of sketching, you'll never be bored."
~ Sandy Sandy
~ Sandy Sandy
Love this. I grew up in Tennessee, dreaming of living in a lighthouse in Maine...(???) And wound up living on the exact opposite corner of the U.S (California). We have some lighthouses out here too, but nothing like the east coast. Looking at this makes me want to be in the scene.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful.