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What Do You Want to Draw Today?

Weeks 11-14: Getting Real With Pencils and Charcoal

While drawing from real life with charcoal and various pencils, advanced NB sketchers pushed into new skill levels for their work. The result? Spectacular, to say the least! To view everyone's drawings, scroll down and click 'Read more' at the bottom of this post.

 
 

Images shown clockwise, starting upper left: Thairie smears, smudges, and erases his way through a drawing of a plaster cast; Gianna puts a delicate touch to contrasting shadows and highlights while drawing in charcoal from a plaster cast; Gianna's drawing shows how she started with accurate contour lines and proportions before carefully adding lighter and darker tones; The plaster cast drawn by Thairie shows accurate proportions and perspective, bold contours, and tones for shadows, mid-tones, and highlights.

Shown at left is a superb charcoal study of a plaster cast hand. The drawing shows very accurate details and proportions--a full hour of intense concentration! The artist is NB sketcher, Katia.



 

  
 
Students are finding their own voice in their drawings as they focus on projects that move them toward creating their future. From fine art to graphic design and video game design, students explore different materials and subject matter. To see more pics of NB sketchers in action: Click here

Drawings from observation: Gianna's large-format charcoal drawing of a dolphin vertebra (above left); Taylor's pencil study of scaling proportions with a grid, contours, and tonal values (above right)



Abel got into studying how artists used perspective drawing and various sketching techniques. He drew from masters such as M.C. Escher (above left) and Vincent Van Gogh (above right).

Students starting the new semester moved swiftly through lessons on using lines, shapes, tones, and contour edges while measuring accurate proportions. Above left is Grace's toucan, and to the right is Bobby's dragonfly.

To view everyone's drawings click 'Read more' below...

Weeks 7-10: Form, Contours, Tonal Values, Positive/Negative Space, Perspective

Natural Bridges Sketchers are taking drawing to exciting new levels! A very focused NB crew put together a lot of awesome study sketches showing the roundness and contours of veggies and various objects as they aimed for accurate proportions.We also got into using large format paper and charcoal to study texture, light, and shadows.

Upper left is Abel's study of a squash and the upper right is his large-scale charcoal drawing. Lower left is Gianna's large-scale charcoal drawing showing the form and texture of an apple. Lower right is Frank's composition of different studies of a pumpkin.

Upper left is Elijah's contour study of a a pumpkin. Upper right is Emilio's contour sketch of a pumpkin. Lower left is Elijah's contour drawing of an antique iron. Lower right is Abel's study of the form of a coyote skull.

Students learned about 1 and 2-point perspective. Above left is Abel's 2-point drawing of boxes. To the right is Frank's 2-point drawing of buildings.





A very important aspect of drawing is learning to perceive positive and negative space. Upper left is Gianna's use of the negative space around a flower to draw its form. Upper right shows how Gianna used negative space to draw the contours of an egret. Lower left is Andrea's study of negative space around the egret. And to the right, she adds details forming its body.

Students also learned how to use gray tonal values to represent color. Above left is Elijah's contour drawing showing the proportions of an aloe plant. To the right is Andrea's aloe plant drawn with gray tones for the values of green.

 
You've absolutely got to check out the latest mind-blowing eXpReSsiOn sEsSiOn drawings by Gianna (upper left), Emilio (upper right), Frank (lower left and right), and others: Click here

Click 'Read more' below to view everyone's drawings and Rob's comments...

Weeks 2-6: Proportions, Contour Lines, Positive/Negative Space, and Getting Abstract

Using artwork by artists such as Kandinsky and Mondrian as ideas, everyone worked with lines, shapes and patterns to create their own abstract drawings. Scroll down to view everyone's drawings.

The above pics show the Natural Bridges Sketchers in action. To view more pictures of students in drawing class: Click here

Abstract compositions by Willow (upper left) and Elijah (upper right)

After exploring abstract drawing from the imagination we now shift back to drawing from observation.  Students will be studying proportion and drawing realistic contour lines as well as positive and negative space. 

Dragonfly drawings by Gianna (upper left) and Katia (upper right) explore accuracy in proportions and contour edges.







Kiah's sketch of the egret (upper left) shows how she looked for the negative space in the reference picture to draw the bird's form. Thairie's Jeep (upper right) shows how he used guidelines for basic shapes before finishing with darker outlines.

Natural Bridges Sketchers spend A LOT of drawing! Be sure to check out the amazing student drawings in eXpReSsiOn sEsSiOn: Click here Shown above are drawings by Emilio (upper left) and Andrea (upper right)

Click 'Read more' below to view everyone's drawings...