Wednesday, March 2, 2011

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...