DAY 1
- Sharpen one of your drawing pencils with a knife carving away the wood leaving oh about 1/2 ” of graphite. Play with using this in your sketchbook holding your pencil as seen in this picture. What marks are you able to make? How many values can you achieve ( lights to darks)?
Find an object that is very aesthetic to you place it where you can observe it easily
Because this class is about building a habit, I will send out to you each day a project. For the first week, it will require 5 minutes +/-. Of course, you are more than welcome to do more!
DAY 2
Each of these should take just a few minutes. IN other words DO NOT LABOR THEM! They are meant to be quick. You are not doing these for any product. These are PURELY for the process and getting movement in your eyes and hand.
#1 Make a value scale. In your sketchbook (large one if you are using 2 different sizes) make 10 small blocks. Fill each in getting progressively lighter. The last one is your lightest value or white of the paper. THe first is the darkest you can make it.
When we sketch aim for at least 5 different values; more if you can do it.
Remember to squint ( or take off your glasses) to get rid of insignificant details. Go for the LARGE MASSES of value changes.
#2. Look at your aesthetic object. Do you see a top a side a bottom? Do you see lights and darks? Try to identify why it is aesthetic to you. Why did you choose it? If you had to sum up in 1-2 words why you choose it what would they be?
#3. Now step out of doors with your sketchbook and pencil. Look around. What is the first area that strikes you? Look at it for a few minutes and breathe. Clear your mind and just look. When you are ready, use your pencil to make no more than 5 marks on your paper to capture the gesture of what you are looking at. Make each mark with a different weight of your hand thus achieving 5 different values.
Reflect on : ” You can learn about the pine only from the pine.” (Basho) Now look at the pine and then see the pine.
DAY 3
I wonder what you observed today!
Have you been noticing values? Did you notice what lights and darks are like on a very sunny day? Try to remember so you can compare when we have our next rainy day! Look into shadows as well as lit spots!
- Projects for today’s exploration
— Squint at your aesthetic object noting what is different about it from when you look with wide open eyes
–Squint at a vista that moves you again noting what is different.
Now try this again then in your sketchbook, relying on your visual memory, record the various value patterns of your object and your scene. Use the flat of your pencil creating broad energetic strokes.. like a conductor’s sweeping baton!
- In your sketchbook draw circles… lots and lots of circles. Draw some clockwise, draw some counter clockwise. Start some at the top, some at the bottom, some on the sides. What do you observe about your tendencies? Is some part of the circles’ lines always a tad darker? lighter? Does some part of the circle always wiggle? How much can you observe about your marks?
Ponder Andre Liltute’s words, ” In Art there is no progress only discovery illuminated by methods as old as the world itself.” Does this take you anywhere? What marks would you make as a response?
DAY 3
Values are critical for visual depiction. Light reveals form. Without light there is no way to perceive form. Consequently a truly necessary skill is seeing the values the lights and darks of a lit object.
Values are the skeleton of any visual depiction and thus create the composition. You have made 10 step value study but ultimately we want to work in 18+ values and the way to achieve this is to sensitize your eye – which we are doing these first few sketchbook entries.
PROJECTS
— Take your aesthetic object or if it’s too complicated take a beloved coffee cup or piece of fruit or an egg. Turn on 1 light. Look at the object observe how the light reveals that objects form. Now close your eyes and picture the dark area in your mind. Open your eyes. Did you see it somewhat accurately?
Once you see it well then add the lightest value area to your mental picture. Keep repeating adding more values to your mental picture. Then without looking at the object with great gusto make sweeping marks in your sketchbook.
This exercise will help in seeing values and starting to build your visual memory. Two very wonderful and exciting and liberating skills!
DAY 4
In sketching and painting we have positive and negative spaces. The positive spaces are the ones occupied by objects being painted. The negative spaces are the areas around the objects. Paying attention to the negative spaces will ensure your positive shapes are dynamic.
PROJECTS:
Look at a deciduous tree. Look at its branches and if it has more than one trunk all the better. Look at the areas between 2 branches or 2 trunks. What do you notice? What are those negative spaces like? In your sketchbook using the side of your pencil mark out in 2-4 strokes the shape of one of those negative spaces. Make some notes about your observations.
Spend time looking at negative shapes. Look at the shape caused by a coffee cup’s handle. Now rotate the cup slightly how has that shape changed?
Look at the shoreline and the negative space the ocean makes.
Look at a pine tree against the noon sky. What is lightest value? What is the next and what is the darkest?
Take a walk and look at different scenarios asking yourself.. what is the lightest value what is the darkest? What values ar e you finding it hard to distinguish? Take a pic and turn it into a black and white photo that always helps!
Something to ponder: “Drawing starts with line, but there is no line in nature.” Frank Covino
DAY 5
The past 2 days we practiced seeing values and organic shapes. Now we are ready to take the next step to build our sketchbook vocabulary and that is to see volume.
Here are facts of the physical world which if we understand will make capturing our visual message easier:
- Everything has a volume
- As visual artists we are trying to capture 3d volume on a 2d plane!
- Light reveals volume
- The movement of light over the volume produces value changes
- A rounded volume will have gradated value changes
- An abrupt plane change like the two sides of a box will have an abrupt value change
PROJECTS
In your sketchbook draw all the different volumes you can think of..
Play with them.. shade them, draw them smaller and larger. Draw them tenderly and then with vigor.
Draw a parallelogram and make it into a rock.
Draw a sphere try making it into a cloud.
Draw a cylinder make it into a tree trunk or a coffee cup.
Keep looking around you identifying the underlying geometric shape in things.
Now for some eye hand work exercises:
- Make three dots on your page with the middle dot oh 1/2 an inch higher than the other two. Draw that arc. Draw over the first line again.
- Draw a line then go over the same line 10 times
And finally
Write 5 words that capture your day. Make each word count.
A saying I think about:
Objective observation – subjective expression
DAY 6
I hope you have had a nice rainy day and looked out the window to see values when the sun is not out.
Take some time to play with the values you are seeing.
Take a look at a volume when the sun is not out. Try recording what you observe in your sketchbook
One of Haiku’s intent is to
Take the specific to the universal then bring it back to the particular.
DAY 7
- Look at the sketch you did of the negative space between branches/ trunks. Now with the side of your pencil -not the tip- drawn the trunks in short segments slightly changing direction after each section. Look at the negative space between the trunks.
- Now outline the trunks/ branches and fill in the negative space with the side of your pencil.
What do you observe? How can you use this to sketch your observations?
Along with negative space, geometric shapes, and values another visual it’s good to be sensitive to is spatial relationships.
–Take a look when you go for a walk or when driving at a row of tree tops. What can you observe about their distance and their heights?
–Now listen to a favorite song especially to the melody line. What do you observe? Try marking out that melody line. What does this tell you about aesthetic placement relationships?
So this week, I hope these exercises have started or reaffirmed your skills at observations broadening and deepening what we can see when we really ‘look’.
his week we will focus on Discernment and Memory.. Discernment helps us decide what is important making remembering something easier.
- Take a walk. Note something that strikes you — sketch it quickly in 4-5 values. Squint. See the shapes. Note what shapes are in front of other shapes. Label the values 1 for the lightest down to 5 for the darkest. what value is the closest shape? And the next? When you get home try recreating the shape patterns on a larger sheet of paper or in your bigger sketchbook.
Walk back out late and check your memory. If you want keep working on this.. going out observing coming back home and adjusting. Use our discussion of organic shapes to hold the images in your mind.
- Be thinking about an object you like and would really like to learn to sketch and maybe eventually draw. Maybe its a peony, a certain type of rock. What we will be doing is learning the process of how to ‘learn’ an object. How to discern its anatomy its physical properties and then how to represent it 2 dimensionally. Once you do this with one type of object then next will be easier and so on. It will allow you to develop a ‘shorthand’ for representing objects/ scene you want to capture.
- Draw a sphere, then draw another one behind slightly to the right and above the first. Now draw another behind the first two. Continue as long as you find this exercise interesting. What is this about? Its about one mass in front of another. Its about where do you place objects relative to another. Its about creating a creature from outer space.
When you ponder the following what flows from your hand?
1000 birds fly where I cannot go. ( Chidori )
Or listen to this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CzZV9GQqcI
WEEK 2 DAY 2
In sketching we simplify capturing the essence of what we want to record.
#1. Look around finding something with strong lights and darks. Draw a box – like a frame- within that area map out the shapes of the lights and darks. Let the areas clump transcending the actual objects. For example if a shadow goes along a cup and similar value shadow goes on to the table, clump them together.
After doing this draw around the outlines of each of the values. What do those shapes look like?
Repeat this.. it’s a good way to start seeing bigger shapes.
Remember to squint
#2. This is for those of you who are more interested in representation sketching. Take a landscape from a Master like Rembrandt. Find the simplified value shapes and sketch them out. This is a very valuable exercise to develop a sensitivity to beautiful abstract shapes.
What is your visual response to “ Finding wonder and poignancy in common places”?
- Week 2 Friday
Draw what you think look like organic shapes.. ( non geometric ) To get some ideas look at the shapes you discovered in the Rembrant painting. Place one shape on a page in your sketchbook then craw another. Keep filling your page. Try to place some shapes behind others. What kind of patterns emerge? Try filling shapes in with different values.
SATURDAY
First please send a picture of a page in your sketch book for Monday’s slide show. Prepare 4-5 sentences explaining why you choose it be it a question, an epiphany or?
So here is something to try.
Draw a picture frame ( a box) then within that box create 5-6 organic ( non geometric ) shapes. As you draw these shapes focus on the negative spaces around the shapes. Now fill in the shapes with values. Do you remember how Jill made value marks with the side of her pencil so that the area was one consistent value? Go for that ( in other words not line marks where light of the paper comes through for that makes a mixed values shape)Try this again and again. What happens when shapes touch each other or when one shape is in front of another?
This is the basis of a good landscape composition… Even in realistic art a solid abstract value pattern helps to make an interesting composition. Its really important to study abstract shapes.. or value shapes that transcend literal objects. In many ways realistic work is harder because one can get adequate results by copying what we see. But to make a leap into the aesthetic we must compose and make choices. The first step in this is to see beyond the literal and that can be done by seeing the abstract value shapes.
Another project is cut up different value sheets of paper and play with arranging them. Look for what is aesthetic to your eye.
On Monday after our slide show, we will spend some time talking about other ways to sketch and then look at how do we take a sketch into a drawing.