Kaleidoscope Studies

Kaleidoscope studies with water color teacher and artist Kathy Summers of Austin. This is my second class today and we are doing radial gradation washes on a repeating kaleidoscope pattern then painting progressively dark to light washes on the design. The background piece and the picture on the left are of a repeating poppy design done on Arches 140 water color paper using two washes of dark blue and perylene maroon red (very diluted washes) then using a neutral tint with turquoise blue to acheive the darkest blue, lighter wash of the same for the lighter sections. The  painting on the right is of a ring of autumn leaves and has a red wash on the outer section and pale blue wash on the inside with no further progress yet on that painting.
Today in class we studied about the science involved in color  - warms, cools, staining, non-staining - as well as intensity, value, principles of color arrangement on a painting. Excellent suggested book is Color and Light for the Watercolor Painter by Christopher Schink, currently out of print. Another great principle is to do all of basic drawings for  paintings on tracing paper and you have a ready supply of subjects for painting - can use parts of previous drawings, correct mistakes made on a painting when repainting. Saves lots of time to have your drawings on hand in usable form on tracing paper.

45 minute still life attempt

 

Here is the 45 minute drawing...we took several breaks, put our drawings on the easel to really see what we were doing and where we were going with our drawings and had input from our teacher Deb as well as fellow students. Great critiques that made suggestions for improvements and also accented what WAS working in the drawing - very encouraging. Deb has us focus on what is near to us and what is far away and for our drawings to express that through the farther away items being lighter, more "fuzzy" in focus and the closer items are more detailed, darker, sharper. This vase, 2 limes, and 2 garlic cloves on a  piece of folded cloth were a challenge. We had not done drapery before and it isn't easy to get it to look realistic or "grounded". One additional tip was to use a small grid to get a vase, bottle, really anything to look symetrical - just a quick sketched  grid and lay out the vase on it and adjust so the proportions are correct.
We had great discussion too of our goals as artists - what we would like to accomplish or where we are going with our art - simply personal pleasure, art to gift others with, selling art, showing in competitions, reaching far to display in a museum.
In July, we will add color to our drawing skills, working with pastels.

30 Second Still Life Drawings

 

 Monday night's pencil drawing class at Jerry's with Deb Richardson. These are 30 second and 1 minute drawings that we did of a vase and 2 limes. It was a challenge to get all the information down in a short time but each attempt got more expressive of what we were seeing and we were able to simplify the lines to relay more information in our drawings. Deb  inverted the vase for the last two drawings so we could see the shapes and not just focus on the objects themselves. We also changed to a new easel for each drawing so that our viewpoint of the still life changed. Then we spent 45 minutes on a more detailed drawing, see next post. Final one minute drawing that I did was the upper right one with the vase inverted.

Drawing Class

In drawing class tonight we started off with a collection of objects to draw. Deb Richardson, our wonderful teacher, told us to observe before we started in on our drawing:
OBSERVE SHAPE
OBSERVE LIGHTING
OBSERVE REFLECTIVE LIGHT
OBSERVE THE CLOSEST AND FARTHEST POINTS
Then we began our drawings. The drawing on the upper left was done in 45 minutes with 3 breaks to look at each student's work, critique then draw some more. The second drawing then was done in 10 minutes. Deb asked us to be bold and do a quick sketch.
It was a fun exercise and we all improved.
Next week, REAL objects in a still life.

Drawing Class: Basic Shapes & Shading

Tonight's Cordovan Art School drawing class at Jerry's Artarama in Austin was taught by artist Deb Richardson. She is an excellent teacher, gentle but great critiquing and she helps us realize what strengths and weaknesses are in our work and teaches us to translate what we are seeing with our eyes into how to interpret that through art technique. Deb does wonderful portraiture and fine art that can be seen at www.dkrichardson-artist.com. 
So, tonight we drew basic shapes - cylinder, cone, cube, sphere - with pencil and learned about shaping, shading, highlights, shadows, how to make things appear closer and further away. These basic shapes are even in very organic objects like faces and are critical to learn to become a more effective artist.
Deb is very encouraging to each student and has a delightful sense of humor and a quick laugh as well!

Field of Daisies

Watercolor on cold press Arches paper. Field of pink daisies, swaying in the breeze, soft and muted with some vivid touches of color.