Introduction to Drawing

Introduction to Drawing I

One of my favorite lines in all of literature finds its way to my heart from the garden of Monsieur Bienvenu in Les Miserables. One day, Sister Simplice, a nun who runs the household, works in the garden. She notices that among the four beds, three are vegetables and one is flowers. She admonishes the bishop that the other bed used for flowers could feed more of the poor if put to better use. Bienvenu disagrees and replies, “The beautiful is as useful as the useful… Perhaps more so.” Every student needs some flowers amidst their wonderful garden of vegetables. Come, step into a beautiful potager right outside your own door by learning how to draw!

Join me in discovering beauty with delight and laughter through this course. We start with simple clay shapes of ears, nose, mouth, and eye and work through shape, form, line, composition, value, proportion and shading. Learn 10 values through pencils 9H to 9B while drawing captivating images. Students get to see the vibrance of their work come alive through copying simple subjects like an open three-dimensional box to polyhedra and then to the hilarious and laughable sketches of Leonardo da Vinci’s faces, Andrew Loomis’s faces and characters in fables.

Course Objectives:

1. Begin with tactile 3D clay objects and learn to draw it into 2D
2. Learn value scaling though grayscale pencils
3. Learn how to achieve accurate Proportions in Drawing
4. Move into perspective drawing
5. Imitate Leonardo da Vinci through his images in The Divine and Grotesque where we replicate his beautiful young maiden and his ugly old man; replicate different face shapes through the hilarious and beautiful.

Materials List:

• Full set of Pencils: 9H through 9B (must have 9H, H, F, HB, 2B, 6B and 9B)
• Eraser
• Pencil sharpener (preferably electric)
• 1 Sketchbook 8.5X11 or bigger
• 1 Desk or drawing board
• Play dough or clay; teacher will be using basalite
• Colored pastels or pencils—any set will do
• Ruler, preferably 18 inches
• Protractor

Note: There is no brand specificity for this class. But, pencils must have the range indicated. Finding mechanical pencils last minute will not suffice.