What is Drawing

"I have learned that what I have not drawn, I have never really seen, and that when I start drawing an ordinary thing, I realize how extraordinary it is, sheer miracle." -Frederick Franck

To see like an artist you have to learn to make a cognitive shift from left brain to right brain. It seems wrong, it seems backwards, but this is why you can’t draw.  In drawing, you are constantly trying to disassociate from labelling real objects so your logical left brain can’t try to tell you how to draw what it recognises.  Abstract elements once drawn then become real in front of your eyes and the left brain will then fire up to make sense of the shapes and label it. It is about developing your skills of perception.

Lines and Edges are fundamental units of drawing. Lines often stand in for edges, forming the boundaries between the subject and surroundings.  Shape and space are born when several lines come together. Translating the 3-d world in that a 2-D drawing, the world becomes ordered the way it is rather than how we expect it to be.  Look to see the shapes that are right in front of you. Look closely at the reflection of that shape, it's made of light and dark. Tonal values of light and dark are what add depth and allow the form to come alive.

Drawing is the foundation.

A few starting techniques:

LINE - Mark Making: Get students familiar with their materials and the ways in which lines move. Wether the lines are hard, soft, playful or precise, make the mark matter. Tell them to let their pencil, pen rest in their fingers comfortable and draw as if the tool were an extension of their hand. Explore the kind of lines that  get made in a fast, slow, short, long way. How does the wrist move? Practise, practise, practise.

Blind Contour Drawing

When making a blind contour drawing, the eye is not watching the hand as it draws on the paper. Blind contour drawing is an excellent way to train the eye to draw what it really sees rather than what it thinks it sees.

  1. Choose an object to draw (a door, a book, shoes, window, plant etc.).
  2. Pick a point on the object where the eye can begin its slow journey around the contour or edge of the object. Remember, the eye is like a snail, barely crawling as it begins its journey.
  3. When the eye begins to move, so should the hand holding the pencil. At no time should you look at your hand as it draws. Try drawing the entire contour of the object without lifting your pencil form the paper.

Gesture Drawing

Gesture (10sec-2min) drawing involves capturing the action, form and pose of a subject, drawing a model who adopts timed poses ranging from 1 to 5 minutes. The shorter the pose, the less information you will be able to capture. In the most primitive form, a gesture drawing could be nothing more than a couple of curved lines which indicate the gesture. For longer poses, you can start adding more detail and tone.

Perspective

Perspective Made Easy 

VALUE: Degree of lightness/darkness, creates the illusion of 3 dimensional space by defining highlights, shading and shadows. Value is the comparison of 2 adjacent areas. Different values can be created by altering the density of hatching lines. A variety of hatching techniques are used to create different values.

Rule of Thirds

https://youtu.be/_2OIdcc5Rg8

Consider This: How many jobs utilize the techniques and skills of drawing?

What is Painting

 

Painting is a medium that  has survived for thousands of years and is, along with drawing and sculpture, one of the oldest creative media. Painting is the application of pigments onto a surface that establishes an image (design or decoration). It is both an act and result.

There are six major painting media:

  • Encaustic:paint mixes dry pigment with a heated beeswax binder. The mixture is then brushed or spread across a support surface.Encaustic dates back to the first century C.E. and was used extensively in funerary mummy portraits from Fayum in Egypt.
  • Tempera: paint combines pigment with an egg yolk binder, then thinned and released with water. Like encaustic, tempera has been used for thousands of years. It dries quickly to a durable matte finish. Tempera paintings are traditionally applied in successive thin layers, called glazes, painstakingly built up using networks of cross hatched lines.
  • Fresco: painting is used exclusively on plaster walls and ceilings. The medium of fresco has been used for thousands of years.There are two forms of fresco: Buon or “wet,” (Buon fresco technique consists of painting in pigment mixed with water on a thin layer of wet, fresh lime mortar or plaster)and secco, meaning “dry.”(Secco fresco refers to painting an image on the surface of a dry plaster wall).
  • Oil:paint is the most versatile of all the painting media. It uses pigment mixed with a binder of linseed oil. Linseed oil can also be used as the vehicle, along with mineral spirits or turpentine. Oil painting was thought to have developed in Europe during the fifteenth century, but recent research on murals found in Afghanistan caves show oil based paints were used there as early as the seventh century.
  • Acrylic: is a great medium for beginners because it is relatively inexpensive, water-soluble, quick-drying, versatile, and forgiving. If you are not happy with an area you've painted, you can let it dry and paint right over it in a matter of minutes. Because acrylic is a plastic polymer, you can paint on any surface as long as it doesn't contain wax or oil. Unlike oils, acrylics can be used without any toxic solvents and can be cleaned up easily with soap and water
  • You can start with 10 to 12 basic colors (cadmium red medium, ultramarine blue, cadmium yellow, titanium white, mars black, burnt umber, phthalo green, cadmium orange, dioxazine purple).
  • You’ll need stiff-bristled brushes for thick acrylic paint and soft-bristled brushes for watercolor effects. You’ll be faced with an array of sizes and shapes (round, flat, and pointed), and you also get different lengths of the handle. If you’re on a tight budget, start with a small and a medium-sized filbert (a flat, pointed brush). Filberts are a good choice because if you use just the tip, you get a narrow brush mark, and if you push down, you get a broad one.
  • Wooden, glass, or plastic palettes can be used for acrylics. Work from the general to the specific..Acrylic paint colors tend to dry darker than they are when wet, particularly with inexpensive paints, which have a higher ratio of binder to pigment. When this occurs, apply several successively lighter layers of paint to achieve the desired color. This layering often enhances the painting, adding complexity and richness to the color.Student-grade paints also tend to be more transparent. To counter this, add a tiny bit of titanium white to the color or a tiny bit of white gesso, which is a paint-like substance similar to acrylic but thinner.Keep your brushes in the water while you're painting so that the paint doesn't dry in them. Use a container with a shallow layer of water to keep the brushes wet without soaking the handles (which will cause the lacquer to peel off) and another container to clean the brushes between colors.When you are done painting, clean the brushes with soap and water right away, making sure to get back to the base of the bristles; rinse and dry them well, and lay them flat.

  • Watercolor: is the most sensitive of the painting media. It reacts to the lightest touch of the artist and can become an over worked mess in a moment. There are two kinds of watercolor media: transparent and opaque.Watercolor consists of pigment and a binder of gum arabic, a water-soluble compound made from the sap of the acacia tree. It dissolves easily in water.The medium is extremely portable and excellent for small format paintings. Transparent watercolor techniques include the use of wash; an area of color applied with a brush and diluted with water to let it flow across the paper. Wet-in-wet painting allows colors to flow and drift into each other, creating soft transitions between them. Dry brushpainting uses little water and lets the brush run across the top ridges of the paper, resulting in a broken line of color and lots of visual texture.

  • Opaque watercolor, also called gouache, differs from transparent watercolor in that the particles are larger, the ratio of pigment to water is much higher, and an additional, inert, white pigment such as chalk is also present. Because of this, gouache paint gives stronger color than transparent watercolor, although it tends to dry to a slightly lighter tone than when it is applied. Like transparent watercolor, dried gouache paint will become soluble again in water.

 

Other Painting Media:

Enamel paints form hard skins typically with a high-gloss finish. They use heavy solvents and are extremely durable.

Powder coat paints differ from conventional paints in that they do not require a solvent to keep the pigment and binder parts in suspension. They are applied to a surface as a powder then cured with heat to form a tough skin that is stronger than most other paints. Powder coats are applied mostly to metal surfaces.

Epoxy paints are polymers, created mixing pigment with two different chemicals: a resin and a hardener. The chemical reaction between the two creates heat that bonds them together. Epoxy paints, like powder coats and enamel, are extremely durable in both indoor and outdoor conditions.

Printmaking involves the creation of a master plate from which multiple images are made.

Relief Printing

printing form a raised surface onto another surface (ex. rubber stamp pressed into a stamp pad than onto a piece of paper).  Relief printing plates are made from flat sheets of material such as wood, linoleum, metal, styrofoam etc. After drawing a picture on the surface, the artist uses a variety of tools to cut away the areas that will not print. A brayer(roller) – is used to spread ink on the plate. Paper is placed on top of the plate and the image is transferred by rubbing with the hand,  press or block of wood. Remember: The completed print is a mirror image of the original plate.

Intagalio

These prints are made by cutting the picture into the surface of the printing plate, using a burin (a sharp V-shaped tool).  To make a print, ink is pushed into the lines of the design, the surface is then wiped clean so that the only areas with ink are the lines. A sheet of paper which has been soaked in water is then placed on the plate which is run through a printing press. The paper is literally forced into the small lines that have been cut into the plate.

Lithography

Lithography is the art of printing from a flat stone (limestone) or metal plate by a method based on the simple fact that grease attracts grease as it repels water. A design or image is drawn on the surface with a greasy material – grease crayon, pencil or ink – and then water and printing ink are applied. The greasy parts absorb the ink and the wet parts do not. Acids are often used with this type of printmaking to etch the stone and prevent grease from traveling where it should not. We typically do not use this in Elementary Arts unless we have a

Stencil: Serigraphy

A stencil is a sheet of paper, fabric, plastic, metal or other material with designs cut, perforated or punched from it. Ink is forced through the openings onto the surface (paper, fabric etc.) to be printed. Sometimes called silk screening, serigraphy (seri means silk) is a type of stencil printing.

DO: Use any technique to make a print into your sketchbook. Why did you choose this technique?

 

 

 

What is Collage:

A form of visual art that takes different visual images and textures and turns them into a uniform image.

3 teaching techniques to know:

  1. Find the right backing and adhesive.
  2. Gather source materials and make your own.
  3. Plan out your composition before gluing it down