Granting Permission. Last year I had a letter from Amiria Gale, an art teacher in New Zealand, who loved a particular exercise I gave my students to really advance their observational drawing skills, which she had seen on my blog. She asked if she could use the photograph on her website, which is geared to […]
To see ourselves as others see us. Gil Zamora, an FBI trained artist, has produced a set of drawing of several women, without ever seeing what they looked like. Separated by a screening curtain, he asked the women to describe themselves – their hair, jaw, eyes, and he drew as they described their features. Later […]
Tip toe through the Tulips, Water Colour, Moleskine Sketch book I love tulips, and I love spots. And I really love pears. Tulips are a lovely subject – a complicated mass of leaves, which are nicely explained in swathes of greens (try mixing Cerulean Blue with Lemon Yellow for a lovely range of ‘spring’ […]
A: All the difference in the world. An outline is that imaginary place around the edges of things, where the object ceases ‘being’, and becomes the background. Nothing actually HAS an outline. All things are fairly solid, and just Are, or Aren’t. To draw a line around the edge is fine, but if it’s all […]
Technology and the internet has transformed our lives, and there’s no going back, only faster and faster forward. This is very exciting, and just about anything we can think of can be reality very quickly. However, this doesn’t mean that everything happens quickly. Change is rapid, communication is instant, BUT the skills we need to […]
Drawing back from the edge. Cloth in pencil, by Julie Douglas. Moleskine sketch book Last term I started my Masters-Mistress at college(see http://juliedouglasdrawingpaintinglearning.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/mistress-of-arts-college-and-portfolios.html).Studying Multidisciplinary Design means that all students come from different disciplines, and we each carve our own individual path to our personal goals, although we attend workshops together. The advantages of this varied […]
A few years ago I met an intelligent, educated woman in her 60’s who worked in an art gallery, and who also arranged painting holidays for students with an artist who exhibited at the gallery. She was clearly extremely interested in her work and would have loved, she said, to have been an artist herself. […]
Drawing… Why is that that drawing is regarded in so many contradicting lights, from adored to ignored, from loathed to feared? Inexperienced students can regard it as a chore to be avoided at all costs in the run towards ‘painting’. Experienced students and graduates without a drawing-based foundation regard it as the gigantic hurdle they […]
Christmas Snowmen ‘Awards’, and Angels I know it’s not Christmas any more, but we haven’t quite reached the ‘Twelfth Day’, so just time to share the Snowman series that is evolving. I got some lovely cards, and the Best Original Artwork this year was from 9 year old Jack Flanagan, the son of a […]
Fungi. Every session I teach has a fairly similar aim to every other – to provide ways to stretch student observation using tone/texture/form/colour/contrast/light/shade/shape/pattern. The challenge is to find subjects which are beyond what student expectation of ‘good’ subject matter might be, for student perception is seriously limited (and limiting). Where possible, I prefer to let […]
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