Unit Two: Drawing as an Exploration of Creativity
Over the past several weeks, you have participated on a journey of discovery. For some, the journey has been on new and untested roads; others have revisited familiar paths. Regardless, you have all walked the walk. As a class, your hard work and your willingness to explore untested areas are evident. In addition to introducing, for many, a new language for communication, I have been primarily interested in pushing you to go beyond the obvious, to put literal interpretation aside, to address concepts and engage your thoughts in more abstract terms. I have invited you to play on the playground of creativity. I hope you are pleased with your results. Now, it is time to explore the graphic skill of drawing.
"Drawing. Oh my... I can't draw."
Drawing has a long established role in the visual arts, the recording of the events through history, and the development of ideas in our civilization. While usually thought of as an activity requiring the skill of the talented few, drawing is a natural, often spontaneous, human response. People instinctively doodle while engaged in some other activity. Young children who scribble with crayons and marks on paper or walls draw instinctively in an effort to describe what they see, to represent what they know, and to express how they feel. The intent of this unit is to describe this vital process of drawing as an accessible, enjoyable, productive activity that at its heart, is a creative process.
For the next several weeks, we will continue our exploration of non-verbal expression. By improving our abilities to see and perceive, we can increase our technical skills in drawing. Improved drawing skills in turn will better enable us to communicate artistic thoughts and ideas. Of course, as with all our exercises, learning how to draw is secondary to learning how to perceive the world around us.
Throughout this unit, you are to keep a sketchbook. All your assignments are to be entered into this book. Each sketch or assignment should be labeled and dated. If you feel like doing additional drawing, doodling, scribbling or whatever, use this book and date your work. The more you draw, the more you will learn. This sketchbook will provide a visual record of your work and serve to assist me in assisting you to improve in areas of less skilled perception. At the end of this unit, I will collect your sketchbook for observations. IT IS ESSENTIAL for you to keep up and come to class in order to make progress. Doing all the drawings the night before the sketchbook is due cheats you of feedback and an opportunity to see and learn.
#11. Pre-instruction Drawings.
DUE: 3/3
You should spend ten to twenty minutes (longer if you wish) in the execution of each drawing for this assignment. Please execute these drawings in the following order.
1. Draw a picture of a person without looking at anyone or any pictures. There are no specific directions for this drawing, only the general direction to "draw a person."
2. Draw a picture by looking at a real person -- the head only. Draw someone studying or sleeping, or draw yourself by looking in a mirror. Do not use a photograph.
3. Draw a picture of your own hand. If you are right handed, draw your left hand in whatever position you choose. If you are left handed, draw the right.
4. Draw a picture of a chair by looking at a real chair, not a photograph.
After you finish: On the back of each drawing, write an assessment of the drawing -- what is pleasing and/or displeasing to you about each drawing.
#12. Learning How to See Like an Artist
Due: 3/5
Learning how to see is perhaps the most essential element in learning how to draw. Often, the brain thinks it see relationships, which may be symbolic representations of reality. You may look at a tree. In a split second, the brain identifies the object as a tree. If you are asked to draw what you see, the cognitive brain has already solved the problem and a short hand representation may be your drawing like a trunk with a bushy top. But to really draw the tree, it is important to turn off portions of your brain that label items to allow the portions of the brain that see patterns, relationships, shapes, lines, and textures to do the job. A tree is not a series of quick lines. A tree has mass, value, texture, individual shapes, proportions, roots, shades of color, positive and negative space, and so on.
To experience the shift out of the verbal and linguistic brain into the visual and spatial portion of the brain, you are to reproduce an assigned drawing looking at it upside down. In doing so, the brain can no longer symbolize or represent what it thinks it see, nose, eyes, chin, etc. Instead, you should begin to identify patterns, shapes, relationships and portions.
Read the following directions before beginning this exercise.
1. Do not turn the drawing over until you have finished. This is a visual/spatial mode brain exercise and turning the drawing right side up would cause a shift back to the verbal/linguistic mode.
2. Look at the upside down drawing for a minute. Study the relationships that are formed by the lines intersecting one another. Look at the angles and the shapes. Note the relationship of the shapes and lines to the edge of the page. In fact, the paper is the constant shape and size. Is there a line, which is parallel to the edge of the page? How far up on the side to the page does the extended line intersect? Do not try to change the size of the drawing as you would be changing the relationships between the abstract shapes and spaces. Verify your starting point and check relationships throughout.
3. When you start your drawing, begin at the top of the blank page and copy each line, moving from line to adjacent line, putting it all together just like a jigsaw puzzle. Do not name the parts. That is a verbal brain function and not important to this exercise.
4. Once you have begun this exercise, you should slip into the creative brain mode. You should find yourself becoming interested in how the lines go together. How this line curves up a little and that line intersects there. What is the proportion of this shape to that space?
#13 Shape Drawing from Ads
Due: 3/17
"Nothing is more real than nothing." Samuel Beckett
For this exercise, you are to select a photograph of a landscape with buildings or a street in a city. The vantage point must be far enough away to see a large vista. Look for a photo in which shapes are easy to identify. You are to copy this scene by creating a line drawing of the picture.
To achieve this, approach the drawing by distilling it into four elements: LINE, SHAPE, DETAIL and TONE. Use lines to define the outer shape of the objects you see. After roughing in the shapes, refine the objects by adding detail (texture, color, etc.). Then, unify the objects in the space by showing light and shadows.
When you think about it, a geometric shape in a drawing is a two-dimensional concept of an object. Lines are used to define the object's boundaries, which separate the object from a larger visual field. In reality, the edge is NOT A LINE, rather, it is the extreme portion of a difference in contrast of tonal value, color or texture that occurs between objects. Any line that defines a shape on one side of its contour simultaneously carves out space on the other side of its path. Think of an object as a positive space and the area around it as negative space. Each have shape.
Draw a rectangle or square on your sketch pad, which is in the same proportion as the picture. Make certain the frame is measured and straight and the corners meet at right-angles. You can enlarge or decrease the composition as long as you maintain the same relative proportions. For example, your photo may be 4 inches tall by 5 inches wide. You can enlarge this to 8 inches by 10 inches.
Now, divide your photo into four quadrants and lightly sketch these guidelines on your sketch pad. Your first step is to place key shapes within each section of the drawing. Sketch these in lightly as you will need to adjust them. Check the relationship, the proportion, scale and position of the shapes with one another. Go back and make corrections. Concentrate on seeing beyond the photo to the abstraction lines that make of shapes. Placement of abstract shapes within the frame helps sculpt the drawing.
After verifying the overall composition of the lightly drawn shapes in your study, go back and darken the edges of the shapes. The more certain you are of the proper positioning on the sketch pad, the darker you should draw in your shapes until you have a completed line drawing. Do not worry about detail and tone as we will work on this aspect of drawing in the next assignment. This is a line and shape drawing.
#14 Perspective Drawing through Detail and Texture
Due: 3/24
Fortunately, human vision is selective. When we concentrate on a scene, we focus on a specific area. While there, our eyes adjust to see extreme detail and clarity. Outside this area of clarity our peripheral vision takes in context to fill out the scene. In the peripheral vision area, objects appear as shapes but with less defined detail. Objects further away from our center of focus remain as shapes but have no detail, only value. A drawing should capture a visual moment. If you draw everything in your sketch with equal clarity and detail, it will lack focus.
Select a photo to copy, which has a depth of field (foreground, middle ground and background). Find a photo that has an object which is in focus and of interest to you. Concentrating on detail and texture, sketch the drawing.
Following the same procedure as in #13, lay out your sketch. Now concentrate on the focal point. This area should have the most detail, texture. The further away from the focus point the drawing moves, the fewer details you should add.
#15. Perspective Drawing.
Due: 3/24
By now, you should appreciate the concept that a sketch is a product of a variety of lines assembled to make shapes that resemble realistic forms. Detail is added to these shapes to give them more meaning and identity. A final dimension is achieved by the addition of tones and black to represent differences in light on the various planes and to depict shadows and shades.
A sketch is a graphic means for recording and communicating a visual experience or mental image. To be able to do this QUICKLY and EFFECTIVELY is an invaluable tool that can be used in many fields of endeavor.
In the theatre, all designers need to be able to sketch as a means of communication. A scenic designer in a production conference must be able to explain to the director his or her ideas "on the spot". A costume designer should be able to sketch a figure or article of clothing as an example. A lighting designer should be able to show another designer how the intangible light will affect a concrete structure. Sketching is an essential language for all theatrical designers.
For this assignment, you are to execute two perspective landscape sketches, each taking at least one hour execute. One must contain a building or house or anything that is architectural with a distant scenic background. The other perspective drawing should be strictly architectural, like your hallway. Observe possible settings, which have lines and shapes as dominant features. Once you have selected your subject area, determine the visual frame of the area you will sketch. Establish a horizon line. Rough in shapes verifying their relationships as you draw. After you are satisfied with the general shape or form composition, sketch in detail and finally tones and black. Remember, in perspective, vertical lines are straight up and down. They get shorter as they recede into the distance. Horizontal lines slope toward the horizon line or vanishing points.
Consider the following order in creating your drawing:
1. SIZING UP the composition. This is the rough-in stage. Look at the object that is to be communicated. Identify the bounds of the frame. Identify the horizon line.
2. Lightly sketch the measurable frame on your paper.
3. Then, BLOCK IN other shapes or forms (lightly) as references for compositional proportions. Move the forms or shapes around until the large elements are in relative relationship with one another. Your eyes should tell you when it is correct.
4. Placement is essential.
5. Now go back into the drawing first working on the central or most important object (the focal object). It should receive the most detail. Just like a camera, focus equals sharp detail. Treat secondary objects with less detail. Treat objects in the distance as shapes with tone.
6. TONE AND SHADING gives dimension. Shadows have variety. There are DARK, Dark, dark, dark, and dark shadows. The more variety created in the shadows, the better the dimension. Distant objects blend into the overall background by having little contrast with the background tones.
LINES create SHAPES. FORMS are defined by DETAILS. Objects become dimensional through light and darkness or TONES.
#16 Seeing Shadows
DUE: 3/26
Thus far, in constructing a sketch, we have concentrated on line, shapes, texture and perspective. This next assignment focuses on the way light strikes an object to create shadows and mood. Artists go about the illusion of creating depth by utilizing what we know about the process of human seeing. As we have observed, our eyes focus on a particular subject without seeing everything in the field of vision with equal clarity. What is focused upon is seen with the most detail. Detail is determined through texture, through sharp contrast of planes, through brightness. Objects outside the immediate focus, but relatively close, receive secondary detail. In this zone, perhaps we see definition, but a softer edge, more blended shadows. Beyond this band of vision, and progressively, the eye sees shape or silhouette, muted tones, etc. It is as if our eyes have taken a photo, snap shot.
What confuses many who are studying the illusion of reality through drawing is the notion that vision is not one snap shot, but a series of snap shots to create a film like composite. Because our eye can focus, refocus and scan any area in the bat of an eye, we believe, we think, we see an area with equal focus and detail throughout. To draw this would be to draw everything in sharp contrast and detail. In doing so, the composition has no focus. It does not look like something, which has depth.
As I develop a sketch, I begin by roughly sketching is the shapes. Regardless of where I will focus, I know the eye will see shape. I use very light lines as ultimately, I do not want to see lines, rather shaped planes which intersect to create the illusion of lines. Once I have these shapes in a verified and proper relationship to each other, I turn to the focal point of the composition. Through detailed shading and highlight, I work out from this center. I will spend most of my time working on the focal area. By the time I am the furthest away from the focus, usually, I am blending everything to black.
Another means I employ to create the illusion of space, foreground, middle ground, back ground, is by creating a series of horizon lines. At a minimum, you must have one horizon line in your composition to GROUND the objects. However, the more you can break up the horizon, the more active the composition. And, if you can create several horizon planes, your sketch has the illusion of depth of field.
For this drawing concept, you are to focus creating shadows. Using a single source light in a dark room, set up an interesting still life study. The white of your paper is the highlight from the lamp. Sculpt the shadows into the composition with various grades of darkness. Extreme shadows are the darkest, but not all shadows are equal in tone. Define lighting direction and brilliance by concentrating on the shadows.
#17 Seeing Light
DUE: 3/31
In class, we will set up still life composition and single source lighting to exploring value sketching. It is an essential graphic communication tool for a lighting designer. Value sketches are executed on black paper, black matt board, black pastel paper or black velour paper. Conceptually, the paper represents a dark room without light. Using white pencils, white pastels or white charcoal pencils, sculpt the light as it hits the objects. Approach these drawings in the same way you to a pencil drawing. Line, shape, texture and tone. Give yourself a two-hour block of time to concentrate on this assignment. Draw a series of common objects.
#18. Portrait
DUE 4/2
Portrait drawing is like any other sketch. You need to abstract the human body or face to reveal lines, shapes, texture and tone. Here, knowing general human proportions is important to a successful outcome. For example, most humans are seven heads tall. The eyes generally fall midway horizontally on the face. Knowing these guidelines allow the artist to concentrate on capturing the spirit of the person drawn.
You are to sketch your roommate or friend, brother or sister. If you do not have any friends ... or at least do not have someone willing to sit for you for 2 hours, draw yourself by looking into a mirror. This is often a little more difficult but doable. You must spend 2 hours in one sitting. If you really want to learn this, you need to commit to the time to this exercise.
#19. Extra Credit Drawings.
DUE 4/2
To further improve and for additional credit, continue to draw in your sketchbook. Label the drawing/s as assignment #19.