Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Drawing Pencil Sketches
Just released a trial video clip on YouTube all about Drawings of Flowers. This is clip #1 in this series and being a trial run I have not yet put in voice-over. But check it out and let me have feedback. There is a link here to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB6e2pmFUrQ&feature=g-upl

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Drawing Lines of Length, Width and Direction

Drawing lines can be complex or simple. Line divides space and form and may describe contours of the form. As your line moves over the surface of the paper, has a rough or smooth edge, has a light or dark tone, it starts to describe an image.

These lines can then begin to describe your experiences, your thoughts. Your drawing then takes on an emotional quality and therefore conveys a message to the viewer. I've heard it said many times that art represents "the quality of communication."

You have to ask yourself first "What is art?" The bumper dictionaries do not define this too well and many of these definitions give the idea they are groping around in the dark for something more concise.

Here is a recent definition "the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles." What does that tell you? What are aesthetic principles? Does this mean that a work of art is good only if it is beautiful? I don't think so. Anything that is beautiful or ugly is only in the eyes of the beholder. Right? And that depends on education, experiences and emotional feelings towards the subject matter, the painting itself.

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Watercolor Fast and Loose

This is one of the more difficult mediums to use with many beginning artists giving up almost after their first try!

With watercolor, you must plan your painting first; you cannot erase your mistakes with white opaque paint. So you paint the correct colors (in value and hue) first. If you try to paint over an area again, it will look a mess. This takes practice—a lot of practice.

Watercolor paintings must look fresh and spontaneous, not muddy and overworked. My advice is to start with a LARGE brush about 1 inch wide, preferably a Purdy from Home Depot as they are a lot cheaper than the art store brushes.

Get a fair amount of paint (say blue for the sky) and mix it with water so your brush is loaded with paint. Before you put paint to paper, wet the watercolor paper with a damp sponge, then take your loaded brush and make a sweeping stroke at the top from left to right (if you are right-handed) and run your brush down the paper as you blend it into the white areas with more water on your brush.

In one or two attempts at this you should have a nice even and blended blue background from your dark blue color at the top fading into a white (your white paper) at the bottom. You work fast and loose with NO fiddling.

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Are Your Drawings Expressive Enough?

There are many drawings by famous artists, living and dead, on display in the top museums here in the USA. Many of these are expressionless and rather boring.

Because a drawing has been created by a famous artist does not make it expressive at all or even good...you will find many sketches in this category that are taking up real estate in the museums!

How DO you make your drawings more expressive? That is a good question as there are gazillions of ways to make a drawing expressive: here are a few; your line quality, thick or thin, light or dark, length of line, short or long or variable? All lines can be bold or slender, curved or jagged, strong or weak...the varieties are endless.

Beginners have timid lines, and the best way to overcome timidness is to start gesture drawing—quick bold strokes giving vitality and strength.

Go here for an e-book on "Beginners Guide To Drawing" which will not cost you a cent...you have to sign up for the monthly newsletter on Drawing and Sketching.

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Drawing Rudiments - A Guide on Learning How to Draw

Drawing rudiments are of course only for the beginner who needs basic understanding.

I have a basic guidebook on learning how to draw which is free. You can go here to sign in for the monthly newsletter which entities you to this e-book. It is very easy to understand and absorb so you will be delighted with the results.

This book covers these basics:
  • How to be a good artist
  • The advantages of pencil and charcoal
  • Learning to see things as they are
  • Getting started with materials
  • How to hold the pencil
  • Doodling and its pleasures
  • How to draw lines
  • The basics of perspective drawing
  • Basic drawing shapes
  • Various shading techniques
  • Erasing and dusting

You can draw and anyone else can but not everyone can make a good drawing. Pencil drawing is a skill that needs a good foundation on theories because pencil drawing is a blend of theory and proper execution of these theories.

Practice makes drawing perfect but foundation on the theories and techniques in drawing paves the way for better drawings.

This ebook mainly targets beginners in pencil drawing and those who wish to enhance their pencil drawing skills through other techniques and insights that one may find here.

If you are a beginner and want to be a good artist, go here!

Sunday, August 28, 2011

Drawing Fashion Sketches: From Modern To Trad

There would seem to be an abundance of really new fashion styles but if you look around in the stores, most styles are old hat. Some of the big houses do try and revamp style with accessories and color changes but if you remember last season's latest trend with this year, you will be disappointed to find they are pretty much the same.

Don't believe it? Check out Nordstrom's or Penny's, Sears or Old Navy to name a few. Many of these stores seem to aim their target market at the middle-age women and these style are really boring.

There are many top-of-the-line fashion stores where you can get plenty of fresh ideas. But why go there? Who sets the fashion trend? No, it is not usually some designer sitting behind a desk designing the latest fashion using Adobe Illustrator.

So who does set the trend? No, it is not Pantone who claim "A secret group of 10 people meet twice a year at the invitation of Pantone, a company based in New Jersey, to decide on the hottest fashion..." I don't think so.

Fashion, color and style are set by the top entertainers, Lady Gaga, Adele, Katy Perry, Britney Spears, Taylor Swift, Beyonce and many others. Madonna use to set fashion styles but she has now taken a back seat.

Watch these stars carefully and note the colors, the styles (yukky or otherwise) and their accessories. Then with your creativeness, take it a step beyond and your designs will be showing at the top couturiers in no time!

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Monday, August 22, 2011

Figure Drawings Over The Past Three Decades

I've been slacking here on these posts lately but not on my website. Recently I have looked into my archives for thousands of life drawings over the decades. Most of them are gesture drawings completed in about 10 to 15 minutes. All these were done in charcoal.

Go and have a peek at the web page I've created last week. You will find it here.

Being gesture drawings they are very rough but these can be quite dynamic with line and movement.

If anyone would like to do life drawing there is a wonderful group in Boulder, Colorado where they meet up three times a week. The sessions range from 5 minutes to half an hour with the mid week session is one long pose - mainly for painters.

There is also the Student League in Denver with weekly sessions. If you really want to be proficient at figure drawing, there is not shortcut but to go to one of these groups.


Wednesday, August 10, 2011

How To Sketch For Fun and Profit

Here is an article written by Mz Sock from the Philippines. She would like to share her views on How To Sketch For Profit. She has suggested to give comments on this article to help her climb the ladder of success in the literary world.

How to Sketch for Fun or Profit

What does the word Sketching bring to mind? A good way to kill time? Something to do when you're bored, right? All of these things? Yeah, probably. Sketching is a waste of time and energy! It gets you nowhere! That is a huge misconception. People tend to think of artists as homeless men and women, spending day in and day out by the street, making a living off of selling their paintings. Life, basically, sucks. Not in this day and age it doesn't! If you're an artist, someone who's interested in the arts, or just a really bored person doodling every class period away, you'd be glad and relieved to learn that you can not only sketch for fun but also for profit!

Sketching As A Hobby
Let us begin by exploring how you can sketch for fun. Sketching is very enjoyable (duh), whether you are a seasoned painter or someone who merely doodles every now and then in class. Sketching can be very therapeutic as it can act as a distraction. It also helps with something experts call “flow,” which is basically an almost meditative state that a person gets into when he or she is absorbed in doing a particular thing, such as sketching. Besides that, sketching also provides you with a hobby. When you have a hobby, you will feel like you have a more balanced lifestyle, you feel like you have a purpose in life. All of these are very relaxing, which is why sketching is fun.

Sketching For Law Enforcement
We will now discuss another benefit of sketching – profit. Contrary to popular belief, the fine arts do not doom you to a future of selling your paintings by the street. There are many opportunities at careers that require skilled sketchers. Firstly, there is the sketch artist. “Sketch artist?! Don't those only exist on TV?!” I hear you exclaim. No, they're real jobs for real people. If you are an avid fan of crime shows like CSI or Bones, you should definitely give this field further thought. As a sketch artist, you can either be in the police squad or the forensics unit. The police squad would require you to draw sketches of faces as described by victims. The forensics unit would usually require you to sketch with a computer software to reconstruct a crime scene.

Sketching For Entertainment
Next, we will look at another career field that an artist can go into. It is an obvious albeit interesting choice – a cartoonist! What does a cartoonist actually do? Well, have you ever flicked through the pages of a newspaper just to get to the comics section? The job of a cartoonist is to create content for that section. Of course, you don't have to limit yourself to newspapers; you can branch off into different media like comic books, magazines, or you can even do freelance work.
Society has always been appreciative of the fine arts, way back into the days of the Renaissance, the time when naked sculptures and paintings sprung up all over Europe. The problem lies in the way that the fine arts is interpreted, that you will only end up as a painter, a sculptor, or something along those lines. Times have changed, though, and sketching can now be used not only for fun and entertainment but also for legitimate business and career prospects. So, don't throw away all those smiley faces and hearts you drew in Math class; turn them into a portfolio!

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Are Your Drawings Expressive Enough?

There are many drawings on show in some of the top museums in the country, many of them are expressionless and boring. Few of the old master's drawings are in this category.

So how can we make our drawings more expressive with an emotional message?

There are many ways of course--from the quality of your lines, thick or thin, light or dark or even the length can have an impact on the overall statement. The subject matter does make a difference, if it is the same old stuff regurgitated you are not going to create much impact.

Great drawings have to have a cohesion between the form being drawn to how it is being drawn. That also implies the quality of line you have used to express the emotions.

A jerky line can be expressionless whereas a bold line has character...there's no doubt a timid line can be expressive against a bold line to give the latter more strength.