More About Drawing as a Skill

I teach people how to draw, working from photographs. Because it is a skill, not a talent, we need a still photograph, on paper, so that we can measure, rotate the photo and the drawing to view it from other angles, and work as slowly as necessary.When I began drawing, I was a slave to the photographs that I worked from. I learned how to draw from real life, but nothing would hold still long enough so that I could measure. I didn’t have the skill, the instruction, the freedom and confidence to just loosen up and let my pencil fly around, getting close enough. 

It has taken me many years to be able to draw without reference photos. I can only do this on a few subjects, and I have to check with at least one of three things before I am convinced that it is a decent piece of work: 1. a reference photo, 2. the scene in real life, 3. after a bit of time, just study it to see if it is truly believable.

I am still learning. You too can learn.

Here are links to previous blog posts about drawing lessons:

Lighthearted Lessons

(More) Lighthearted Lessons

Drawing Lessons — Fast or Good

P.S. Today’s drawings are from my drawing students.

Drawing is a Skill

Drawing is a skill, not a talent. It is like typing: anyone can learn to type. Some will type 25 words per minute, some will type 60, and some whizkids will type 90 wpm. All of them are typing. Those who get the great speed and accuracy probably have some innate talent, or perhaps they work more at it because they enjoy it more. Maybe they enjoy it more because they work harder at it.

The skill of drawing is a mechanical ability to put on paper exactly what you see, or exactly what you mean to put on paper. It is not artistic at that point—it is mechanical, methodical, painstaking, and systematic.

Once you know how to evaluate what you are seeing, break it down into its foundational parts, divide up the visual parts in a manageable way, and most importantly, see accurately, then the artistic parts come into play.

 

The only people who don’t learn are the ones who quit too soon. If you don’t enjoy the process, don’t truly want the product, and don’t push through the difficulties, then you won’t learn.

No blame, no judgement. Drawing isn’t for everyone, just as sports are not for me, and knitting, gardening, or baking bread may not be for you.

But you won’t know unless you try.

Here are some links to previous posts about lessons:

Drawing Lessons are for Learning to Draw

More on Drawing Lessons

Drawing Lessons

Drawing Lessons Begin

P.S All of today’s drawings are by my drawing students.

Irrelevant?

Due to an unfortunate series of events, I cancelled drawing lessons the first two weeks in February. The third week, my first class of the day cancelled me. Well, not really. Out of 7 members (in theory/on paper) only one student could attend.

Hmmm, are drawing lessons becoming irrelevant? Am I? 

I love helping people learn to draw. I used to give lessons 3 afternoons a week, with 3-4 classes, each one containing 4 members, along with a long waiting list.

It isn’t that way anymore.

Everything changes. Figuring out how to make an art business viable means continually adapting to the changes.

Eventually, it will cost me more to go down the hill ($5/gallon for gas, rent and insurance at the gallery, and my time, which is a squishy thing to place monetary value on) than I earn from my students. But how can I justify raising my prices if there is no waiting list?

Meanwhile, I will keep helping the people who show up.

Here is an irrelevant photo of a cat whose name* I have forgotten because it was only semi-civilized and disappeared before we were able to get to know it.

*Was this Butch (abbreviated tail)? Or O’Reilly (bold and fresh)?

 

Remarkable Drawing Students

I have said many true things about my drawing students, mostly about how they are so kind and encouraging to one another. 

Here is another truth: most of my students are remarkable. They are eager to learn, highly creative, and have many interests. Most take drawing lessons because they have another line of art in their lives and want to be more accurate. They pick up the basics quickly, and then they keep coming because it is so fun to have people to draw with, a time set aside, and of course, help from me.

Look at what two of my students have done on their own.

C (not the “C” of email drawing lessons) loves to watercolor, and she has gotten quite proficient at urban sketching. She also has made a highly original Christmas card for several years, which her kids turned into, I kid you not, COCKTAIL NAPKINS!

Another student, M, found something online about painting on teabags. When she told me she was doing this, I said, “Oh dear, let me get you some paper!” Look at the Christmas card that she gave me:

She lets used tea bags dry, carefully opens them up and empties out the tea leaves, and uses watercolors and ink to create these one-of-a-kind teensy beautiful (and yes, weird) paintings. (I will get her some paper any time she asks!)

I really admire my students and feel so proud of them for taking what they’ve learned about drawing and applying it to their other forms of making art.

You can learn a bit more about drawing lessons here. Lessons

Drawing Lessons Are For Learning to Draw

Mrs. Customer (of the indoor murals) said to Mr. Customer, “I think you should sign up for Jana’s drawing lessons”. Mr. Customer said, “I would be too embarrassed”. 

I said, “Many people have that worry; the reason for lessons is to learn to draw. No one knows how before they take lessons; everyone starts out the same. My students are all very kind and encouraging.”

Every bit of that is totally true. 

One day a drawing student said she didn’t know what to draw next. She was wearing her normal black high-top sneakers, and the late afternoon sunlight was coming in the doors of the gallery. We put her shoes in the light and photographed them with her phone from many angles. Now she is drawing her shoes, and we are wishing we had stuffed the laces inside rather than having to sort out all the loops and droops.

The first step is to figure out what to draw; the second step is to get a printed photo. Yes, you can draw off your phone, but it is easier to work from paper, which is a fixed size. You can see that she is enlarging the shoes on the drawing, which is an important way to learn to see proportionally.

Do you want to learn to draw? You can. The only people who don’t learn are the ones who quit too soon. Not everyone enjoys the process, not everyone enjoys everything. (I can’t stand sports.)

Working Anyway (Cough cough)

If you think your cabin and cabin community might burn up along with your home and your town, you can spin in circles, nervously jabber on the phone, send endless emails and texts, putter, make a dog’s breakfast of your knitting, compulsively refresh websites with fire maps, randomly go through cupboards, seek oral gratification, pace, try to take deep breaths and then experiment with your new wheezy smoker’s cough.

You can also put on your big girl pants and do some work.

Montana Cabin, commissioned pencil drawing, 9×12″
The Orchard, original oil painting, 12×12″, $250 (plus tax, but you know that)
New drawing lesson with C via email – a demonstration on how to draw a dog eye from a fuzzy photograph of a now deceased black dog, the most difficult of all possible drawing situations.

Cough cough, hack, wheeze. 

It was actually sort of not too smoky yesterday so we took a walk. 

See what I mean about helicopters and the little marbles they carry?

Looking downstream – not too bad.

Looking upstream – yeppers, big wildfire, but smoke not as bad as it has been.

At one time, it looked this way. It could again. We could get rain. There is no reason to think that winter will never happen again. The peaks upstream don’t show in this drawing because it was winter and they were hidden by clouds, not smoke. Remember those days?

Oops. See what I mean about nervously jabbering?

Random Collection of Unrelated Thoughts in a Saturday Bonus Post

One week ago we climbed on the hill behind our house and saw this above our roof.

The smoke from fires makes it look like a foggy day. The differences are an orange tint, warm temperatures, and falling giant dandruff instead of a gray tint, cold temperatures and falling water.

This week Tucker and I had a little fun in the grass. He likes to stay just outside of arm’s reach, and jumps ahead whenever I crawl toward him. This is the second year of no mowing in hopes that the lawn would thicken up either by roots or by seeds. The cats love it long, and it seems thicker. Of course, transplanting chunks from another area may have contributed.

I just checked this book out from the library (Woodlake, because Three Rivers is closed due to the fires). It is fluffy, and fluffy is most welcome right now. The weird orangish tint is because of the fire.

This week I learned that the company who printed my coloring books has not saved the files. This means that reprinting any of the coloring books will involve a massive amount of computer work, again. The fad has passed along with demand, so I am unsure about proceeding. I am considering compiling a new one, combining pictures from the previous five. The Heart of Rural Tulare County is a long title, but it describes it well. This is an old post about designing #5. All the coloring books are sold out, but perhaps one of my retail outlets still has a copy or two. Here is the cover of the second one:

This week several places asked about reordering notecards. The prices have gone up considerably, and I am in sticker shock. When I started making notecard sets in 1987, they sold in stores for $5 for 10 cards. (You can read about that here, here, here, and here; there may be more old posts about them, but I am tired of looking for them and you are probably tired of reading all those links). Now they will have to sell at $10 for 4 cards. I made a new design, and will restock only a few of the most popular cards. People just don’t write that much any more to justify my keeping a large inventory. This is the upcoming Thank You card (no, it won’t say “Note Cards – 5.5″ x 4″ Folded – Premium matt: Front Side)

Because of the fires, drawing lessons did not restart the day after Labor Day. I have postponed them until the first week of October. I miss my students (a dear one died yesterday morning – if you are in drawing lessons and want to know more, email me). But, with the fire restriction of voluntary evacuation, I am reluctant to leave home; if it suddenly became mandatory to evacuate, then I wouldn’t be able to return home and get all my sweaters stuff.

 

Another Emailed Drawing Lesson

Remember Buck, AKA Mr. Curly? C and I are continuing to work on him via email. She is a remarkably clear communicator, so this is working out well for us. She had specific questions, which always makes it easier to offer instructions.

This is how he looked when we last saw him. I sent her written instructions that corresponded to each colored oval.

This is the most recent iteration of Buck, complete with more colored ovals.

1. The upper neck/mane: You were right about this area. (She had circled it, said it looked wrong and asked about a particular fix.) If you study this area on the drawing versus the photo (I recommend upside down), you will see that the mane sort of curves downward into the neck. Hmmm, words aren’t working. Let me show you.
2. My blue circle: At the intersection of the leg and chest, that slight corner needs to be higher. Look at the photo to see EXACTLY where it lines up with the nostril. Essentially, you will be lengthening the leg by making that intersection a bit higher. Look at it all upside down to re-examine the shape between the face and chest. (A tiny thing that might not matter, but I am scratching around, looking for answers).
 
3. Red circle: study the photo to see where the nostril/cheek indentation and the neck intersect. (Another tiny thing that might not matter but try it just in case. . . )
 
4. Purple circle: All of this area needs to be much darker with the segments less defined because they are in shadow. The exception – keep this little bump light.
 
Does this all sound like gobbledygook to you? Good thing C and I have been working together for a couple of years, because it does make sense to her. 

Electronic Drawing Lesson with Buck

Remember my drawing student, C? She and I have been doing drawing lessons through email since last year. I haven’t updated you on her pencil drawing of a horse named Buck, whom I referred to for awhile as Mr. Curly.  I have been posting about other things, while C has been working diligently.

The last time I showed you:

 

The mane is looking great. She has now begun “undercoating”, just laying down pencil for a base coat while she waits for me to tell her something helpful. I actually had very little to say because she is doing a great job on her own.

This is what I told her:

1. Yellow: the cheek sticks out a bit too far. I noticed because his face seems noticeably curvy in your drawing. This made me check the photo, and when I put a box around the area on the drawing and one around it on the photo, I could see the drawing had a wider box. Just carve off a little of the cheek by widening the mane on the right side of the cheek. A fraction ought to do the trick.
 
2. Orange: blur the edge between the dark and the light of this area so it looks like something is changing color instead of being 2 separate pieces ofnthe face/nose.
 
3.  Green: Obviously you aren’t finished with this yet so this is just a heads-up to be sure to have the dark parts of the coat much darker than the bright-light parts. There is a ton of contrast in the photo, which is part of the appeal.
 
GOLD STAR FOR YOU!! 
 
Here is her original photo so you can see what I am referring to:

And if you would like to see the previous posts about virtual drawing lessons with C, here is the list. (Each link will open in a separate tab so you don’t lose this page.)

Previous Lessons

The beginning

Lesson 2

Mr. Curly Becomes Buck (lesson 3)

Lessons via email (lesson 4)

Soldiering on (lesson 5)

It is possible I missed a link to a post; it is more possible that I just didn’t keep you all current.

More On Drawing Lessons

These drawings are all by my drawing students, in progress, quickly photographed by my inadequate phone.

Different levels of experience, different levels of completion, but all work at their own speeds on subjects they choose.

Some of the things I tell them: “You can try this if you really want to, but it might even be too hard for me”; “You draw better than I do so I’m not sure why you are here but I will try to help you”; “That looks really fun!”; “Oh wow, that is going to take a long long time”; “I drew something like that once and ended up hating the subject”; “That is a great photo and will make a great drawing”; “Good thing you know your subject matter because it is really difficult to tell what is happening in that little area”.

I also help with step by step instructions. Lessons last 1 hour with 4 students per class. $55/month plus supplies, no lessons in July, August, or December. If you would like to know more, email me (cabinart at cabinart dot net, spelled out because it is supposed to discourage robots from contacting me) or use the contact button here on the website.