If you would like to see the completed piece shown in progress here, come to the student art show! Start with simple things. Get help on big things. Good tools make a job easier. Learn from others who know how. A second set of eyes is helpful. Sometimes you just have to do the work, […]
Things to be learned in drawing lessons, part 1
You can see this drawing at the upcoming student art show. Because a show for my students is coming up soon, I’d like to share with you some of the things learned when taking drawing lessons from me. How to see, really see. How to break down a complicated picture into manageable parts. Lots of […]
A Cabin Commission
Cabinart – making art of cabins, using pencil. That is my roots. Now that I oil paint, when a commission drawing for a cabin comes along, I am thrilled. Thrilled, I say! The defining characteristic of this cabin is the group of massive trees in the front yard. The truth is that I sort of […]
And more links to learning to draw
Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Morro Rock When I was growing up in Tulare County, I thought the only real beach, the beachest of all beaches, was Newport in Orange County. In fourth grade, we took a field trip to Mission San Miguel and then went to […]
More Links to Learning
If you are here, I’m guessing you have finished the first 8 drawing lessons and are ready for more. Help yourself – I love to teach people how to draw! Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Cajon Pass My maternal grandfather, Eugene B. Maise was […]
Links to Learning To Draw
In case you are a new reader of this blog and are wondering how to find the earlier chapters of Learning to Draw, here is a convenient clickable list of the first eight. If you want to click on all these but get tired of going back to this page, just right-click on each one […]
Reasons to Learn to Draw
#13 in the series “Thoughtful Thursdays” Reasons to Learn to Draw Drawing is a skill that can be both taught and learned. If you compare it to typing, this makes sense: some people top out at 25 words per minute and others can become as fast as 90 words per minute. All are indisputably typing. […]
What you want to see
After I got over the thrill of drawing what was really in front of my eyes, I began to want to make better pictures. Real life is messy; artists get to clean it up. It takes practice to draw what isn’t really there, to make up a tree that you didn’t see, to show the […]
What You Really See
As we learn to put on paper what we really see instead of our symbols, it is shocking to learn how much is really there and how it is really shaped or sized. Drawing upside down is one tool; tracing the basic elements and only looking at the tracing instead of the photo is another […]
What we think we see
When we are beginning to make art, we depend on symbols more than visual information. The symbols come from our memory, from what we know. The visual information comes from what is in front of our eyes, regardless of what we know. You may know that a table has a round top, but what your […]