Home School Art Lesson, Drawing A Focused Highlight

Spectrum Home School Community 5/9/13

Effecting a highlighted area in a drawing.

In class pictures were distributed for the students to find inspiration off of.  These pictures were from old calenders; most were of lighthouses or structures that had a major area of white or negative space.

Using pencil the students drew the lighthouses and surrounding seascape. Since the light house is white little is needed to do except a gradual shading.

The white lighthouse is lost in the sky since most students want to leave the sky blank but by using a dirty blending stub the sky is stained so that the sky was a value darker than the lighthouse. Some have problems keeping the sky smooth and not showing the marks of the blending stub. It requires patience and several minutes of rubbing. A tissue may be used to smooth out the blending stub marks. It may need to have the charcoal or pencil rubbed on and removed a few times to get the desired effect.

Charcoal drawing of Light house with sky a value darker.

The example above is not the best I admit, but it shows the sky is a value slightly darker than the white lighthouse. The effect is to make the lighthouse brighter than the rest of the drawing. This moves the foreground  forward and gives the effect of distance.

Another example may be seen at the link below of a boy in a white shirt. The shirt looks white because the background is toned down as described above.
http://artistadron.blogspot.com/2013/05/quick-sketch-while-at-cafe.html

The link below shows another example of a creamer with a dogwood blossom. Here the dogwood blossom is bright because the table was stained to a slightly darker value as described above.
http://artistadron.blogspot.com/2013/05/charcoal-sketch-of-creamer-and-dogwood.html

(c)Adron Dozat

Home School Art Drawing the Human Figure.

Spectrum Home School lesson for May 2

Art 2

We will warm up with a sketch of Woody our wooden model. It will be posed in a common pose and students will be given a six minutes to draw it. (See the finished example of this at the link to my other blog: artistadron.blogspot.com.) This will help free up the young artist and teach them editing and decision making in drawing.

Our main project are inspired by pictures cut out from the local sports section of the newspaper. These often have dramatic postures and actions. The class will begin with a light pencil rendering and go over it in pen.

Below is an illustration of a sketch in marker of an athlete clipped from a paper. It was done during class as an example showing the process of the drawing.

Starting with pencil I drew an articulated stick figure for the frame and then adding the thickness of the figure. This part of the drawing took less than three minutes. Switching to pen and ink I rendered the figure sometimes tracing the pencil lines, and sometimes only using them as a reference. A dark area was in the photo so it was included in the picture to give reference and to help move the runner forward.

Sketch in marker of an athlete running.

The project was challenging to some. Since the photos were from the newspaper they were given to the students who wanted to finish the project during the week at home.

(c)Adron Dozat