Drawing Students' Final Projects

My drawing students from Family Learning Program fall quarter surveyed a broad range of drawing topics, practiced skills and experimented with new concepts, and shared this final artwork with their community.

 

We explored how drawing can create the illusion of three dimensions with marks on a two dimensional surface.

I could tell the students took to heart the importance of building our Drawing Community when I noticed everyone sharing their work either with a neighbor or with our whole class.

 

Perspective drawing is especially useful for useful for building spatial-visual connections, showing architectural and mechanical forms, room interiors, and landscape drawing. 

 

Objects appear to diminish with distance. Things appear smaller when farther away.

Students were asked to study proportions and practice using sighting and relative units of measurements.

 

Every person has unique and beautiful proportions. We can use relative units of measurement to show all kinds of interesting people.

  

To train our eyes to see small but important changes in the light to shadow scale, or spectrum, we set up a visually simplified situation with a single light source. Then we practiced drawing an object while attempting to capture a full range of light and shadow gradations.

At it’s most basic, a drawing is a group of marks on some kind of surface. Any drawing will relate to line, shape and/or pattern. You can draw anything visible, and many imaginary things as well, with a step by step process. Start with a soft gesture drawing that captures the shapes and motion of the entire subject. Next, check and correct proportions using relative units of measurement. Finally, add detailed contours and gradations of light and shadow.