I started the month long drawing class at Trinity last night. Randall, our teacher, is a classically trained oil painter. He is teaching us to draw in the old classical method used back in the Renaissance. It went out favor in the early 1900’s , I think. I took a drawing course at Cornell and it was not this method, more the contour method, I think.
Randall started us out drawing basic geometric shapes and then turning them in to 3-D shapes. I was a bit perplexed at this point. OK – all you artists who have gone to art school are probably thinking how naive is she!
Then, he showed us how to look at animals and human bodies and see geometry. We began by drawing cubes which we turned into faces. We did not spend a lot of time on each drawing – he kept moving us forward.
We moved on to drawing dogs. We used spheres and cones.
Then, we were given photos of dogs and piece of tracing paper. We traced the geometric shapes from the dog and then drew those on our drawing paper and with the charcoal added details to create a dog that was supposed to look like the photo. I really love the dog that I drew.
Then, we moved on to body parts, starting with arms and legs. These started as cones.
Then, we did a body in motion that blew my mind.
I had so much fun. Can’t wait to go back next week.
Please keep passing on the hints /steps as you learn. This method intrigued me because I was never taught anything like this in all the art classes I have taken. I am going to go sketch right this minute! We have to do a “mini-me” project in my art quilt group TAGY…I now am looking forward to it.
This reminds me of the Ed Emberley drawing book that I had a child, where each drawing was just a combination of basic shapes. I really liked creating animals from his instructions, although certainly they weren’t realistic or sophisticated like your drawings. Glad you are having fun!
http://www.amazon.com/Ed-Emberleys-Drawing-Book-Animals/dp/0316789798