Carrasco Studio

Arctic Daydreams

This is where I learned to memorize images and then go inside to draw them.  My ink would freeze, otherwise.

The Only Fish in the Sea (Not) Water color Lesson #2

This is an example of glazing, not in watercolor, but in acrylics...I started with laying out  the  simple shapes in the LIGHTEST value ....pale browns, olive greens, pale reds, etc. , and to keep it simple (I was on a tight budget and of course, needed it done yesterday), I used a MEDIUM value next of all the colors, and then used the darkest and most intense values (sparingly) last.  The reason I bring this up in a watercolor class is that IT'S EXACTLY THE SAME STEPS I USE IN TRANSPARENT WATERCOLOR....with the exception, as you can see....where I used an opaque blue white for the fish and the guy's shirt (as a little dash of seasoning on a beige background)  This is one of a series I did for Tommy Bahama's flagship store in Vegas.

It's acrylic paint on Roclon canvas that has been primed with beige gesso.  My first layer of paint was the glazed "bloom" of orange for the background, and then I went from light to dark in my values of paint.

Here's the black and white version, so you can see the value change.

So many people tell me they hate acrylics because the medium is "garish".  It's not, if you glaze, and make your colors your own...cool down that shrieking green with a little red, chill out a magenta with a little ochre, and GLAZE a complimentary transparent green over that shocking orange.

OK.  Next week please bring a tube of Lunar Black from Daniel Smith.  If you can't make the trip, let me know and I can either pick up one for you or make arrangements with another student to get a tube.  You can also share!

Yep. You guessed it.  The next lesson is about VALUE.  Don't miss it!  And I must say, I was so proud of the way you toiled away at your apple rendering in the last class.  Most of you got it by the end of the lesson, and I have to tell you I was thrilled.  I promise, after the next "basic" class, we are going to get a little more wild and crazy, and your lovely individual style will find more expression.

Water color Lesson #2, Fall 2009

 

2 .Watercolor Class, Fall C and P   Contour drawing.  Using only secondary and tertiary colors. Fruit and and fish.  Warm and cool colors.  Structure.

Look at leaves!  Color samples...warm or cool...guess what combination of primaries.  Secondaries or tertiaries?

1. Contour drawing....mountain ash, boston ivy.  Why? It centers you and slows you down.....gives you focus and a quiet meditation.  SLOW....find an edge and start SLOWLY...back up on shared edges, don’t lift from paper...turn away from.paper.  This is an exercise in looking that happens to use the physical skill of drawing. Focus entirely on the object you are drawing....let the world and your internal “edit” fall away.  (ten minutes)

2. The difference between Hansa yellow and A. yellow, Manganese ,pthalo,  and cobalt, alizarin crimson, cadmium red and earth red.  Notice degrees of staining, granulation and opaque quality.
Mix some secondary and tertiary colors in your pallatte wells.  Make them fairly intense.

On two small pieces of watercolor paper...Draw very lightly (1) Three apples  (1) three fish.
Notice the structure of the fruit and the fish.....this is what drawing can show you.   Put a pale wash of yellow on all six shapes.  Work quickly.
On the second and third apple and and the second and third fish drop in while still wet,  secondary colors and tertiary colors. Let dry.

Show how to make shadows of cobalt and umber (or manganese and umber)  (I don’t like stains for shadows.)
Put shadows to the side of the apples.

Glaze some stain color patterns (dots, stripes, zig zags )on your fish.
 Use red and green (which is what primaries?!!) (mix each with a bit with a complement) to do the curving stripes on your apple and mix a brown from red and green for stems. 

When fish are dry, try wetting all of # 2 fish and using a blue/umber wash on the bottom to show shadow.  Then use  Lunar black for shading on the last fish. (with a light hand!)

Assignment.  Reread 1-15 in Jan Hart’s book.
On a quarter sized paper, lightly draw arrangement of  five fish of different sizes and shapes and angles, or 3  fruit and  branches, leaves or vines. Spend only 20 minutes sketching out your arrangement. Think of the negative space.  Don’t get too complicated.  Use large size or group shapes for a focal point.  Start light, paint shapes with water, then add a pale wash and then let colors bleed into the shapes.  Work from top to bottom.  Use some of the cobalt/raw umber or lunar black to show modeling or shadows.

Using a cool color to create modeling....letting a blue "bleed" into a wet warm colored shape to create a shadow below.

 

Or, using Lunar black to create shadows or modeling....paint area with clear water and then paint with a glaze of lunar black, letting the granulated black pigment "fade" out as it approaches where the light hits the form.

As you work with the paints, I think you realize that the blog entries, while giving you some information and also as a definite reinforcement for what you did in class, are not a real substitute for being in class.  It's a commitment, and I know how our lives are so tangled up with other people and other promises, so the combination of the blog, your efforts and all my support will contribute your feeling of success in this class.  I just hope you will end up loving painting as I do.

Last, but not least, I want to emphasize that I am NOT teaching you splinter skills!  You can use the concept of glazing with watercolor, wash drawings, acrylics and oils. When I was taking lessons on trompe l'oeil (fool the eye) painting and my still life looked too "jumpy" or full of unrelated objects, a GLAZE (over dry paint with oils) of raw sienna, dioxide purple, cad red, or hookers green...(lightly, lightly!) made everything unified...until I punched a bunch of stuff up  and had to glaze it again!

If you have a chance to go to the Vancouver show of Dutch painters, take a look at Rembrandt's lace collars and cuffs...he calmed down that blinding flake white with a swish of umber glaze that puddled deliciously in the impasto valleys.

I'm no Rembrandt, but I was amazed at how a glaze could calm down a rowdy bunch of grapes or day glow oysters! (you should have seen my lobster before I washed him down with a tint of purple)

©Jennifer M. Carrasco 9/17/09  All blog entries on this site, visual or intellectual, are the property of Jennifer M. Carrasco (unless stated otherwise) and cannot be reproduced or used without her written permission.

Fishing! (with watercolor)

Do you remember when your cousin dared you to jump off the edge of the patio?  Or when you balanced on the edge of the high board...drawn to the edge but afraid at the same time?  That's the perverse, frightened, attracted feeling I felt when I first saw this beautiful creature, waving it's delicate chiffon fins  about five feet below me in the coral reefs in the Philippines.  I so wanted to drop down and get a closer look, to put my bare feet on the coral next to it and double-dog-dare the fish to sting me with it's deadly barbs.

But I didn't.

I floated off, and lived to paint to and give art lessons to my friends in Seattle.

Here's the first watercolor lesson of the fall season.............and check below the lesson for the steps I took to come up with the Lionfish....the transparent staining colors, the granulating pigments, the glazing, etc.

Hi Watercolor students.....Here’s my recap of the first class and I want to tell you, you were fabulous!  Thank you all for coming, and thanks to Sarah, Ellen and Phil, we had enough tables for all.  I paid Phil for the table from your donations.  Cam and Pete now have enough tables for Lots of Parties and I was able to sail into the class, concussion free (remember, my canopy door is unreliable). with my back almost purring.
Now that you have experienced the first class, you know a little more about what to bring and how to arrange your supplies.  I suggest that you tear your big sheets of paper into four smaller sheets before you come to class, and “blue tape” around the edges (see fish example) to give it a clean margin.
  Get a hose or a kitchen sprayer to clean off muddy mixes or antique clots of paint on your palatte. Keep the newer paint blobs. Start clean...by the end of class you will have plenty of mud.  If you have a plastic palatte, either sand the wells with sand paper or rub with Bon Ami or Comet (thanks for the suggestion, Nancy) so the paint doesn’t “curdle” when you mix it.  Organize your paint tubes in some baggies....cool colors (blue, green, cool neutrals) and warm colors...red, yellows and warm colors...in separate baggies.  Wrap up your watercolor brushes in a table mat or get one of the handy brush carriers.  Paper towels or T-shirt rags are great for sopping up messes and dabbing, a spritzer to keep your paints and /or paper wet, two containers for water, and you are set.  Pretty simple,actually.  Advice from the Queen of Chaos.

And, with all of us, we are reminded that watercolor, despite it’s unmerited reputation for being a medium for Sunday painters, is a demanding medium.  I don’t know if you noticed, but it does need focus.  When I demonstrate, I am always torn between talking (language=Left brain) and painting (spacial and intuitive= Right brain). Not only does it wear me out, but it also usually results in an inferior product.  Women, especially, are supposed to be good at multi tasking, but I think most of us will admit we end up with most of the tasks half baked.  After a day of dealing with family and jobs, we need a break from being pulled in forty directions, and I hope the classes will provide this for all of you....a meditative companiable time to really sink into the process, to quietly focus and  leave the chatter and demands of the world behind.

1  Draw a LARGE Fish very lightly with pencil  on half paper....touching almost either end.

2. Painting your fish(es) with water, apply a watery tint of yellow (Azo yellow or Aureolin yellow is best
...transparent. on your largest fish)   Now, using only a turqoise blue or Pthalo blue, alizarin red or a perlene scarlet, drop these watery colors into the fish...barely touch the yellow paint...watch how the pigment moves.  You can tip it if you like.  Try this with some of your other pigments.  Also, see what happens when the paint starts drying.  Now, LEAVING A MOAT between your wet yellow fish and the background, prepare a wash of pale pthalo blue or turqoise (cyan) and carefully apply it to the wet  background, only. (negative space)                                                                                                                                                                            
3. Review of color wheel....mix on meat tray.  Secondary, Tertiary.  Complements (mix all the primaries together)  Show how after image appears.  show how all primaries make a neutral. (black eyed Susan)

4. Difference between  (Demo)
    a.Staining pigments (organic synthetics....pthalos, quinacridone, azos...bright, transparent stains)   b. Non staining, inorganic pigments......(cobalts, manganeses, burnt umber and raw sienna, ultramarine blue, lunar black , casecade green, cadmiums and chromiums) 

5  Demo a glaze across fishes and water,  Yellow (intensifies yellow on yellow, creates green on blue) Don’t over stroke! (and must be dry first)

6...color wheel....using only  the three primaries.  Secondary, tertiary, and a neutral in the middle.

7. Beginners...Then glaze stripes, zig zags and dots on your fish with primaries.   Experiment with your colors.

8.Extra time?  Do an arrangement of fall leaves....paint them yellow and drop colors in them while wet....experiment with your inorganic granulating colors as well.  How can one leave yellow or red “veins” in the leaves?

Assignment.....Re read page 1-15.  Try painting some small paintings of single colorful leaves, using the same techniques you used in this class (The rhododendrum leaves are always a good choice, any time of year)  Start with pale colors and work into brighter, more intense hues. If you want sharp lines, wait until the pale yellow or pale colors dry, then glaze into the shapes. Tape them on your fridge or your bathroom mirror so you’ll think about them)

First Step...I sketched the outline of the fish in brown Stadler pencil, a soft, water soluble brown, and then painted it in with a pale yellow (Azo Yellow, Daniel Smith) wash.  I also taped blue tape around the edge to mask off a crisp white margin.

 

Then, while the yellow was still wet, I touched in a mixture of lunar red earth (granular) and burnt umber (granular)  Both colors are inorganic pigments. I let the pigments "travel" without stroking them....just tipping the paper to help them move in the direction I wanted them to go.

 

Line in some defined light areas when the underpaint is dry.

 

Wet some areas with clear water and drop in some vermillion or burnt sienna and red into the wet area. Let it spread and bleed.

 

Mix some hematite violet (Primatek) and Luna Blue (Primatek) and apply to clear wet spots for eye and spots.

 

Add hematite violet and a little red stripes, then add hematite violet and luna blue thin line while the stripes are still wet.

 

Finish stripes and add more intense and darker colors.

 

Glaze over all of body with orange and touches of cobalt violet

Add Luna blue/black to stripes and more orange on body...then remove some paint from fins and some from the "swelling out" part of the fish's body.

 

Then add clear water , then Luna blue (Primatek) to background, leaving a "moat' between the fish and the background so they won't " bleed" into each other.  In some places near the fish, add more of the Luna blue pigment so the color can "travel" out from the fish.

Book Announcement! Surfer Otters with Attitude!

The book!  The book!  (will be published and on it's way to my place by September 18!)

It's called "Lotus and the Golden Pearl" and it's written by Libby Pink(lotusandthegoldenpearl.com) and illustrated by me. First book for me to illustrate, and I loved it.

It's a little book (5x7"), what they call a chapter book in the trade, just right for next Christmas/Hanakuh stocking stuffers and our meager budgets ($8.95 each plus shipping and handling..which will vary, depending on how many books are ordered)

Anyhow, the writer, Libby Pink, the book designer, Shannon McCafferty, and the editor, Ceci Miller and I (the illustrator) collaborated online to turn out this marvelous story of how a young girl named Lotus brings peace to the animals living on a magical island.  A combination of her own bravery (imagine allowing yourself to be transported to an island in the beak of a giant pelican!, )the help of a magic pearl and more than magic white deer, and the cooperation (non partisan, folks) of the animals help deal with some very aggressive otter surfer Dudes.

 

Jade, the big sister otter is REALLY MEAN and very aggressive.  She tries to drown Lotus, but Lotus calls on her magic pearl and is saved.

 

And Zack, the more laid back Surfer Dude otter, comes to the aid of Lotus when he realizes that peace is the better option.  And little Dakota, the youngest otter....well, she is more concerned with eating clams than anything else.

 

 

In this exciting adventure story, Lotus gets to sleep in a beyond-cool bedroom inside a giant conch shell, and talks with animals. (Everyone takes turns to give their opinions...no screeching and yelling at these town hall meetings!)  And the awesome finale...well, you'll have to read it and see.....

 

If you are interested in ordering a book, contact me (upper right hand corner) and I'll put you on my list. (and confirm when I find out the shipping and handling....it's usually about 4 to 5 bucks a package)

By the way, I did all of the interior illustrations in Daniel Smith Lunar Black watercolor, which is utterly divine for illustrating.  It looks like graphite drawings, doesn't it? And frankly, it is nice to work small for a change...I like working back and forth in scale.  It prevents dotage.

And, a reminder, if you are in the area and would like to take my watercolor class that starts on September 8, 6 to 8 pm at CandP coffee house, send me an e-mail and I'll give you the details and what you need.  The fee is $120 per 6 units of classes.

Ditto for the Plein Aire extravaganza on Sept.11 and 12.....

And, very important.  My beautiful little cousin Lucy was my model for Lotus!

Classes, Yup! Plein Aire, Yes!

Plein Aire painting is a joy and an aggravation.  The serendipity of centering a mosquito right in the middle of a divine splooch of yellow and green, the popping and groaning of joints when you sit on the cold hard ground, the approval or disapproval of onlooking squirrels, crows and people.  The sweet person who wants to tell you all about how his mother used to paint (before she had all those demanding children and a grumpy husband).

There is an energy that goes back and forth between the painter and the actual landscape that, on good days when the planets are in proper arrangement, practically vibrates on the paper. It's fast and loose (mostly loose), so you are never sure what you will arrive at.  You also get the whole spectrum......the sounds and smells and textures that you never get from the lovely but dead photograph.  This embeds the memory forever, and when you are drowsing at the edge of sleep , the vision of this experience will accompany you to your dreams.

I still remember, in 1969, painting at the edge of the Hein Palace lake in Kyoto.  I was looking across a bed of iris, across the shimmering lake, to the incredible delicate Hein Temple.  The purple haze of the iris bed, the dragonflies skimming the lake and the polite whispers of the Japanese behind me..."Ah so, des ka" they murmured.

So, I sigue into An Event going on in the World and Seattle..........

Paint Seattle / Worldwide Plein Air Paint Out / Call to Artists
Seattle joins the world for Paint Seattle, part of the Worldwide Plein Air Paint Out from September 11 -13, 2009.  Plein air artists are invited to create their art on site throughout the city as artists around the world simultaneously paint plein air.
Deadline: 9/7/09
 
Details:
Seattle joins the world for Paint Seattle, a part of the Worldwide Plein Air Paint Out from September 11 -13, 2009.  Plein air artists are invited to create their art on site throughout the city as artists around the world simultaneously paint plein air.
Artists wishing to participate in Paint Seattle should complete the registration process on the Walking on Water Gallery and Studios website.  There is no fee. Artists will be included on the Paintout Map and can show in the Gallery on Sunday at the Artist's Reception and Exhibition from 3-6pm at 4333 Fremont Ave N, Seattle.  16 to 20 works will be selected by Walking on Water and be displayed until October 13.  All art during this event must be created in 'plein air' during the three-day event.
For more information and to register visit:
http://walkingonwaterfremont.com/


Deadline: September, 7, 2009

I plan to be down, for this event,  at Lincoln Park again, painting away.  I'll try to be more specific on where I'll be if you contact me via e-mail.  Feel free to join me.  No instruction or conversation.  Just being a Tree, or the spangled leaves or a patch of glorious weeds, and splodging and flailing away with paint and abandon.

And!  Watercolor classes Will Resume at CandP Coffee House..6pm to 9pm on September 8...will go in units of 6 classes for $120.  Contact me if you plan to attend so I can arrange for tables and I'll send you the details and Materials list  Come one, come all.  See ya.

"The Lingering Grave Affection for a Face...." #8 CandP Drawing Class

I am very fond of this Portrait of a Lady by David.  I think he must have loved her...a sister, a beloved cousin or friend? And his backgrounds are simple, but never dull.
They vibrate with subtle color and brush marks.

When I read a movie review by Louis Menaund in the New Yorker magazine, I was so caught by this paragraph and felt that it was a perfect accompaniment to this painting.

"Some of the big Hollywood action films move so quickly that they eliminate the most rudimentary emotional attachment to the material.  It would be terrible if computer editing wiped out the proper emotional resistance to making a cut–the lingering grave affection for a face, a landscape, an interior, even the resonance of empty space."

Here is the last class, the # 8 in the series.

#8 Drawing on the Right side of the Brain

1 Portraits..Size relationships.Triangle...eyes to tip of nose. Basic Unit? Give out view finders

2Value...Highlight, cast shadow, reflected light, crest or cast shadow. Give out Escher drawing. See pg. 194

SQUINT, DAMNIT!  Look intently at Fuseli drawing in your book, pg 195. See shadows as Shapes of different values.  Where is the cast shadow, reflected light, highlight, core or crest light.  Look at Escher for the same.

Right brain does a gestalt.......pg. 198.  3 basic portrait poses...full face, profile, 3/4 ...show axis.

4. ...notice  shapes of shadows on portrait on page 206.. Cross hatch onto these shapes...create a range of the 5 values with cross hatching......show my examples and pg. 208.

6 When finished, show value strip curved.

And, at the end, here is my self portrait....it's always good to do a reality check and draw yourself at least once a year.  "The sorrows of her changing face...." as Yeats would say. 

I look very exasperated and school-marmey.  "Have you done your assignments, class?!!!!"

Sugar Chronicles

I finally finished my client's pastry paintings!  She will hang them in her room until the time she has her own bakery and can arrange them behind her cash register.  The paintings are done on 8 ply mat board and painted in acrylic with gold leaf on the decorated frames.  As I had shown before in a previous entry , my friend Cathy Connor had come over to decorate the frames a la French pastry with Golden Acrylic modeling paste and her own pastry cones (she made them out of parchment paper).
The larger pieces are 20" by 20"

And, to insert something totally irrelevant, here is a picture of me at the Greenwood Art Walk with my new Virgin of Guadelupe socks. Ann, my  best friend from highschool sent them to me to keep me safe.

#6, CandP Drawing Class...The Far Horizon...Angles and basic units

I start out with this concept (courtesy of the amiable Mr. William Powell in his excellent little book.."Perspective) , the HORIZON LINE, because of all the ideas in linear perspective, this was the hardest for me to get.  Not only do we experience the horizon line in real life (i.e, the place where the Puget Sound meets the often grey and dripping sky), but as artists, WE ESTABLISH OUR HORIZON LINES IN OUR DRAWINGS AND PAINTINGS.
  In other words,n the horizon line in the Mona Lisa is NOT the horizon line of the very short or very tall tourist snapping pictures of the painting on their cell phone.  The HORIZON LINE of the Mona Lisa painting is the one established by DaVinci in his arrangement of the landscape behind that mysterious smile.  You, as the artist, are the one to decide where to put your horizon line in your painting.  And then, unless you want to cleverly mess up our perceptions (like the  visual conundrums of Escher), you place your horizon line and keep it there.

 You can have many vanishing points,but in a traditional linear perspective set up, you can only have one horizon line.  Now, take a look at these following illustrations and a photo, and see if you can estimate where the horizon line is.....

#6 Drawing on the Right side of the Brain

1 Sighting...unlocks space.    Ratio...relationship....something has to be  number 1.( The BASIC  UNIT).. Show  on propotional scale, ie, 1 to 2 is the same ratio as 2 to 4, or 6 to 12....the difference is only how much(size) , but not the ratio (format). 
Paradox....ie, width of table...how many basic units across.?  page140 and 141

2.  Go through the measuring of a table...page 141.

3.  Perspective...changes our prejudgement...different cultures...i.e., Egyptian (flat, profile), Chinese, (stacked)
Pg. 143  Durer’s device.  Like your hand.. Discuss briefly.

4. Formal perspective....a little dry....not taught in this class....I could do a workshop in it if anyone is interested.

5. Get right in front of door. Outline your viewfinder shape on paper.  Do crosshairs.  With viewfinder , arm locked and  with magic marker, mark top of door width AT THE LINTEL.  This is your basic unit.  Mark the same on your paper.  Now, with your pencil (cause the viewfinder gives tendonitus!) measure how many “basic units” are in the length of the door.

Now,  draw the same format on the paper, but make it larger.  Do cross hairs.  Make the same PROPORTION of BASIC UNIT for the width of door.  Then do the same amount of Basic Units for the length..  This is called “scaling up”, which I do for murals (show how each square can be scaled up from 2”= 1 foot square.)
Show ballerina. 11-6 at back of the book.
(You can do the opposite and “scale down”)

7. Trace another format.  Open door.  Now look at BASIC UNIT.....where does the door cross the lintel?  Check the angle of the top...about 45 to 50 degrees off the horizontal?  Think of shape more than degrees. Show angle examples.  Accept the paradox and measure everything by amount of basic units and angles.  Draw the door.

8. Copy Hopper Drawing.,,,...What kind of FORMAT?. Chose something small for your BASIC UNIT  Using your newfound skills, take 20 minutes to draw the painting.  (Don’t shade) 

Assignment :  Read chapter 9 and draw a corner of your kitchen. (no shading...just use your pencil to set up the Basic Unit and measure the angles.)  BRING A PAINTING or Photo EXAMPLE  to the next class WHERE YOU CAN ESTIMATE THE POSITION OF THE HORIZON LINE.

Delicious?

Joined: 23 Apr 2008 Posts: 78 Location: Seattle

Posted: Fri Apr 24, 2009 11:58 am    Post subject: Good Enough to Eat? I have a client who wanted "pastry portraits" for the bedroom of her teenage daughter. Her daughter is a dedicated pastry cook at 17.....has attended several culinary institutes already, and, lucky girl, knows that she wants to do this for her career. Anyhow, the mother wanted very realistic pastries against green and salmon backgrounds to hang from large moire salmon pink ribbons in her daughter's room. She also wanted some sort of frame around each specific pastry, and she wanted the frames gold leafed. I called in my friend Cathy Connor to help me with the "icing" around the 8 ply mat boards (which I supported with 8 ply mat board strips in the back. Cathy, among one of her many talents, has studied pastry making and had her own bakery for years, so she whipped out the designs in record time. She folded up her pastry tubes with parchment paper and used Golden modeling paste. Now all I have to do is tighten up my rendering and gold leaf the edges. Another odd and interesting project in the world of decorative painting.

CandP Drawing Class#4 and Left Over Rabbits

After I marvel over this wonderful drawing/watercolor done in the 14th century by Durer, I also wonder how he got it to sit still for such a complex drawing.  Maybe, he was a good "memorizer" like we have been talking about in class. Durer looked, closed his eyes to see the image, looked again, closed his eyes and saw the image in his head and drew it before the bunny hopped away.  Or maybe Durer was a Rabbit Whisperer.

Anyhow, with Easter just behind us, I thought it would be appropriate to have Bunny as our picture of the week.

* Sometimes brown pencil or brown ink lines are very effective to limn out a drawing you plan to paint....the black lines can be too dramatic and interfere with the feeling of volume....as you probably know...a hard line around a drawing of an object "flattens" it out.

Also, my friend Karen is a calligrapher, and she collects quotes.  She has set up a site where she sends a quote a day to friends....this is one I really liked (and a poet I love and admire....heard him read a few years ago at First Presbyterian and I blubbered all the way through it.)  The quote made me think of you, Lena, and your philosophy of Voluntary Simplicity.  Maybe you could tell us more about it in our next class?

"Practically speaking, a life that is vowed to simplicity, appropriate boldness, good humor, gratitude, unstinting work and play, and lots of walking brings us close to the actual existing world and its wholeness."  Gary Snyder

#4. Drawing on the Right side of the Brain  4/21/09

Empathy...bringing yourself out of yourself....”Being something else......a daffodil, a pet, another person....can be a side benefit of drawing

2. Warm up.  Draw a key with both left and right  hands TOGETHER.

3. Practice looking at parts of the room and “drawing “what you see " smashed "up against the plexiglass with your pencil  on the paper.....Hold the glass (and your head) still. check angles with the crosshairs...Don’t point the plexi into space.  Pg. 101.

3.  Tape edges of paper so the paper is the same format (not size) as viewfinder. Tone it with graphtite.....rub in with s circular motion....smooth silvery tone. Draw cross hairs on it. (not too dark) (see book)

4.  Do another drawing of your hand under the plastic...holding a pen.  Now....looking at your toned paper, lightly draw "crosshairs" on it and then place dots to connect as guides  for drawing your plexiglass drawing on the toned paper/.

5.  Reposition hand (using plexi as a guide)   Close one eye, focus on a point on an edge, and move your eye slowly along the contour as you move your pencil.  Check angles with the crosshairs.  Imagine the plexi and crosshairs hovering... over your hand....can check from time to time with your plexi drawing

6/ Look 90% of the time at your hand...Compaire..edges, spaces, shapes, relationships.....when you have trouble, move to an adjacent shape with “shared edges”

7. Pick up light areas ( highllghts) with eraser and darken the darkest darks
 ( shadows) with your pencil.   You now have some volume in your drawing.

What are the three things the left brain has trouble with? 1.  Mirror images (Faces and Vases), 2 Upside down perceptual  info (Stravinsky) 3. Refuses to process slow , complex perceptions.

8.  Do one more hand drawing with the hand holding a tissue using the same technique as what we did in class today(it's in Chapter 6). Read chapter 7

  (Cameron and Jerry...I'll drop by some view finders and plexi plates and charcoal for you at CandP or send them through Phil.)