Monday Morning Art School: please learn to draw
Drawing is the cheapest and most liberating of all media. All you need is a sketchbook, a mechanical pencil, and a straight-edge.
Reverse aging by learning to draw
Use it or lose it? No, train it and gain it. Learning a new skill develops mental acuity in the aging brain.
Learning to draw without a teacher
Can you learn to draw from a book? Absolutely! Here are some suggestions, and I’d love to hear about your favorites. Occasionally, I’ll send a student home from a workshop with the advice that he or she should take a basic drawing class. I’ll see that person the following summer only to learn that there …
Monday Morning Art School: How long does it take to get good at drawing?
It doesn’t take long at all to learn to draw. I taught my friend Amy Vail to draw in one short session; a week later, she was drawing like an old pro.
Monday Morning Art School: angle drawing
During last week’s workshop, Beth, Sharon and I were looking at a house on Pearl Street in Camden. I’d given them a lesson on two-point perspective and then said, “That’s just so you understand the principle. In real life, you’re going to measure angles rather than draw to a vanishing point.” That’s harder to do, …
Monday Morning Art School: how to learn painting (from the very beginning)
Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to learn painting for the absolute beginner. You can either dip your toe in or go for broke; the major difference is the materials you start with.
Exercise: Observational Drawing
Learn to Copy What You See Drawing is all about measurement and angles. Copying other drawings is a great way to learn how to observe detail. When you copy a drawing, you have to pay close attention to the shapes, lines, and angles in the original image. In this exercise, you will copy 5 line …
Step 2: The Value Drawing
Better paintings every time The value sketch is the oil painter’s secret weapon. It’s an opportunity to plan your painting in advance, before you ever pick up a brush. And it’s critical; if the value structure is compelling, your painting will be compelling. If not, your painting is doomed from the start. Nothing in painting …
Monday Morning Art School: how important is drawing, anyway?
Drawing is the grammar of art, and color is art’s vocabulary. As with language, we learn them both intuitively and intentionally.
How to practice drawing (when you don’t feel talented)
Drawing is not a magic trick—it’s a series of steps like long division or attaching a sleeve to a dress. Anyone willing to put in the time can learn it.