Art 101 Begins!

My basic art class, Art 101 launched Tuesday morning. It's a small class that meets in my studio. I painted some of my furniture white and the difference it makes is amazing. The space looks less cluttered and large.

After a brief lesson about pencils and paper we went on to begin learning about line and contour drawing. Contour drawing is one of the best exercises a person can do to help coordinate their hand and eye movements. It also can be used to render subjects in fine art works.

Contour drawings can be done several ways-

•  Blind, eye following the edges of the subject while the hand draws them
• Blind with peeks, looking only to place a pencil,but not looking when drawing
• Looking as much as desired
• Tracing edges on photographs
• Another form of contour drawing refers to the surface of a shape, such as contour maps

The students did very well with their work. Below are two of the students' works.

Next week we move on to gesture drawing.