Working with Text & Shapes

Designing for the Web

Designed by Tim O.  

In this lesson you will create 5 different images that show your knowledge of  use selection tools, filters, color, shapes and texts. One image should show use of the crop tool and your previous portraits.  Pay attention to the negative space in your work to find a place where you can add these elements.   We are trying to create depth and interest in our piece. The "f/x" tool will help you design and personalize your text.  See the full description of the lesson below.

 Creative Text & Shape Lesson

Shape Tool Tutorial

Custom Shape Tool Tutorial

Using Filters

Contour Drawing

Intro to Drawing

Last week in class we warmed up to drawing again by doing several gesture drawings.  The quick lines that we drew are quite the opposite of what we will be doing when we are creating contour drawings. We will look carefully at the edges of our subject and draw slowly.

Mona Brookes, author of Drawing for Older Children and Teens, writes:

"By following what appears to be the outline edges of an object, you can create an impression of it.  Contour Drawing is a style of realistic drawing, but it doesn't capture the kind of three-dimensionality that you can achieve with shading."

Below notice the way Pablo Picasso uses a line to represent most of the edges of the figure below.  He tried to keep the correct proportions and successfully portrays the physical characteristics of the model.  Learning how to create contour drawings is a fundamental skill that all artists should develop. 

We will also try a couple Blind Contour drawings.  This is when you draw using one continuous line and do not look at your paper. 

Class assignment:   Draw a contour drawing of the vase will flowers.  Try very hard to just draw edges with a line. Do not shade in at all!  Think about the negative and positive space on your paper.  As yourself where you are going to place the bottom of the vase on your paper so you still have room for the top of the flower.  Think about proportions (the size relationships of the parts of the flower and the vase).

Sketchbook Assignment: Draw 5 contour drawings of your hand and for Extra Credit draw 3 contour drawings of your foot. Due 2/19





Contour Drawing



Outline

EXAMPLES OF CONTOUR DRAWINGS

EXAMPLES OF CROSS-CONTOUR DRAWINGS

Sky, Land, COLOR

Advanced Drawing and Painting

"Each of these luminous and mysterious images of trees against sky, field, and river evoke a subtle variation of light and atmosphere. The arrangement of the trees - whether standing in solitude or in pairs or in large groupings seem at once inevitable and yet surprising, formal yet accidental. All of these paintings are comprised from memory, imagination and thumbnail sketches from my beautiful basement studio in my home in Connecticut. I work on wood board, paper and canvas using several layers of gesso before priming the surface with cadmium red base, a quick sketch using charcoal is used to lay out the design then the paint is applied. I work in layers using thinned down oil color, building on these layers with glazing techniques the colors are adjusted and brought up to completion before final coats of varnish are applied. Light has come to play an important part, and when I look back over this body of work, I feel it speaks about spiritual places, places that contain a quiet inner light, radiating an ethereal whisper, the places we see every day."

- William McCarthy

See more works by William McCarthy 

Your next assignment is to create an acrylic landscape that experiments with the layering of color to create a luminous atmosphere.   William McCarthy takes photographs and draws thumbnail sketches of landscapes that have an appealing composition or beautiful lighting.  He then goes back to the studio and creates a landscape that may or may not be representational.  Some artists would prefer only to paint outside looking at the natural world and how the sun affects it, there are many ways to create a landscape or seascape. You can be inspired by a sunset, but not want to duplicate it.  There is no right or wrong way to approach drawing a natural setting it would be ideal to pause the perfect sunset so you can paint what you are seeing, but you can't.  
For this project focus on:

• ·         Creating a composition that has at least 60 percent sky so the horizon line falls below the center of your piece.  This will allow you to focus on creating an interesting sky and you can layer colors in larger areas.

• ·         Choose a color scheme that includes tints with accents of other more intense colors.

• ·         Search for a landscape or seascape that inspires you, but that you aren’t “copying”.  You can use a photograph you or someone you know took.   You wont be duplicating them, but observing the colors, shapes, texture of the sky.  You can also combine images from a variety of photographs to create the one you like.  

• ·         Abstract if you like.  This painting could be a very abstract one with barely any details if you choose, but you need to have a beginning reference.  

Vocabulary List & Assignment

LINE....free form

Intro to Drawing and Painting

The first Element of Design we are going to be exploring is "Line".  Line's can be thick, thin, dashed, wide, light, dark...etc.  This may seem obvious to everyone, but when do we use a line in a work of art and vary its characteristics?  Look at the artwork below to see the variation of line quality and how it creates a unique work of art.

Link to more art by Karna Mustaqim

Intro to Photoshop

Designing for the Web

student work

The first lesson in Photoshop will help you learn some basic tools and functions of the program, while creating self-portraits applying the 5 color schemes you already are familiar with. 

Creative Self-Portraits using Photoshop Lesson

Gesture Drawing

Intro and Advanced Drawing and Painting

Gesture drawings are sometimes used as a warm up exercise.  Before you sit down to do an elaborate painting/drawing it is good practice to get your mind engaged in the process of creating art by making quick studies of an object/person/landscape.   Changing the line quality of your drawings can help emphasize certain characteristics of the subject.   The exciting thing about gesture drawings is they are never stagnant.  You should purposefully make quick movements with your hand or your whole arm.  Capture the essence of what you are drawing without details.  Action drawing, could describe some types of gesture drawings.  Action drawing involves representing the movement of the subject, for instance a person running, stretching, jumping.  The lines you draw will emphasize the "action" of the figure.

I like the way artist Jill Saur writes about Gesture drawing below.

“Gesture drawings are quick, loose drawings. You don't stop the motion of your hand while doing it. Also, you don't take your pen off of the surface to move it to another point, you just drag it over…
…the gesture drawing focuses more on the inference of the figure, not an exact replica of what you see.  Practicing quick gesture drawings will train your eye-brain-hand co-ordination to pick up on lines and see where they are in relation to other lines.  Before you begin a fine drawing or painting, gesture it first to get a 'feel' for what you are going to do.”  

  Jill Saurr  http://dailyartclass.blogspot.com/2010/11/gesture-drawing-definition.html
Awesome website showing gesture drawings: http://studentwork.isabelmar.com/24/gesture.html

In class we will be drawing several quick sketches of objects and people.  In the beginning we will only be concerned about trying to get proportions correct and capturing the essence of the object on paper.   We will be looking for lines that define the movement and the proportions of the subject matter.

Sketchbook Assignment:

You are required to do a dozen gesture drawings in your sketchbook.  Draw your dog, parents, friends, hands….anything you like, as long as there is variety. The gesture drawings should be timed.  Try 30 seconds to 2 minutes.  Make sure you are timing yourself and stop when the time is up.  Due 2/5

Mixed-Media Self Portrait

Advanced Drawing and Painting

Start pondering ways you can create a statement about yourself. A mixed-media self-portrait gives you the opportunity to be creative while telling a story about yourself with words, shapes, lines, texture...etc.  Start compiling a a list of characteristics about yourself that you would like to include.  

Great You TUBE Tutorial...painting a mixed-media portrait

Designing for the Web

Before we start creating digital images for the Web let's take some time to learn about color.  Click on the following link to see your first assignment to help you learn some fundamental color vocabulary and theory. 

Color Theory and Vocabulary Review