Tuesday, 30 July 2024
6:30 – 8:30pm ET/US | 5:30 – 7:30pm CT | 3.30 – 5.30pm PT
LESSON 03 / NOTICING THE WORLD AROUND US
GOALS /
__ make 2 drawings each from observation of 1) object 2) nature 3) scene
__ share work in zoom meetup
__ learn more ways other artists have used sketchbooks
__ draw together and go over the next lesson for SESSION 4
ASSIGNMENT DESCRIPTION /
although drawing from life may feel intimidating, doing it within the safety of a judgement-free sketchbook will help you focus less on the outcome of the drawing and more on the experience of making.
make 2 drawings (at least) each of:
__object
anything goes here – something that holds meaning or something banal. 2 different objects ok
__nature
this can include a houseplant, a leaf, a twig. slow down and really look
__scene
this could be a still life, a landscape, a group of people, a corner in your home
BRING TO OUR ZOOM MEETUP
__six drawings from observation
__for our drawing time: glue stick, scissors, sketchbook, other drawing materials, some type of collage material, a loose sheet of paper
INSPO SESSION 03
Thomas Nozkowski on a hike
Thomas Nozkowski: Pace Gallery: All The World is a Painting (To see his abstract paintings based on what the world offers)
Elizabeth Alley (A local Memphis artist who has a wonderful sketching blog)
Liz Steel (Notice ‘sketching tools’ and ‘how to sketch a teacup’)
Maggi Hambling (Objects that hold meaning)
ZOOM VIDEO
melissa, i loved the spiral exercise and the poem you read… after lynda barry… can you share those with us? thanks!
Here’s the video:
And here’s also the transcript:
All right, so while you’re working on your spiral, put all your focus on the very tip top of your head and then move it to the center of your forehead, your temples, the back of your skull, your cheek bones, and your jaw, your nostrils, your upper lip, your tongue, the nape of your neck, your throat. Move it to your shoulders and your shoulder blades and move it to your collarbone, your sternum, down your spine to the middle of your spine and hold it there, move it to your ribs, put your focus in your belly and then move it down the base of your spine hold it at the bottom of your spine hold your focus there, your hips, your thighs, knees, your shins, your ankles, all the way down to your feet. Now put your focus in the soles of your feet and hold it there then move it back up your shoulders, down your arm, both arms to your elbows, your forearms, put your focus in your wrists, the palms of your hands, your fingers, your thumbs.
“You’re sitting here with us, but you’re also out walking in a field at dawn. You are yourself the animal we hunt when you come with us on the hunt. You’re in your body like a plant is solid in the ground yet you are wind. You’re the diver’s clothes lying empty on the beach. You’re the fish. In the ocean are many bright strands and many dark strands, like veins that are seen when a wing is lifted up, your hidden self is bled in those, those veins that are like loot strings that play ocean music, not the sad edge of surf but the sound of no shore.” Rumi
Her book “Syllabus” is great for both students and teachers.
I really enjoyed looking at all of your drawings last night and woke up thinking about them.
Lori – I keep thinking about the photography you shared the first day, a medium you’ve spent a lot of time with and developed a language with. I’m beginning to notice the connections between the way you see the world through photography being reflected in your drawings: textures, layers, mood. Tap into ‘Lori the photographer’ as you spend time with ‘Lori the drawer’ this week.
Dawn – The variety you presented last night will lend itself to making observational drawings this week. As you tune into the way your eye and hand work together, look at your marks and line work from last week’s drawings and paste paper and borrow from them. I borrow from myself all the time! Also, what if with at least one of your daily card pulls this week you were to draw how the message made you feel with a type of line or mark in your sketchbook? A 30 second or 1 minute reflection?
Jody – The drawing of the lake and the drawing of the cat tail keep coming to mind because you drew not just what you saw but what you felt. Often times when we’re drawing this emotional realm is subconscious. By choosing a continuous line drawing of a duck on a lake I felt a sense of the container the duck floated in, and with a quick smudge across the corner of the page I felt the feeling of what it’s like to see a cat tail in nature’s peripheral softness, that which lives in the corner of our eyes. Keep trusting what’s happening below the surface this week.
Pam – The experience you had while making the ball point pen drawing is a reminder of the full sense experience drawing can be. It is a physical act not only of sight, but of sound, smell and touch. As you draw this week, how are your senses involved? Where do the different drawings live in your body? And going back to the drawings you made last week, looking at them again, how would you move your body in response?
John – There were some marks you made with a sharpie in the drawing with the circles that linked everything together that I keep going back to – an evocative tension, a chain link. You said perhaps you will go back into it and maybe you should, but before you do I encourage you to keep looking at it for awhile. Sometimes the drawings that give us an unsettled feeling are the ones we most need to hear what they have to say. As much as I like to go back into my drawings and add layers, I also need to hear when a drawing is telling me “slow down, we still need to spend some time together as is.”
Every drawing you all made last week opened a new door in your imagination to walk through. The blank page of your sketchbook that is waiting to be filled is an opportunity to build a world. Here you can document your external reality through the objects and landscapes you co-exist with as well as your imagination.
This connection between our external world and the invisible internal is often a non-verbal communication. You may not realize what it’s saying until you flip back through your sketchbook a week from now or five years from now.
Have a great week!
thanks Melissa for all the inspiring comments to all of us. your insight sinks deep inside me.
here are my sketchbook drawings for the week… didn’t do as much as i would have liked… the nature ones are from class last week.
and a re-draw… both last week and this week…
Had fun with these this week! We picked pears at a friend’s house so lots of good subject matter. I’m not sure what the first sketch is, just an abstract that reminds me of a flag and fighting over territory. The second one is a special rock I found in the creek that I’ve never seen before. A one of a kind in my mind, although I know it’s not. I see it as a portal. Third sketch- lichen is near impossible to draw. 4th is a scene I see every day, all day long, from the porch. 5th is drawn from a photo, where I discovered how to use the stage lighting function in portrait on iPhone. Now I’m obsessed with it.
Two words! MAGGI HAMBLING!