Continuation Drawing & Painting (Sketchbook Style) Class

We started the morning with a review of where everyone was currently at with their sketching, and had a little look at their sketchbooks from the introductory course and other recent work….

After quite a bit of chat about materials and method, we finally kicked off with a blind contour drawing….followed by a semi-blind contour drawing of a leaf…

We also constructed some rather cute little accordian sketchbooks – made from the best watercolour paper I could find in Kalamata!

which took us up to a rather sunny coffee break in the garden…..

This was followed by a demonstration on positioning the model; lighting it; choosing the layout; assessing the proportions; and line drawing (straight to pen non the less – no pencil allowed today!)

Everyone then got down to some serious looking, drawing  and painting of their various leaves (my apologies for a slightly out of focus photo here!)

Next, following another demo on colour mixing (lovely greens!) and applying the paint, some really beautiful leaves started appearing all over the studio. Note how the nicely painted cast shadows really make the leaves stand out on the paper.

For homework, the students have been asked to complete both sides of the little booklets, so I look forward to seeing more lovely leaves (or whatever they choose to fill them with)….and the finished books next week. Great work today guys.