written by Joan Stolz,
edited by Roman Menyhart

This drawing tutorial is assembled from the notes and handouts of a drawing course led by Mrs. Joan Stolz at the University of Illinois. It is by her kind permission that it is published here for public use to forge interest and provide support for amateurs as well as for the beginning artists. Illustrations can be found in the art page. Enjoy!

Light tonal scale

(Sun, 7 Feb 1999)

bring graphite pencil, kneaded eraser, paper.

describing the drawing (artist, title, medium, paper, description of subject, line, composition, and anything else you’d like to add).

Scene with very little light

(Homework assignment number 1, due Wed., Feb. 17)

Drawing, @ 18 X 24, black and white, of a scene with very little light. This is an exercise of memory, imagination, and some logic, because nobody really draws or paints in the dark. What shows in the dark and what doesn’t? Think about what disappears. Is there a focus of light somewhere in the room? Squint when you look at your drawing to make sure that your light focus is correct. Make sure this drawing reads as night time. Go darker than you think you should. Go slow in building dark values. Decide on the brightest part of your composition. Make sure that you have your space planned out in your drawing (block out a composition for yourself).

Draw a landscape (maybe a scene from a window) or your room, or set up a still life for yourself.

Artists to look at: Seurat, Goya

Perspective

(Fri, 19 Feb 1999)

On Monday, we’ll start working a little more on perspective, and spend Wednesday working a one-point interior space. Please work with one-point boxes above, below, and on the horizon line (eye level) over the weekend.

Also change the vanishing point, so that you work centered, and left and right of center. If this is confusing to you, it really shouldn’t be –

it’s exactly all of you have already done in the work you showed me (one-point boxes in different locations on your picture plane). Please just do it again. We’ll start applying it on Monday. Bring pencils this time; you’ll also be working on line and a linear buildup of value.

Also for Monday: Bring the drawings to resolution that you worked on Wednesday, and turn them in to me (make sure your names are on them). I also want you to block out the composition that you have used (that should take no more than 5 minutes).

Egg drawings

(Tue, 23 Feb 1999)

You should be working on the egg drawings that we did in class, and that is due this Monday, March 1 (don’t bring the drawings tomorrow, since we’ll be at the Union and it’s too much to carry). Work on careful line, accurate light, and perfect rendering. Remember to shade in the direction of the plane of the egg (i.e., you don’t want flat lines to represent a curved surface). Try for subtlety and delicacy.

1-point perspective drawings

(Wed, 24 Feb 1999)

Bring 1-point perspective drawings closer to completion. Make sure it has a 3-dimensional feel to the space. If you’re having problems, remember to just go back to the cubes on the horizon: this is remarkably similar to what you are doing. Talk to me Monday if you feel you didn’t get it, and you can do a fairly quick hall study. The hall study is straightforward, and I guarantee that you will get 1-pt perspective after trying it one more time.

I’d like the egg studies on Monday, March 1. I’d like to see what you have so far, and this should be done or 3/4 done.

Copy of an old master’s drawing

(Homework assignment number 2 due March 8 )

1:1 copy, use the same medium/media and paper (including preparing the paper if the artist did); this will require some educated guesswork. Do not choose a tiny drawing. Use an acetate grid to put over the drawing you have chosen to copy. The grid should be marked with a very fine-tip Sharpie in what you feel is a comfortable grid size for you (default size, 1 inch, but you can go larger or smaller: I personally like to use a 2-centimeter grid). Draw the same grid on your paper and copy. You should attempt to get this as close as possible to the original drawing in line, shading, medium, everything. Let me know who you would like to copy.

This project is not a creative work

. It is meant to improve technical ability by

1. aiding in accuracy;
2. improving your handwriting;
3. expanding your range of markmaking, and
4. getting you to see through another artist’s eyes and to see how this artist solved problems.

Here are some suggestions of artists to copy:

Durer
Holbein
Bruegel
Leonardo
Michaelangelo
Titian
Rubens
Ingres
Degas
Seurat

Self-portrait

(Wed, 3 Mar 1999)Measure your head, and where your features fall. Do not guess; measure. Draw in your entire head — not your face, or you won’t get the placement correct. Remember that the spacing between your features is as important as the features themselves. Do not overemphasize details like eyelashes, and try to get values correct.

Portfolio reviews

(midterm due Wed., March 10)

Show yourself to your best advantage, first in terms of work, and second in presentation.

Homework

1) dark drawing

2) copy of master’s drawing

Class drawings

1) a drawing that shows good composition (full use of space)

2) dark drawing

3) egg drawing

4) dual viewpoint drawings

5) one-point perspective drawing

6) best gesture drawing

7) best figure study

anything else you think I should see (e.g., was your negative-space drawing particularly successful? did you have more than one still life that you felt really worked, or where your proportion was particularly good?)

Grading Criteria:

1. Technical ability: is proportion, relative scale, and sense of space believable? for value, is there a difference between lights and darks (difference between egg studies and regular still life in tone?); gesture okay? do objects appear volumetric? can you create an edge without an outline
2. Aesthetics: line quality — does it vary in thickness, or are you still doing a flat outline and filling in? is there a range of value? any inventiveness or suggestion? expression?
3. Composition: is there an understanding of composition, and does it vary (overall, dynamic, static); does the artist really consider the entire picture plane; and are compositions balanced and cohesive? is scale considered?
4. Presentation: Remove stray marks, spiral edges, etc.
5. Effort/ambition: attendance, work in on time, concentration in class, motivation outside of class; do you ever go beyond the assignment?

Egg studies

(3 hours, for your portfolios on Wednesday)

draw from life

use graphite pencil

do not smudge — value must be built up by slow painstaking mark-making

do not outline shadow and then fill in area; determine where shadow falls and do slow buildup of value out to that edge without an outline to guide you

edges of eggs need to be smooth, not rough, in order to maintain their ‘egg-ness’

shading must be nuanced (4 tones of gray, minimum): highlight, base tone, halftone, quartertone; don’t forget reflected light on the bottom

remember, the flat plane on which egg is resting should be treated with flat strokes;

the egg should be shaded in the direction of its plane, which is rounded; so here use light buildup technique and slowly build value (slowly darken) by feathery cross-hatching.

Figure drawing

(Sun, 7 Mar 1999)

USE ENTIRE PAGE: FILL YOUR PAGE

Decide on composition: what do you want in your drawing? what do you want to leave out? Is that foot left outside the picture plane on purpose, or did you just run out of room?

Concentrate on the spine first and foremost

Go from large shapes to small shapes (i.e., don’t start with the eye and work out: start with the spine, torso, and work out from there); Don’t start with the ARM!

Use your pencil or ruler as a guide to proportion

Use your arm, not your fingers

Start light, go heavy later on

Go in with definite shading, not all-over or equal smudging: make decisions on what you will be doing

Use your eraser as a drawing tool and as a way to eliminate mistakes: don’t be afraid to correct yourself; get used to the process of putting in and taking away

Move away from your drawing and see whether you have described basic shapes, basic movement, basic overall structure of the human form: Squint, Squint, Squint

Look at the way other artists have solved problems

Think about your line quality, if in fact you are using line. Vary your line in weight, and try for continuous, beautiful line in certain areas.

The scratchy sketching line has its place, but should be confined, not used as the only way to approach a drawing. Try to eliminate the use of a strong outline, and start defining the form with shading, erasing, implied line.

You don’t have to finish every line for it to continue in the viewer’s mind.

Emphasize light: what are the darkest parts of the body? Get this by squinting. Drawings will be stronger if correct lighting is in place: all-over or equal lighting tends to be boring

Use area outside the figure to define the figure: look for lights and darks, not outline, that can define the figure. Use the negative space as a way to check for accuracy in your drawing.

Leaf studies

(Wed, 24 Mar 1999)

There should be at least two leaves in this work: one leaf to scale, and one leaf at least two times life size (can be hugely blown up if you wish). Make sure you make enough time to do a good job on this work. As I’m sure you noticed on the leaf study on Monday, these drawings can be very time consuming.

Make sure you have a finished composition, and that you are playing with the idea of scale. Think about interesting compositions on this. Some suggestions: overlap the leaves; use a very blown up scale almost as a background texture; place a to-scale leaf on the left, same one blown up on the right — composition is wide open here, so be creative and try to set your own premise before you begin.

Make sure that you have an interesting and varied line quality. Bring in traces of natural color if you wish, or attempt this in color if you wish. You may keep this a black and white drawing also. If you do decide to do a color drawing, make sure you watch for changes in value just as you do in a charcoal drawing.

Color in a nutshell

(Wed, 24 Mar 1999)

Color wheel

:

Primary:

red yellow blue (magenta yellow cyan for photography and graphic design); remember, we’re dealing with pigment here, so there are many blues, reds, and yellows

Secondary

: orange green purple

Tertiary:

the stuff in between

Complement

: opposites on the color chart (like orange and blue: they’ll bounce off each other and create dynamic color relation when placed side by side, but turn each other to a muddy tone, or lower the intensity, when mixed)

Earth colors

: mixed secondaries on color wheel of photography and GD, but clays and other earth pigments for our purposes (burnt sienna, raw umber, yellow ocher, etc.)

Stuff to keep in mind when you’re working

:

• Value: dark vs. light; add white or black (tints, high value, white added; shades, low value, black added)

• Intensity: dull vs. bright; pure unmixed pigment: lower intensity by adding a gray or complement (or near complement)

• Transparency vs. opaqueness (try to make sure for now that you always have these elements in the same drawing)

• Associations of color and emotional implications: You came up with great lists of color associations: try to remember the negative and positive connotations of color; remember also what happens when you add white to a color; the associations for red are completely different from those of pink, for example.

Today we worked, or were supposed to work, with a:

Monochromatic palette

: one color for the entire drawing, using white and black to darken and lighten and change the intensity. The purpose here is to get you to see value (light/dark) in color. Now that you’re working in color, an empty area will appear even emptier. You must deal with the entire drawing — the entire surface of your paper — or your drawing will not work as a composition. So, in other words, if you were working in green today, you should have a green drawing.

Complementary palette:

you’ll use opposites on the color chart to create entire drawing (e.g., blue-orange, green-red, yellow purple).

Landscape drawings

(Wed, 31 Mar 1999)

Please go to the library this weekend and look at landscape drawings; try to figure out what I meant by the value changes that lead your eye back into space. It should become more obvious to you when you see how other artists have handled this. Something you all need to think about with landscape is that the ground itself and the sky are the two most important elements, so you need to learn not to rely on objects to create the drawing. You need to rely heavily on value and texture changes. Please also look at classical Asian landscapes: there’s a lot to be learned from them in atmospheric perspective (not to mention aesthetics).

On Monday, be prepared to work outside again, this time on two-point perspective. If the weather’s not good or the ground is soggy, we’ll work on color in a still life.

I’d like you to think about a three-part series for your final project; choose something that we’ve done in class that interests you. Maybe it will be the same still life at 3 different times of day; maybe scale will be the theme; maybe same still life at different eye level. What I am looking for is three drawings that will hold together as a group of related drawings.

Reflective surfaces

(Tue, 13 Apr 1999)

Work on reflective surfaces and concentrate on structural elements of objects. Start looking at reflective surfaces (metals and glass, even some sythetic fabrics), and tray to look at patterns of light and color.

Series

(Wed, 14 Apr 1999)

Final projects are three related drawings (a series);

Here are some of the projects being done in this class; some people are using color, some black and white:

• self portraits (different light)
• figure studies (different light, different angles)
• greenhouse studies (using different light
• silverpoint studies (2 or 3 small drawings on 3 different sheets of paper)
• progressive-color still life (monochromatic, complementary, full color)
• still life under 3 lighting conditions and 3 different perspectives
• same subject matter, 3 treatments: contour, line with shading and detail, full color
• scale and dissimilar objects
• 3 viewpoints in progression of color
• reflective surfaces
• cross sections of fruits (color)
• still life in monochromatic color in primary colors

Your first drawing is due Monday; please also have thumbnail sketches of possible compositions. Plan the series if you can. If you do not feel that thumbnail sketches are not appropriate to your series (e.g., you’re working on foliage and just slugging through trying to understand the color green), then maybe write down what you think your approach will be to the second and third drawings, just as a planning measure. I will not be grading these drawings until they are all together and completely finished. Monday’s drawing is for input by the class and from me, and for me to make sure you’re on track. If you do not have a drawing for me to look at that’s pretty far along, however, I will count it as being late. You need to get right on this.

Please make sure you have a written statement to me by tomorrow, Thursday. Call me (328 6635) or e-mail me if you need help in deciding on your project. Try to find something that interests you. I do not care about how big or small the drawings are, but I will say that if they are small, they need to be exquisite. I will be looking at how hard you worked on these, and I expect a lot of time to go into these. It will be worth it to you.

Final review

(Sun, 18 Apr 1999)

Here’s what I want in the final portfolio. Please be ready to work on gesture tomorrow — we’re talking loose work from the shoulder, standing at the easel, very active. We’ll be modeling for each other.

Please put 9 of these 11 subjects in your final portfolio, along with your final project. You may add more pieces if you wish; do not put in fewer pieces

• gesture study
• self portrait
• figure study
• drapery study
• leaf study
• landscape
• color work
• monochromatic study
• complementary study
• greenhouse study
• white study
• reflective surfaces

I will be looking at

• whether you can create an edge without necessarily using line
• effective use of the picture plane (composition and positive/negative space)
• range of value and color (did you bring in enough color? did you mix enough?)
• technical considerations: proportion, scale, light, and volume
• aesthetic considerations: varied line quality, surface, texture, and value

Presentation: 2 drawings of your choice MUST be window matted. Make sure all of the rest of your work is clean, extraneous marks removed, flat (unless work is really to big to fit into portfolio), and edges trimmed

Gesture

(Wed, 21 Apr 1999)

Class today: we worked on the model. Anyone who did not come today needs to make up gesture work, and I would suggest going to the South Farms and drawing animals for 3 hours. This would be great for any of you, actually.

Remember, gesture is NOT outline drawing, or contour. It is active drawing showing movement and moves freely throughout the form! It should come from your shoulder, not from your fingers.

Landscape

(Mon, 26 Apr 1999)

Today we worked on landscape, integrating a 2-point study into it (or you could say we did a two-point building and worked that into a landscape –either way works. Please finish these off compositionally. They can definitely appear sketchy, but I want at least a nice, loose composition and a clearly shown understanding of two-point perspective. These drawings should be about expression rather than perfect architectural renderings, which tend to be pretty stiff.

We will return to Carle Park on Monday, where you can work on any aspect of landscape that you want (you don’t have to do the pavilion, in other words). You’ll focus on light.

For Wednesday, I’m trying to get a model, if not, we’ll work on expressive color.