I'm Taking An Art Class

One of the things that I've always wanted to do is to draw. Draw and play piano. Draw and play piano and sky dive, yep...those three things are what I have have always wanted to do.

I'll admit now that I've taken piano lessons. Years of piano lessons, and I can play a mean Yankee Doodle Dandy...but that is about it! For some reason I just cannot read music. I haven't given up yet, someday I hope to take lessons again.

As to skydiving, I should have done it back in the day before I developed a fear of heights, now I know it's one of those things that I will never try! I get anxious just standing on a hotel balcony!

That leaves drawing. I think this one is still doable! So I'm taking an Art Class with my sister and our friend Lupe. Wish me luck because I have never had an eye or an aptitude for drawing. 

One of the classes was on perspective, which is tough for me. When I was in high school I wanted to join the Air Force. I took the test and failed. I failed because of questions like this. Once the shape below is folded up, what will the end result be? Can you guess? Answer later on, let me know if you got it. I didn't!

That being said, I'm learning that even someone who has no natural born talent with drawing can still draw using simple techniques. 

One Point Perspective is one way. You can find an explanation and really great diagrams at this link. I will admit it still took me a while to understand this concept while my sister got it right away.

Here was my first attempt. It's not bad, but the couch cushions are wrong and it throws off the room a bit.

Then I went rogue and during the week, outside of class I watched some youtube videos and came up with this. I thought I was doing really well on this one, but can you see the BIG mistake?

This is a subway train, people are going to sit in the seats and the ones that can't find seats will hang on to the poles. You got that right? Well first look at the seats on the left, see how they are almost sitting on the floor? Imagine if you will, someone sitting there, they are going to have their knees up by their ears!

And the seats on the right, imagine sitting there. You would have to jump up there or get a boost from another passenger and even once you were seated your legs would hang about three feet above the floor! FAIL!

But what I lack in artistic ability I make up for in perseverance, so I tried yet another one and this one I think I nailed and my art instructor said this one was pretty good as well.

We'll just call this one the hall in the library because this is the longest room I've ever seen! I'll keep practicing and the great thing is that it's very soothing to concentrate on this and it relieves a lot of tension!

Another technique that we learned just this week is drawing objects using shapes. He's teaching us to see the shapes around us and using 4 simple shapes we can draw almost anything.

In the drawing below, I drew the 4 shapes free-hand, not using a ruler so don't worry that they aren't perfect because one of the things that I am having to learn with art is that it's not perfect and sometimes it's those imperfections that make things beautiful; cones, cylinders, circles and squares. 

He had us make this simple diagram using those shapes and what does this drawing bring to mind? If you said a lamp you would be correct. I need to practice drawing this one some more because I drew it too big. Once I get the perspective of how big it should be I can add detail and make it look like a lamp.

With that lesson in mind, I drew this cute little guy. Can you see the shapes? What he had us do first in pencil was to draw him in shapes, the head, ears, eyes of course are circles. His paws are cylinders, the base of the cup is a cone. Once the shapes were there we simply created the rest of him and then outlined him with a black Sharpie, erased the shapes and there he was!

I'm really enjoying this and hope to learn more techniques and eventually be able to accomplish this! I would love to paint this on one of the fences in my backyard, that would be amazing! And since Lisa and Lupe are taking the class with me they can come and help! There's a method to my madness!

So that's what I'm up to this summer! Oh and by the way, don't think I forgot...the answer to the diagram question above is A. Did you get it right?