Figure Drawing: Portrait Practice with Model Emily

Recently, in Osher Figure Drawing class, I led my students through the process of drawing faces.  

We began by looking at portraits by masters like Peter Paul Rubens for inspiration, noticing how their mark-making, color choices and lighting created portraits that were full of vitality.  

We warmed up with some quick gesture drawings, then, had a 15-minute practice pose with Model Emily.

I began by sketching the structure of Emily's head and face with a light colored pastel pencil, then built up areas of tone and details with chalk pastels and pastel pencils.  The pencils allow more control for fine details like Emily's eyes, nose and lips.

Many thanks to model Emily for her beautiful and creative poses!  Having a good model makes drawing so much easier.

Painting Flowers with Pastels Final Week

In the final week of my class Painting Flowers with Pastels, I picked zinnias, Queen Anne's lace, mint & clover from my own gardens and fields for my students to paint.  Here's my classroom demonstration sketch.

I used a combination of Rembrandt, Grumbacher, Schmincke and Sennelier soft pastels -- a collection of materials I have picked up secondhand at places like the Pittsburgh Center for Creative Reuse.

I have a habit of bringing in a variety of different brands of materials to my classes, and inviting my students to try them out.  I think it's valuable to "test-drive" high quality art supplies before investing in them.  

I must admit, the few Sennelier pastels in my collection are a dream to work with -- soft, with dense, rich colors.

I hope you'll join me for an art class.  The Community College of Beaver County schedule of fall classes is online and open for sign-ups.  You can find my art classes here:

https://ccbc.coursestorm.com/category/arts

Painting Flowers with Pastels

I've been teaching a class in painting flowers with pastels at the Community College of Beaver County.  

Each week, I buy flowers for class, and bring in pastel paper to match.  We sketch and paint the flowers while listening to classical music. 

The first class we had gorgeous fuchsia & yellow lilies.  We practiced drawing them on brown craft paper, and then switched to Canson Mi Teintes pastel paper.

In each class, I demonstrate the process of beginning the drawing, then adding colors and finishing with details.

This week, we drew bright, summery sunflowers. The rich oranges and yellows felt inspiring and sunny.

If you'd like to take a class with me, check out my classes page here:

https://betsyblissart.blogspot.com/p/online-art-classes.html

Osher Figure Drawing with Model Sophia

Friday, November 19th, we had a wonderful session with model Sophia.  An incredibly inventive and flexible model, Sophia created gesture poses that stretched our abilities and strengthened our drawing and observational skills.

During the gestures, I asked my students to spend the first minute of each three minute pose looking for the underlying structure of Sophia's body. We used one color for the structure, capturing Sophia's spine, her rib cage, her skull and other bones.  With two minutes remaining in the sketch, I called for a color change and we chose a contrasting color for the outer contours and shadows, building upon the armature we had laid down in the first minute.

Sophia's last pose was so abstract that it pushed our observation and drawing skills, and was a valuable workout.

All warmed up, we moved on to practicing drawing faces.  I demonstrated the process of finding the shape of a person's head, laying in the eye line about halfway down the face, drawing the eyes, and then measuring where the nose and lips fit in.  

We finished up with a long pose that incorporated our study of Sophia's face.  I used pastels on blue Canson Mi Teintes paper, and followed my intuition on color choices within Sophia's figure and in the negative space.

Many thanks to model Sohia for an amazing session full of inspiration and discovery!

Osher Figure Drawing Class with Kathryn & David

In our final class of the Osher autumn term, we were fortunate to have two skilled models working together.  Kathryn & David created beautiful 5-minute gesture poses to get us warmed up.  

I had told my students to follow their intuition in selecting a medium to use in this class, and I chose charcoal for the gestures and pastel for the long pose.

Kathryn & David used the gesture poses for expressive storytelling, and I invited my students to focus on the negative space between & around David & Kathryn to help simplify the complex shapes.  

I really enjoyed this approach; instead of seeing their two figures as independent structures, I could look at them as a whole composition and capture the flow and energy of the pose.

For the long pose, I used colored pastel paper (Canson Mi Teintes), and took a colorists approach, selecting a different color for each value in the composition.   After the isolation of the pandemic, I am drawn to using vibrant colors to express the vitality of the models I draw and my joy in being together in person.

Many thanks to Kathryn & David for their inspiration in this class, and their work throughout the pandemic to make our Osher classes an oasis in a time of isolation and difficulty.  Your creativity and hard work uplifted many artists.

Bravo!

Osher Figure Drawing Class with Model Shannon

I had alerted my students that I planned to do some creative activities with color in Friday's class, and asked them to bring their pastels, chalks or other colorful media to the session.  

During the 3-minute gestures, I invited my students to begin drawing with a lighter color to make their first messy marks.  After a minute, we changed colors to a contrasting/darker hue, and captured our final contours and shadows. Our model Shannon held some uplifting 3-minute poses.

As we progressed, I added more colors to my palette, finishing with white for the highlights, fuchsia for the midtones, and blue for contours and shadows.  

I love using bright, contrasting colors to create drama in a drawing.

After we finished our gestures, we talked about methods for drawing the hands, and practiced with a 15-minute hand study.

We finished up with a long pose.  I took the colorists approach to my pastel drawing of Shannon, following the rule that you can use any color you like in a composition, as long as it is of the same value (light to dark) as the original color in the scene.  It felt freeing and energizing to create with bold colors, and I played with swoops and swirls in the negative space.

Many thanks to model Shannon for her strong poses and creative inspiration!

Osher Figure Drawing with Model David

The last class of the semester brought us to the study of hands and feet with model David.  We warmed up with some 3-minute gesture drawings, and David gave us athletic and creative poses.

We moved on to practice drawing hands and feet, which are challenging to draw because of their complexity and expressiveness.  Picking up a paintbrush and small palette, David invited us to draw these familiar tools in use.

We moved on to drawing feet in action. Inspired by the Summer Olympics, David posed kicking a ball, giving us two angles to sketch in our 8-minute drawing.

We finished with a beautiful hour-long pose that capitalized on our practice of drawing the hands, the feet -- and the face.  A clever and expressive pose ideal for our studies!

Many thanks to David for his athletic & creative poses, and for always bringing us something different!

Osher Figure Drawing with Model Alexx

Our Osher Figure Drawing class had the good fortune to draw Model Alexx, who inspired us with her inventive poses and an expressive countenance. 

We started with 3 minute gesture drawings.

Now that we were warmed up, we moved on to study drawing the face.  I gave a demonstration of rules of thumb for drawing the head. 

Then, we practiced drawing Alexx's portrait from the front view. Alexx held her facial expression rock solid and still for us.

We moved on to draw a profile view.

We finished the class with a roughly hour-long pose,with model breaks of course, that incorporated the portrait.  Alexx gave us a dramatic & beautiful pose to work from.  

Many thanks to model Alexx for her hard work and inspiration!

More Pastel Paintings of Flowers

Another week in Painting Flowers with Pastels, another painting.  

The recent rains have created a bounty of blooms to clip and bring into class on Saturday mornings.  And, this week, I also brought in some potted Wave Petunia plants.

Focusing only on the bright fuchsia blossoms of the petunias became meditative & relaxing. A simple background of bold colors finished the study an made the flowers pop.

I hope your summer includes some time to meditate on beauty and paint to your heart's content! 

Painting Pastel Flowers

 

What could encapsulate the season better than spending a lovely summer morning painting flowers? 

 Saturday marked the first class of my Painting Flowers with Pastels course at the Community College of Beaver County, and my students and I delighted in delving into a world of blooms with our pastels.

The CCBC Art Studio is spacious and full of light, a wonderful place to turn on some classical music, lay out our supplies, and unleash our creativity.  I asked my students to focus on being experimental, and just playing.  The vibe of joyful creativity filled the room, and my students created awesome artworks!

Many thanks to my students for their willingness to jump right in and experiment!

You can find out more about upcoming classes at CCBC here: https://www.ccbc.edu/arts

You can register for upcoming classes here: https://my.ccbc.edu/ICS/Continuing_Education/