1.learning to draw means learning to see!
For any art one should learn basic fundamentals! When I am working on figure drawing I practice anatomy. When I am doing cityscapes I study perspective. When I am training on color, I do exercises on values and colours with the Munsell color chart. And I repeat these exercises.
Learning to draw means learning to see; and learning to see accurately. “Educate the eye before you educate the hand. The hand will become cunning soon enough when the eye has learned to see, whereas if the hand be educated before the eye one may never see.” — Carolus-Duran(1880) .
You should avoid the feeling that we can’t exhibit practice work. That we can’t show it the same way we would a finished drawing. For me, I am much more satisfied with practice work than a full painting because it makes me feel that I’ve received some food for the inner soul through lots of learning. Also, some buyers took my practice work — they found some spark in it.
After doing some art work one should identify which area needs to be improved, then practice that skill deliberately and get fit for another painting.
What I practice…
At present I am following the book by Arthur Wesley Dow — “Composition: Understanding Line, Notan and Color”. There are a lot of exercises in it... https://archive.org/
You can download it for free or you can buy at Amazon. I use it to do some exercises regularly. At present I am working through exercises on line and composition. I work with pencil, charcoal, and with ink. The line practice must go slowly and carefully as you observe how the line is coming and how the line is growing. Your hand should be controlled by force of will. Practice means giving training to hands and eyes. If you see great masters’ drawings you can find the quality and power of line.
Daily I put the date on my exercise papers, and after practicing for one week, I will check back and compare whether my line has improved or not. This type of checking is very important. If I am getting the same old lines it means I am not practicing deliberately!
The next book is “Freehand Drawing: A Primer” by Philip Thiel. He suggests to practice from life. Draw anything and everything — draw whatever is in front of you. Learn to look, there are wonderful drawing ideas all around you, just waiting to be sketched. Find interesting objects to draw and work from life.Boxes, rope, wire, chairs, hands, hand tools, shoes, flowers, leaves, branches, still life, etc.
Another practice work is to copy Bargue plates.
Charles Bargue designed the Cours de Dessin, published between 1866 and 1871 in collaboration with Jean-Léon Gérôme. It is one of the most influential classical drawing courses and consists of 197 lithographs printed on individual sheets that describe a learning process that begins with the study of the drawings of the great masters, continues with the copying of plaster casts, and concludes with the drawing of the human figure from nature.
I just started first two plates. I am still learning. I found these exercises on some blogs and YouTube. And if I find any reliable online course I want to join it. Famous artist Van Gogh wrote to his younger brother, Theo, in 1881: ”Careful study and the constant and repeated copying of Bargue’s exercises have given me an insight into figure drawing. I have learned to measure and to see and to look for the broad outlines, so that, thank God, what seemed utterly impossible to me before is gradually becoming possible now. I no longer stand as helpless before nature as I used to do.”
If you search in Google you will find a lot of sites and tutorials on this, so it’s a sign that the significance of classic realism is growing !
Recently I bought the book “An Accurate Eye” By Darren Rousar. I want to start this also. There are so many good books and resources for drawing practice. Find them through reliable sources and start practicing!
My advice for the people who want to draw, self-taught artists, and women who want to work and learn from home, for those who want to draw again after long gap and for emerging artists is that anything can be possible with practice. Just do it. Take very limited time, start small, do it with focus, repeat the same exercise, check whether your line has improved or not. Again, go for it.
I have given some links below about the command of line by the masters, line importance in the site of Google arts and culture, practicing Bargue drawings etc.
2.We learn by practice!
Practice is important to any art form.
Many artists make practice a routine and a ritual through their whole life.If we practice developing the skills in which we like most, this gives us utter happiness and growth in life. It is true that “what you do every day is more important than what you do once in a while.”
To learn any skills we have to practice. The practice should be wholehearted, regular and repeated.
Researchers have noted that top performers in every industry are committed to deliberate practice. The best artists, musicians, athletes, CEOs, and entrepreneurs don’t merely work a lot, they work a lot on developing specific skills.
For a long time I thought that practice meant daily drawing or painting any subject we like, so I used to take photos from magazines and paint them and finish them, happy every day that I was working.
But looking back, I saw that I didn’t learn anything. I didn’t grow at all. it was only labor.
But recently I got to know that there are a lot of exercises to develop particular skills, and many artists seriously work for years on those exercises.
One artist says that “Having a solid grounding in the fundamentals allows you the artistic choice to express yourself however you’d like. Lacking those fundamentals, you are a slave to your poor technique and will always struggle to express your self eloquently.”
So learning some basic skills is very important. We have to learn it in the right way. We have to make a plan and we must practice daily. Because every subject is infinite, we have to learn for our whole life.
I love traditional muggu (rangoli) with dots inside. I started to practice two of them daily for a week and again two the following week. It only takes five to ten minutes. I also did calligraphy in the same way; taking two letters each day, I practiced for a whole month. And I did some drawing exercises in the same way. So doing four exercises it only takes one hour for me.
In this process, when I was painting or drawing, suddenly I got the feeling that particular exercise helps me. At that time my eye opened. I saw my improvement — that was a great moment in my life.
Artist and Art teacher Paul Foxton gave great advice on practice.You can see the link below .link http://www.learning-to-see.co.uk/effective-practice
I am doing some drawing exercises daily. I will explain them in future one by one.
3.My journey with children – Storytelling and Drawing..
I tell stories for my grand daughter regularly.
I thought I could also tell the same stories to school children, so I started telling stories to government school students five years back and it is still continuing. After telling stories to different classes, this academic year I wanted to stick with only one class. So I took fifth class students from one elementary school. All students are poor and orphans. My goal is not just telling stories, but also asking them to tell stories, making them draw, making them to read story books and giving story books as prizes. At the end of the year each child must have four to five story books of their own.
Telling stories
Because telling stories for fifth class students is not easy, I will prepare a day ahead by rehearsing. If we don’t prepare well they make such a noise that we can’t control them. The children always need the best stories. Sometimes I read stories from story books because of details and language. Children like the details.
For many years I have been gathering children’s story books. I have translations of worldwide folk tales and I always search out the best publications of children’s books from the main book shops and book exhibitions. I also visit second-hand book stalls regularly.
Drawing from stories
When I tell two or three stories, the session finishes in about 30 minutes, so in order to spend more time with the children I asked them to draw from the story. At first they hesitated, but I said whatever you want to draw, do it. Just play with colors. Then they started. Now after story telling they will form into groups, each with have five students. I supply crayons, color pencils, papers etc. and I give advise on some technical issues like drawing big, coloring evenly, making clean work, don’t leave backgrounds white but fill in with colors, don’t write on the drawing, etc. Their beautiful drawings came out with lots of color and creativity. Always girls do the best. The next day I will check their work, write notes, and select some children to give story books for their best work.
– When I am telling the stories, four or five children make noise. they can’t concentrate.
– Four children from other classes join regularly; they don’t leave.
– Four or five children attend only for the story telling class; they escape drawing class.
– Other classes’ children always ask me to take story class for them.
– Sometimes I don’t tell stories; I will give story books out and they sit and read.
– At the end each child owned three to four books as prizes
Total 26 weeks, 35 stories, for each story there will be 30 to 40 art works.(drawings)
This is my learning journey with school children in this academic year!
Best wishes and Thanks for Reading!
Kiran
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