Beginner's Drawings That'll Knock Your Socks Off (Part 1)

[image_with_animation image_url=”9446″ alignment=”” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] For the past couple quarters I’ve been teaching beginning figure drawing shorties. “Shorties” are Seattle Artist League shortened classes – shorter by hours, by weeks, or both. These are run like cardio exercise classes, fast paced and intensive, but short enough to not be too overwhelming. I’ve been adding more shorties to the schedule because they’re super fun for me to teach, and they’re great for people who aren’t ready to commit to an 8 session, 4 hour studio class. Many of these students have never taken a drawing class before, almost all of them are new to figure drawing. I’m going to say this again, because it’s amazing. These are BEGINNERS.

Rather than learning one style, I offer a completely different stylistic approach every session, so by the end of the class the students have learned a different drawing style for every week. We’ve done straight line measures, site sizing, envelopes, kites, mass shapes, shadows, gestures, contours, volume, cross-hatching, and more. They even did a stylistic approach that a student named “Chocolate Bar Drawings” because they used the side of brown conte to make volume, and everyone’s drawing looked like it was made with a bar of chocolate. Recently I’ve started collecting photographs of this work, so that I can share it with you.

Remember, at the beginning of every class, the concept is new. The students have never done this before. The first drawings are usually pretty awkward, but midway through each class, they’re making high quality work. These do NOT look like beginner drawings. They’re gorgeous, I’m thrilled, and I wanted to share.

To start with, here are drawings in which the class combined big shadow shapes with thin contour lines. We were also thinking about implied lines, leaving some areas of the drawing purposefully open and undefined.

Enjoy.