Last of Five Drawing Classes for Fall

Every time I have a new group of students, the first question I ask them is, "What do you like to draw?" The second is, "What would you like to draw in this class?" The answers vary from class to class.

The largest number of students in this class chose animals. Several mentioned wild animals so I brought models of tigers and lions for the second session. The next time we worked on dogs because some of the students asked for them. Then a couple students asked, "Are we going to do any people?" Some classes want to spend all their classes working on one subject such as tigers and lions but this group had a variety of interests.

Since there is no set curriculum, I work with what the students decide. There are plenty of things to learn about drawing. No matter what I show them, they are always learning about looking carefully and drawing what they actually are seeing, not what they assume they are seeing.

For the last session, I told them about the standard measurements that artists use for faces. The eyes are halfway down the oval that is the face. The nose is halfway between the eyes and the bottom of the chin. The lower edge of the lower lip is about halfway between the bottom of the nose and the bottom of the chin.

Below are the faces the students drew. They used white paper but the lighting in the classroom was not ideal for my small camera. I adjusted the colors with JASC Paint Shop Pro 8 but I need more practice!

I suggested that the students make a small mark with a black marker to show about halfway before putting in the eyes.  This student gave her face freckles so the mark doesn't show.

I told this girl I would erase the dot she put  to mark halfway so I did.  See below.

   One of the other girls used what started out to be a study sketch in her notebook as her final drawing so this is what she drew.  The teenager's acne camouflages the measurement dot between the eyes but the lines she drew to get a good shape for the head were a distraction also.  I told her I was good at getting rid of acne and lines on faces.  Nothing like a computer!  Here is the before and after.  I left the spot she told me was a mole. She accidentally left her drawing in the classroom.  I will take it to the Community Services Office where she can pick it up this week if she wants to.

Although most of the students decided to complete the how-to sketch, the artist below drew a new picture.

This artist used the batman characters for models.

After this student did her face sketch, one of the ones shown above, she decided that she really wanted to work more on this drawing of Dixie.