A bunch of fun and interesting stuff

I have all sorts of goodies here, starting with some whiteboard notes from my Monday evening cartooning class at ACAD. Here is my ACAD classroom before the students arrive.

And the other direction from my Drawing 1 class on Saturday working on perspective

 At my atelier (http://atelierartista.com) I have a whole bunch of great courses in drawing and painting you can take, visit my website for more info and to sign up HERE.

 We are working on portraits for the upcoming peoples portrait prize at cSPACE King Edward.

I also have a figure drawing evening at ACAD and on Wednesday evenings at the atelier as well as anatomy classes, here is a glimpse of some of the demonstation notes.

 I left a little skeleton surprise for the gals in the Con Ed department after leaving my figure drawing class for the evening.

 It looks like one is about to be kicked to the curb hard. lol.

After all, it's good to keep life and art a little lighthearted!

Many jobs, many hats, it's monday mish mash

In an effort to save up for my trip to Italy and keep productive and out of the house, I've been working triples. Wake up early, get home late. I taught after effects all last week to grade 9's at one of the CBE art schools. I hd 6 lasses of 30 or more, it was brutal but the impossible was accomplished. I am also teaching all my regular classes as well as working on a mural with Martinho plus I have some commissions on the go see a sneak peek below.

My kitchen table has become a make shift studio once more until I figure out an alternative space.

I do love painting anatomical hearts this way.  I have also keep up a very fulfilling and busy regiment by teaching on my only free day off at Swinton's. Alas, there won't be another for a few weeks but I do love the samplers.

I paint neon pink on all my sampler supplies in the case somebody gets into my stuff. I do a big into at the start and then we mix colours to see how the pigments behave.

I love colour so much and I am always amazed at the colours the participants choose to create during this part of the session.

 We then select an image to pant and go about blocking in the large areas of colour. I love it when the background colour shies through. This landscape is very enticing to me.

 Here is one more refined, all the leaves etc were done with the tip of a palette knife, I really like this artists style and choice of colours.

 Here is this lady's first sunflower painting, she brought her mom who also made a nice piece that day.

 In our cartooning things got wiggy by the end as I crammed tons of perspective drawing techniques and exercises into my 3 hour tour.

hat was really hard but I always aim to please. I hope to deliver the most amount of education I can so that artists walk away having learned so much they can keep running on the fumes for a while and what they learn they can carry with them as important techniques and tools for their artistic success. When I get another break there will be more to come. All work and no play make Jack a dull boy. But not me,  I'm not sure I'll ever be dull.

Erase me. White board notes from my Teen cartooning class.

I may hate drawing with white board/ dry erase markers but I sure do love teaching, so if thats what it takes then I'll battle the materials.  Here are some of this weeks white board notes from my Teen cartooning Camp at the Alberta College of Art and Design. In the past few days we have covered a lot. Tomorrow they will be finishing and presenting their final pieces for critique and I can't wait to see what the final products look like.

Here is a simple revolver in 1 point perspective and below showing how to construct a car using boxes in perspective. The board gets so dirty that the markers erase the layers as they write, time for a good wipe down.

We did a whole day where our goal is to describe form that appears 3D but is drawn on a two dimensional surface, our sketchbook paper.  Drawing creates an illusion after all.

We covered all the types and methods for drawing forms in space, including isometric projection and perspective drawing. Above is my kitchen interior in one point perspective.

We did some 3-point perspective afterward (worms eye and birds eye view) It is a little bit more difficult but it is incredibly useful for cartoon and comic artists. We also went over foreshortening and  how to draw ellipses,  and circles in perspective using only straight edges.

We also focused on the figure and superhero poses using a 5 step development process. The notes didn't get complete as I was going around and working at each and every students station based on their individual needs and then the day just seemed to evaporate in to the class ending.

1. Sketch a skeleton in the position you want with the desired proportions
2. Flush out the forms using simple shapes like cylinders
3. Refine the details, clothing etc.
4. Ink and erase the pencil lines
5. Shade and create form on the figure

We also drew a variety of hands using a few methods, including the Preston Blair method of simple circles which is really quick and effective to learn. I've drawn tens of thousands of hands this way. We then went into the anatomy of the skull and how to draw and create faces.

We spent a the better part of class figuring out layout and panel designs. This was by far my most fun set of teaching notes of the week. Not only that it is packed with useful information!

 This is a sketch one of the students did that was just so simple, elegant and beautiful I asked permission to take a picture to share with you here. Isn't it awesome?! I love it, it communicates everything it needs to with so few lines.

Sniffing markers is part of the job!

I've been teaching my Cartooning class to teens all this week at ACAD. They are a good little group quietly drawing their assignments as I write this post. I have also been teaching evening classes which has me swamped, but its the good kind,  art day and night.

Here are some examples of the notes I write up on ye ol' whiteboard. I do hate using these pens. But it helps to accompany my hand outs. All in a days work!

 Here are some character design and how to flesh out the character from the skeleton. Also some angry birds just for fun.
 
We start every class with some drawing exercises I listed off some objects from them to draw from their imaginations we also do a little blind contour.

 From the perspective drawing classes. Above is one point perspective examples, landscape and a room interrior.

 I drew graphical boxes from a single vanishing point and a gun in 1 point perspective.

 We moved into two point perspective practice. Here are 9 cubes floating in 2 point perspective space, above and below the horizon.

 My white board is really starting to get mucky. We drew a bunch of bird houses in 2 point perspective as well, seen here in blue dry erase marker.

 We also did a room interior applying the rules of 2 point perspective.

 We moved onto 3 point perspective and did many examples of worms eye view and birds eye view, then tried the bird house again. I did an example using a basic stair case sketch covering all the methods we covered: isometric drawing, i point, 2 point and three point perspective.

 I explained foreshortening and ellipses and how to draw ellipses properly using a nifty geometry trick. We turned our elliptical shapes into useful drawings and drew soda bottles with liquid in them at varying angles.

I covered layout design, word bubbles, onomatopoeia, timing and text on this white board panel. Then the students got to work on their assignments, leaving me with an opportunity to update this blog.

I hope you enjoy. Don't forget to check out the Vanageddon show this Friday and Saturday only!!

FB info and event page is here.

A little more perspective

this is the continuation of the drawing class material.

We began with a quick review of isometric drawing and how to use the Q-bert box to draw a contained object, such as a fire hydrant.  We then reviewed our basics for one and two point perspective.

3 point perspective can make a drawing really dynamic.  Above is the first example drawing of how to create a cube floating above the horizon with a shadow beneath.  The vanishing points are spread out like an equilateral triangle. The two vanishing points on the bottom are along the horizon line as in 2 point perspective.

Here is an example that might be used in a comic book, like Spiderman. Its more of a birds eye view looking down on the top of buildings. It is constructed in the same way but this time the horizon is set high and the third vanishing point is below. It is important to remember........ often when you are drawing your vanishing points are far off the picture plane/paper. The dotted red line gives an example of where the actual frame of the drawing may be.

We expanded these ideas and rules into close up objects in order to learn foreshortening.  Also how an ellipse is drawn correctly. To the far left are examples of a column drawn in isometrics and to the right of that wioth foreshortening ( or in 3 point perspective) notice how as the cylinder moves away the lower/further end becomes smaller than the top.

Here is the examples on the board that I used to illustrate how to draw circles properly in perspective using some geometrical tricks. You can eyeball it but people tend to put the center in the wrong place. BY drawing a diagonal you can see where the center intersects and then draw a line parallel to the front and back. The front portion will be wider than the portion further in the distance. You can then split up those into 16 smaller squares and use geometry to create points that you can connect with simple arcs.

My class notes are much more extensive, and we created a lot of drawn examples to work on the techniques. It is really fun to create drawings using the rules of perspective!