This class will begin to explore the foundations of drawing skills and how to properly see objects in order to render them in the two dimensional form. We will occasionally take a few minutes to look at many types of drawings and still life’s for the classical and renaissance period to see how they handled their subject. We will take different types of black and white dry mediums (i.e. pencil and charcoal) and work on seeing lines, forms, planes, shapes within objects, perspective, and value. In the second half of the year we will start looking at basic color theory and understand how much a black and white drawing is important to understand before tackling color. We will start to take these drawings and show how each and every object and figure is affected by light which then defines color.

This class will begin by looking at the human figure and the anatomy that lies underneath of the skin, and how to properly render such things. We will study some classics who were masters at the figure, for example DaVinci, Michaelangelo, Raphael, and so forth. To begin we will learn about gesture drawings, blind contours, box drawings, and work on a general understanding about the bone structure of the figure as well as the musculature. We will work from observation and learn how to see figures as shapes, planes, darks, lights, and so on. In the second half of the year we will explore more of the figure in motion and learn how to take what we have learned about the figure in general and apply it to a moving figure from which we probably would not have reference. We will continue to look at lights, darks, and throughout the year explore color as defined by light, shapes, and skin-tones.