 Probably you have ideas on what you want to draw but might like some more guidance to get you moving in the right direction. Think for a minute of all the different things you would like to record on paper. You can learn all the skils required. Perhaps, like me, you especially love the beauty of nature scenes in the country of fields and trees, mountains and clouds. Maybe your interest is centred in people, the faces of your family, or the exciting and glamorous activities of people look like they attend a charlotte cosmetic dentist, or prefer caricature studies, water jet planes, bouquets of flowers, animals, or comics with your mind. If you study drawing lessons and practice faithfully, you soon be putting on paper the pictures you have dreamed of. I will be continuing step by easy step art lessons though this blog and I will eventually have art EBooks available. In the mean time I add a few books by other authors, as suggestions to help you get started. You can order this drawing book, A Foundation Course in Drawing, Techniques and Skills', by clicking on the image below.    Revision of a previous lesson Artist's Way of holding the pencil. Do not grip the pencil tightly like you do when writing. Also hold the pencil several inches away from the point. Pencil should be able to be pulled out of your hand easily.  Revision of a previous lesson Place your drawing board in position (see previous drawing lessons) and you are ready to begin. Do the warm-up, exercises on this page to get the feel of the pencil. Use firm, sweeping pencil movements for these lines and strokes. First your lines may not look much like the examples shown here. But with a little practice, you will soon be able to draw them with reasonable success. Don't tighten up __ don't draw each line slowly and tedious __ don't use short, timid strokes. Make your pencil glide across the paper. I used to have video art tuition available and it was great being able to play it on televisions. I am currently compiling an e-Book style art lessons series and I miss not having my art lessons to show on our lcd tv. I will take a look at camcorder reviews and decide if I want to web video lessons in the future. In the meanwhile I am providing these art lessons on line, here, free of charge.  Exercises. 1/long, smooth, strokes. Draw each line with one sweep of the pencil. Try pencil position B or D. 2/Swing the pencil, in the circles. Use pencil position, B or E. for many circles, fill pages of practice paper. Soon yours will be smooth and round. 3/horizontal and vertical lines __ line them up with the edges of the drawing paper. 4/finally some slanting, lines. 5/and looping curves.  Strokes and Shapes. Now put some of these lines together. 1/horizontal and vertical picture frame  2/circles large and small with some lines accented, (darkened) with a 3B pencil.  3/lines with verticals make a box ... a house. Sketch very lightly until you get the right slant then darken the line.  4/Draw round circles... you can do this easily now. 5/Next __ swing an oval. Then a thinner oval __ still thinner___very thin indeed.  To draw a flower pot. 1/"vertical and two horizontal lines. Add slanting lines. Swing oval in top and bottom. Accent with the darker pencil. Draw a daisy, without lifting the pencil.  Begin to work using a still life model. Each of these outline drawings was done directly from a model. Notice how the lightly sketched, construction lines were used.   Draw some long smooth steady strokes horizontally across a sheet of paper; freehand, do not use a ruler. Draw each line with on sweep of the pencil. Try pencil in position B or D.   With your drawing board in position and your B pencil sharpened, you are ready to begin. Practice the warm up exercises shown here to get the feel of the pencil. Use firm sweeping pencil movements for these lines and strokes. At first, your lines will not look much like the examples given here, but with a little practice you will soon be able to draw them with reasonable success.  Draw circles. Swing in big circles, use pencil position B or E  Make many circles, fill pages of practice paper.  Soon yours will be smooth and round.  Then swing the circle the other way. Lesson 1 continues, with the next blog post, here with more drawing strokes, then shapes and forms. However, before I do more art lessons I need to duck over to my art slim blog as I have been asked ,to give some quick weight loss tips. That is not actually a subject I cover, as I am more for steady balanced lifestyle of healthy portion controlled eating and exercise. I do bring this subject up in the art’s pages as I come from a family of creative artistic people and all those I knew aside from my sister and myself, did themselves a great deal of harm by neglecting their bodies health through a life of sedentary work due to an obsession with their art. Artist's can be healthy and creative but it requires learning life Balance, something I am constantly working at.  The Artist’s Way of Holding the Pencil. Position A/ Gliding on the little finger. Hold the pencil firmly but lightly two make sure your hand is 2 to 3 inches away from the point and you do not have a vice like grip on it, as that would restrict free movement and while it might allow you to write it prevents the flowing movement across the page required to draw well. Position A shows the artist resting the little finger on the paper and holding the pencil loosely between thumb and the top two fingers then drawing by sliding the hand along the paper guided in the distance away from the paper by the little finger. If you are covering a small area, you can just swing the hand, from the wrist, if covering a larger area, swing the arm and slide the pencil along using this little finger as a guide. If you are working in a studio space with water, faucets so you can clean up easily, you can test these pencil-holding techniques out using charcoal sticks. Practice makes perfect. It is a myth to believe that we are born talented. We may born, with the desire within us to apply ourselves to things we love, learn and practice harder at some things than others, less interested in them, might do and so we become talented. Every one of us has a strong creative urge, we are all, artistic. Some of us have just developed these skills, more than, others. If you want to become an artist, you can. You do not need to be talented to start, you need to have the desire, to learn and practice. it is your teacher who needs to have the talent to show how, explain why, and constructively critique the students work, in order for you to advance. I hope you gain what you are needing from these art lessons and Kathy Shell is available as your tutor, for on line, art tuition advice if you would l like to go further than these lessons can take you. 
Try the various methods show here and get someone test your grip, if the pencil is tugged by the free end, it should be able to be withdrawn from your hand. Your firm grip should only be firm enough to hold a pencil without any counter force, still in your hand; it should not be so tight as to stop an external force from removing the pencil from your grasp. It is easier to master this if you are a beginner than if you have been holding a pencil incorrectly to draw for a long time. There are lot’s of advantages to being a beginner and learning the right way, the first time. The way you hold a pencil to write is very different to the way you hold it to draw. You will find some positions suit certain pencil marks more than others do. When writing you only make short hand movements in drawing your pencil moves all over the paper and you may be swinging your entire arm, not just your hand. We will be learning now to do free sweeping movements across paper using your not only your hand but your arm, now you are really needing all those newspapers and scrap papers you have been collecting to practice free movements with the pencil and varied pencil holding positions. The best, natural sleeping pills I know is going to bed with a fantastic feeling of inner satisfaction from knowing I have completed an art pursuit that leaves me feeling creatively satisfied. I hope you all achieve this feeling J Practice, Practice, Practice! Kathy Shell is available as your tutor, for on line, art tuition advice. In the next lesson, I will describe these pencil-holding positions. It is important to get the beginner lessons down pat, regardless of where you are at, beginner, intermediate level or advanced, it still always pays to check if you have learned the basics correctly as even a slight improvement in pencil grip position will improve your drawing ability.       
Arrange your position so that the edge of the drawing board is resting against the edge of the table and the base of the drawing board in your lap. In this position, you can move your arm and hand freely. Some people prefer to work with the drawing board resting flat on the table, but this is a cramped position that prevents full freedom of movement. Sometimes I use a tilting drawing table and I stand in front of this or wok from a tall drafting stool. Fasten the drawing paper to the board with drawing tacks, clamps or masking tape. It is a pleasant surface to work on if you place 2 to 3 sheets of paper under the work paper to cushion it. Any clean paper can be uses as padding. This makes a softer surface that accepts the pencil well and prevents any dints or marks appearing in the board, which might then affect further drawings. Remember all those paper advertisements for diet supplements and store sales that come in the mail can now double as your practice paper for drawing techniques, and you can save the pure, clean, acid free paper for the finished work. . Practice, Practice, Practice! Kathy Shell is available as your tutor, for on line, art tuition advice. 
Be prepared to use up a lot of paper in your practice sessions. I once asked an, experienced artists I was having private tuition with, to show me how to do something. When he showed me, I exclaimed in glee that ‘I now knew how to do that’. He quickly ‘put me in my place’ by telling me that ’40 years of doing that is how you learn to master it’. I went home and every night used up every sheet of the newspaper, practicing the technique over the top of the news advertisements, acnepril reviews and comics,until I had mastered it. Practice, Practice, Practice! Kathy Shell is available as your tutor, for on line, art tuition advice.  Lesson One ` Drawing ~ Getting started, Drawing Board and T-square. Here is the drawing board with drawing paper in position. Use the T-square only for making boarder lines.Note; do not use the T-square for drawings, do all drawing freehand. Getting started in drawing is a very simple matter. Pick out the materials you need and begin right away with warm-up exercises I will be showing soon. These will be the same drawing, exercises, I have been doing since I was 13 years old. lol, 50 years of experience behind me in doing my drawing exercises, these are just like practicing the scales for a musician. As you read the lessons, do the exercises I show you, done in sequence they wull be easier than filling out no exam life insurance papers J. You can if you wish, enrol with me for private on line lessons and I will constructively analyse your drawing lessons.   The finished artwork, The Warby Hut by Kathy Shell is on the left A photo enhanced brighter version is on the right hand side. Which version do you think would be most suitable to make the print? I have received a lot of requests this month to paint commissioned art works. This is my training, this would be my love, but my lifestyle does not allow me to accept commissioned art work now, I paint for the love of it when I can fit it in. I am in retirement as a professional artist The few paintings I now do are entirely 'free choice both in subject and how long I need to take to complete them. This is the only way I can fit painting into my lifestyle, which has changed from being the artist who writes to the writer who paints. My writing takes me across a wide variety of subjects from short story writing, a novel in planning stage, reference books, booklets and articles through to wrinkle cream reviews and my ten blogs where again I can enjoy free lance creative freedom. I write about Art, in this my 'A Creative Life' blog at Kathy-Shell.net Travel, in my 'gone bush blog' at gray-nomad.com Fitness at Artslim.org. Blogging in my 'A bloggers's Muse' at bloggermuse.com My Kathy Shell page in facebook, is where I publish all my blogs. The photo for the Warby Hut, artwork, as provided by one of my Kathy Shell page on facebook’s, ‘fans’. Kathy Shell on Facebook If you have a photo of your own, you would love to see painted,, (if I do use it I always send a print as thank you), then view my Kathy Shell page, and click ‘like’, then place your photo in the fan’s photo album on the left hand side of the page and every time my fan’s page increases,, by another 100 , I paint one of my fan’s photos to ‘celebrate’ and say, ‘thank you’, to my fans. J . Thank you for your support of my gallery items for sale and affiliates advertised products, so I can afford to continue to do E How lessons. My sincere appreciation to all those decent people who do the right thing and respect copyright and support artists who give their time and skills over the internet, by supporting their web sites, with a purchase. Thank you :-)   With beautiful soft artist quality pastels and loving the texture of the paper, I lightly worked over the acrylic underpainting, lightening the sky so it contrasted with the mountain. Show in the side image, I am creating haze over the mountain. I also took this softening with the pale ultramarine blue into the tree line behind the hut, creating an airial perspective appearance of greater distance and at the same time reducing the overall appearance of green as I wanted to create the effect of softer lighting of early morning or late afternoon, much as I had viewed this scene myself. Working in a confined caravan setting I made a compromise on the composition of the finished art work due to the available time I have to paint. I am not fully comfortable with compromising any part of my art standards and that is the reason I do not paint very much anymore. I am very much an all or nothing person. I do want painting to become a part of my new life as a carer though know it can never be what it was when I was the Internationally acclaimed artist with my own multi award winning gallery.  I have 9 trays of pastels with three trays placed in each of three boxes. One box is for my cool colours of blue and blue green or blue violet. I have a yellow to yellow orange, yellow green and white box. Then a red to red violet and orange box. Then within these boxes, I have divided my trays into the dark, the medium tones and the light tones. I find this system easy and efficient to work with and pack for travel.  Working into the shadows over the entire painting, placing dark ultramarine blue everywhere it is medium dark regardless of the actual colour of the object, as I want a beautiful colour harmony for this painting, that at least I have the time to do. I accentuate the split opposite colour harmony of blue blue violet, yellow orange and red orange. I subduing, though do not totally overwhelming the green in the original photo and underpainting.  Close up detail of part of the painting. This is the time in my life for me to share the skills I learned with those who now have the time to pursue painting as a career or lifetime skilled hobby. Painting works better than a herbal phentermine for me, it takes my mind off food and the effect does not wear off, it always transports me to an inner peaceful world, J, no matter how long I have been doing it.  I use a dark orange gold pastel for small areas on the mountain, the trees, and the ground, especially in the foreground and the corners as I wanted to darken these to keep the eye within the work. I have used this as accents on the building and the rough texture of the paper helped me achieve the effect of the colour only on a few high points, not a solid cover. My next bog with show the work at stage four, detailing completed.  | Kathy Shell on Facebook What is RSS
Kathy Shell, Australian
|
RSS Feed
