The Art & Science of Drawing - Week 2

gonvalhector - Saturday, July 18, 2020

As I look back on it, this week lessons from The Art & Science of Drawing by Brent Eviston over on Skillshare was much more about capturing emotions and creating an atmosphere on paper rather than mastering specific techniques. Not that there is no such thing for representing those aspects more accurately, since we seem to collectively associate certain line weights and patterns, for example, with certain emotions. Nevertheless, this week’s teachings granted me a better understanding on the sensations and feelings people have when they see a drawing and the concepts necessary to know how to properly elicit them.

Week 2 - Dynamic Mark Making / Drawing with Expression & Creativity

One of the first practice assignments we are given is to make a continuous line, or at least one that is perceived as being so, that changes every so often. Then we choose 3 to 6 different kinds of lines from the ever-changing line and try to make a single vertical line with each of them. The experimentation allowed with this exercise was great fun, and trying to come up with a different type of pattern or mark was challenging but freeing, since it was more concerned with the expression of the art student.

On another lesson we practice how to construct 3 identical teacups with very light lines and going from the biggest shape to the smallest, making adjustments along the way like we learned from previous lessons. We then apply our dynamic mark making to the tea cups, giving each of them a unique feeling. I must admit that for this assignment I picked very similar lines to the ones used in the demonstration by Brent Eviston , since I felt more comfortable making those types of lines and they made more sense for the teacups.

Next, we learned about the Tactile Line, which helps us convey the texture sensation of an object in visual form. For this assignment I made a drawing of a small brown paper bag that I had in the kitchen. I tried to convey the rough texture of the paper, but I got caught up in the rendering of the shadows, which made me half-ass both.

Finally, we explored Atmospheric Perspective which is better observed in how the objects closer to the viewer appear to be larger, more detailed, and higher in contrast & saturation. This is the opposite for the objects farther from the viewer; they are smaller, less detailed and appear to have lower contrast & saturation.
I didn’t upload the image I made of the practice from this assignment, because I felt I did a terrible job, but I think I can better represent this concept with what I tried to do for my pixel art portrait of Briana White.

In this pixel art painting (also in the gallery), I wanted to make the background of the original picture applying the concepts from this lesson, which at the time of making the portrait, I had already gone through at least once. The trees, bushes, plants and flowers are much less detailed and are made with a lower amount of values. While the objects furthest to the back are so low in saturation that they are almost monochrome. Hopefully it was well implemented.

Overall, this week was a lot of fun experimentation that helped further reinforce the tools necessary to properly portray feelings and emotions on paper.