After my evening pistol league, later in the week I joined an art class. Creative Drawing may be way over my head, both in actual capabilities and understanding. Our instructor is DeBob Jacobs, who is very good. You can see her work here and here.
Most of us have heard about composition using the golden mean, or doing something that is asymmetrical. I knew about things like the light source, but my education is sadly lacking in other areas, like there are 15 composition types and that clothing can only fold in 7 ways when it’s on the body. That bit about clothing is found in an anatomy book, but the composition is explained in a book called Composition of Outdoor Painting by Edgar Payne. This is a small book with a big price, so I won’t be getting it anytime soon.
Other things that we practiced are finding the light source, and different ways of making shadow with our pencils. Perhaps one of the most difficult tasks we practiced is to NOT make a line, but to let the shadows created with the pencil make that line instead. The purpose of the class is to learn about and to improve drawing skills in order to translate that to a canvas for painting or other medium.
I’ve been told that the types of composition are even present in abstract works, so I will be examining some art in the coming days. Actually, it’s already hard to not look for those composition types when I look at any painting.
One type of composition is the pyramid, for which Howard Terpning is known to use in his paintings. Here is a page with complete works. Find the pyramid! The one at the top of the page is one of his and came from the website linked here.
After the class, a trip to our local art store, Asel’s was required desired—always a fun stop.