THE MOBILE ART STUDIO

A tip for drawing is to use the grid technique. Here, I have simplified the grid into four sections. Drawing from life is made convenient and easy. This drawing demonstration requires HB and 2B pencils, ruler scalpel, A5 sketchpad and eraser. The head fits into left quadrant of the grid  I set myself up in the ruins of Coventry Cathedral where an interesting statue happened to roughly fit into a grid of four. This was ascertained by holding the pencil to eyelevel and measuring width to height proportion. The head and torso of the statue was twice as high as it was wide. The photograph of the statue shows how this works. Of course, the photo and a drawing from life will always look different. As can be seen from the rudimentary sketch, the face of the statue roughly fits into the top left of the grid. On the page, I drew a rectangle of 18cm high by 9cm wide. I then divided the rectangle into four quadrants. Take care not to sketch too dark at this stage. I have emph...

Drawing portraits is one of the most difficult subject matter to tackle, particularly when the face in the three-quarter view. The subject is not in profile, neither is it full frontal. Such a dilemma can cause skewed looking portrait drawings. Here are four mistakes to avoid when drawing portraiture in a three-quarter view. This demonstration has been taken from my art book, Oil Painting the Angel within Da Vinci’s the Virgin of the Rocks: Unleash the Right Brain to Paint the Three-quarter Portrait View. Da Vinci's angel within the Virgin of the Rocks Here, I have used Leonardo da Vinci’s angel within his masterpiece ‘ The Virgin of the Rocks ’ as example, which is exhibited within London’s National Gallery. Here, the angel’s face is in three-quarter view, which can be tricky to draw. Every drawing begins with a rough linear sketch. And unless the drawing is accurate, mistakes can be inherited within the shading and the painting. Here I have used two drawings to d...

Art students may be frustrated when muddy colors result from a box of pigments purchased from an art shop. Often the true primary colors are not included, and worse, the color wheel shown in some art instruction books is not correct. Not every red, yellow and blue produces a clean violet, orange or green. In fact the mixture can be muddy and dull. The reason for this problem is simple: the true primary colors are often not displayed in certain artbooks nor are they included in a typical beginners box of art pigments. The Color Wheel Myth Not any blue pigment is a primary color, and often contains other pigments in small amounts. Ultramarine, for instance, is a vibrant blue, but contains a lot of red, as this blue has a violet slant. Cadmium red is a vibrant red, but actually contains a lot of yellow. The true primary colors are in fact those that resemble the pigments of printing ink, which are magenta, yellow and cyan. Art colors that resemble the pigments of printing...

During my term teaching life drawing, I came across students who struggled to draw. These were adult students who had plucked the courage to begin drawing after bringing up children or pursuing a career. Others were young adults who had yet to move on from cartoonish drawings that are highly stylized. This is often a disguise for frustration at capturing what is really in front. So why so some intelligent adults who have great skills or talents in other sectors find it hard to draw? Shut Up Left Brain! Hemispheres of the brain The answer lies in how the brain is wired, causing a sort of picture dyslexia. Our brains are split into two hemispheres, the left and the right. The left hemisphere is where the speech centre is located, and therefore is verbal, bossy, labels things and edits the world to make it make sense. The right hemisphere is silent, has great spatial awareness and sees things how they really are. Hemispheres of the Brain and Drawing Ability Skewe...

Drawing is more about how our brains interpret the information in front of us than what the hand is doing with the pencil. Having seen numerous drawings during my time teaching art, came across a common affliction, which appears as though the drawing is sloping to one side. Drawing Cure for Sloping Drawing Crooked Drawing I believe we are all biased towards one side of the world that we perceive. For instance, some people will be more aware of one side than the other. This bias will be reflected within the drawing which will appear to slope to one side or be squashed up on one corner of the page. The only way around this problem is to make the student aware of their crooked drawing problem. I find turning the drawing upside down or viewing it through the mirror effective in making the student aware of this sloping problem. Drawing Class in Fields of Vision A Basic Drawing Lesson The world that we see can be thought of as four divisions: upper left, lower l...

Drawing not only involves what the pencil is doing on paper, but also what is going on in the brain between the mark-making. In fact, drawing begins before the first line is drawn. During my years teaching, I came across students who struggled to draw. I noticed that a common feature of this low drawing ability was the tendency not to look at what is in front but to draw what is believed to be in front. A struggle to draw often comes in tandem with a low visual awareness. Cure for Low Drawing Ability Optical Illusions can Occur in Real Life when Drawing Low visual awareness means taking little notice of how things are arranged around us. This might be difficulty in judging the angle of a contour, the size of an object next to another object. An inability to make visual judgments can manifest itself in many ways, such as the inability to hang a painting perfectly level, or to arrange objects in a balanced still life. How Distorted Perception can Ruin a Drawing ...

One of the most common problems with drawing is the affliction of skewed-looking objects. The crooked look to a drawing may remain unforeseen until the drawing is well under way. The solution is to practice drawing symmetrical objects freehand without any drawing aids. Drawing Exercise to Improve Skill Symmetry can be found in many objects including ornaments, tools, creatures and art. I believe that students with low drawing ability lack visual awareness of one or more quadrants of the visual field, whether this is the left, right, top or bottom of a page. This results in a drawing that appears to lean to one side, or to be placed too far on one corner of the page. Common problems are: teapots that appear to lean to one side, lob-sided ellipses, squashed-up edges of portraits or animal drawings. Drawing Lesson for Beginners Crooked Drawings become Obvious when Placed in a Grid Countering skewed drawings can be aided by the practice of symmetrical drawing...