Crealde Student

Posted on by Thor

In my Crealde Urban Sketching class, we take one class to do fast five or ten minute poses with each student taking a turn.

As a demo I sketch each student in turn and try and encourage the students to capture more that the person but the entire scene.

There is a frantic energy to working so fast and the goal to get the students to work just as fast and frenetic. Sketches become less detail oriented and more simplified. Detail is only added where it is needed.

I am always pushing students to look for the curve of the back so in this sketch there is one curve drawn behind the figure to show that curve. It was the first line to go on the page.

Cyclops

Posted on by Thor

For the day of the out Macular Degeneration patient Eye surgery I had to wear a plastic Eye shield. I couldn’t resist the opportunity to do a Van Gogh inspired self portrait.

The eye patch was removed the following morning at the doctors office by a nurse. She waved her hand in front of my face to see if I could see and then held up one finger to see if I knew how to count. She pulled her hand away with the one finger and asked if I could still see her finger and I let her know that it was still attached to her hand.

What had been a red blob in my patch covered vision was now a blurry and wet view of the office. The lower half of my vision was till a grey air bubble. I can see through the grey air bubble but it is like looking through gauze of a thick fog.

My eye looks like I was punched by Mike Tyson without a boxing glove on. There is no white to my eye, it is all a bloody mess. I was told the bubble sloshing around in my eye will disappear in several weeks. In the mean time I tend to get sea sick whenever I move my head. It turns out I am always moving my head except when I sleep.

I will not be venturing out to sketch on location for a few weeks. My Sunday Crealde classes were canceled, not because I look like a monster, but because not enough students signed up. I am thankful to have the Sundays off to recover, but I have a dozen virtual classes each week that I need to pace myself through. I had rescheduled virtual classes that were slated for the day of the surgery to the following day. I am very glad I did that because I felt nauseous and rested most of the day after surgery. The make up classes went alright but I rested between the classes. Today I have 8 hours of virtual classes back to back. It will be an adventure to see how I hold up.

Baldwin Park Dog Park

Posted on by Thor

For the last class with my Crealde Urban Sketching students I often take them to Baldwin Park Dog Park. At Crealde I do an in depth lesson on how to draw dogs doing lots of sketched on the chalk board.

Once My students are warmed up and have enough dog sketches under their belts, we head over to Baldwin Park which is a short drive away.

Once in the dog park I do a quick demo showing that the dogs are not the biggest focus of the sketch. Instead the focus it the large trees and the far shore of the lake. People and dogs are scattered throughout but they are tiny compared to the expanse around them. On this day there was an orange utility fence blocking dogs access to the lake.

I work on the demo I sketch I started but walk around and share each stage of the sketch and offer each student thumbnails to show how I might tackle the scene they are sketching. By this class I know what level of finish each student will bring to their work I encourage them on their journey.

Crealde Thumbnails

Posted on by Thor

I am thinking that I should hold off on posting scenes from COVID Dystopia until the weeks leading up to the next film festival. That means I should share more sketches done on location.

These are thumbnail sketches I did with my Urban Sketching students at Crealde. I find that many students start out with very tiny water brushes which makes covering a 9 by 12 sheet of paper an arduous task.

With this assignment we break up  the page into nine separate panels and then explore the Crealde campus. I then do a quick demo having them watch as I complete a single thumbnail sketch. I explain composition and keeping the sketch loose and simple. I then ask then to hunt down statues as center of interest in each of their sketches.

As they are working, I then do another thumbnail and walk around to check on their progress. At first I show them each individual stage of the sketch and then I start finishing each thumbnail before I walk around. My most impotent lesson is being sure you are in the shade for the duration of each sketch. In Florida that lesson is critical. I teach then to pay attention to the movement of shadows to be sure the shade doesn’t disappear as the sun moves. I have has students ignore that lesson and get caught in the blazing sun. I then swoop in to encourage them to take cover as they apply color.

There was a gorgeous wedge of ferns near the bridge at Crealde. Since renovations were done that wedge has been pulled up. I have been planting ferns in the back year of the Chatsworth Studio. I wish I had such a thick lush planting. In tile they will expand and fill in.

Crealde Panorama

Posted on by Thor


Each Sunday I head out to Crealde to do demos and try and inspire my students to sketch anywhere they go. We spent all of the classes so far exploring the campus. I keep stressing that everything is sketch worthy. We have covered drawing human proportions and this last class I did a demo on how to draw faces. Most of the time however is spent sketching.

I had the student break up a single sketch page into 9 panels and the goal became to fill each panel with a small sketch. Since students were still getting used to the supplies they worked slowly the first class. Some students only finished one panel other finished several. This week we returned to the same assignment to complete the page. At the end of this class one very talented student had finished every panel. She said, “This is the first complete sketch I have ever done.” It was rewarding to know I helped pushed her towards the concept of finished sketches that have line, value and color.

Another student pointed out that she had never filled a sketchbook. The problem is that many artists feel the book as a whole needs to be a masterpiece, and if it isn’t they put it aside and start another sketchbook. I always show my students my sketchbook that was lost when I rode my bike across the country. It was returned 30 years later when it was found in someones garage. Early sketches in the book are from when I was a freshman in college, then the book transitions into sketches form today. The transition is a jarring as the transition for black and white to color TV.

Since I am packing up my studio, I found all these scraps of matte board which are very horizontal in format. I demonstrated how to block in a panoramic composition in pencil, then pen and finally watercolor washes. I walked the sketch around to show each step, so students know how much time an effort goes into each step. All the while I let them keep working on their own sketches. They learn the most for making their own mistakes. I always offer suggestions, but also encourage then to accept the sketch as it is and apply my suggestions on the next sketch they do.

A gardener was carrying off huge trash cans full of refuge. It looked like real back breaking work. He loved to chat. He has been doing this type of work since he was 14. His father got him started and the money he made was put towards his first car. I later learned that he makes more than I do teaching at Crealde. Unfortunately I doubt I am strong enough to carry the same loads like Atlas. I can only put down lines and washes.

Sprout Halloween Nap

Posted on by Thor

The last drawing I did during a virtual online course with a student pulled everything together. Donkey got off of this seat and Sprout took her place. Thankfully he was facing me as he dozed off. He is rather small on the page which allows the setting to tell more of the story.

In the corner is an umbrella for a rainy day. Next to the umbrella is a six foot long stick which I used to bring to Crealde Classes to be sure students were spaced apart. COVID is airborne and can linger in the air for much further than six feet but at least I tried to keep my students safe.

What makes this sketch work is the contrast between the bright outdoors and the dark interior. It allows for more impressionistic colors and moody greys. Hopefully the student walked away with an understanding that a good sketch is more about the story than just getting the thing on the page.

Crealde Thumbnails

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My next Crealde Urban Sketching class was canceled since not enough students signed up.These thumbnails were done on the Crealde campus with an Urban Sketching students. He only had a pencil and paper to work with so I used just a pencil to block in the quick compositions. I enjoy doing these since there is no pressure to produce a refined and finished sketch. Looser is better.

Crealde casual

Posted on by Thor

This is another casual sketch to demonstrate that the figure does not need to fill the page when doing a sketch on location. I will usually one of these for each student to show how I might approach the scene they are sketching. I seldom push these to a finish. The main thing I stress is how to block in a scene quickly without getting caught up in minor details to start.

I am also pointing out how to set the stage. You can see a faint hint of the space under the tent and that mirrors the shape of the top of the table. The student is maskless So I make sure to sketch from a distance outdoors.

Crealde Classroom Pandemic Sketch

Posted on by Thor

In my Crealde Urban Sketching course we tend to take one class to sketch fellow students as they work. I do quick 5 minute sketches to demonstrate how to position a figure on the page.  This particular sketch seems to be a sketch on top pf a sketch. I forget what I was demonstrating with the rough grid pattern. I was probably stressing how to avoid lining everything up on a grid and avoid horizontal and vertical lines.

Most classes are outside exploring the campus with our sketchbooks. I do this because it keeps my students safer during the pandemic. I was advised to offer an advanced urban sketching course but not enough students signed up so it was scrapped. No artist thinks of themselves as intermediate or advanced. Heck every one on my sketches is a series of mistakes.

The next series of Crealde Urban Sketching classes is starting up January 20, 2022. We meet on Sundays from 9:30am to 12:30pm.

Crealde Demo

Posted on by Thor

Once with each class at Crealde I do a quick demo to show the stages of progress for a typical sketch. Behind the classroom is this tranquil view across the lake. I didn’t spend as much time as I usually do on the inking of the line work. I opted to keep much of the distant far shore line work in pencil and I just inked the chairs ad the sculpture. Part of the lesson was to encourage students to leave the white of the paper showing in multiple places.

The grass wasn’t just painted green. instead I painted it yellow where the sunlight hit, then green then yellow ocher and then blue where shadows hit. My goal is to get students to get away from a puzzle piece approach to covering the ppage with color. Instead I try to get them to only use three of four very large washed to cover most of the page and then to break up those large wash areas into smaller light and dark areas.

If the darks are taking too long to put down then I just start frantically scribbling in darks with colored pencils. The main point is to get the students to see my chaotic and frantic approach. There is never quite enough time to finish a sketch to a high degree of polish so I paint like a madman and then slow down if the subject lingers.