Crealde Classroom

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My Crealde Urban Sketching students were give the challenge to sketch the classroom and include as many of their fellow students as they could in the sketch. I settled in and joined them. Students who wore masks discussed why they choose to do so. One student like myself has never been infected by COVID-19 and it trying to keep it that way. The other student recently recovered from COVID-19 and has no desire to be re-infected. Since 2/3 of the students now choose to not ear masks, I keep the studio door open on the rare days we work inside.

Most of my classes these days are virtual for Elite Animation Academy. I enjoy the virtual classes because I get to work with students one on one and I am sketching along with them so they see how I work at all times. My feedback is far more immediate and interactive online. With the online courses we are learning the foundations of sketching, character design and animating. I particularly enjoy teaching animation since I get to animate a scene with the students every class.

Summer Camp

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Teaching Elite Animation Academy virtual summer camps has lead me to drawing some odd stuff. One issue beginning students have is not knowing what to draw. In a world full of billions and billions of things to draw I find this notion confounding.Many beginning students are caught up in drawing cartoon characters to impress friends and family. I try and break them away from that habit to draw the world around them.

In the foundation drawing class I ask students to first draw their hand while not looking at the page. You can tell when a student looked when a drawing comes back where the line touches where it began. We attack that assignment a few times until I convince them to make an absolute mess.

Then we do the same thing but glance down every time the pencil needs to be re positioned to start a new line.  Each line is a bit meandering since it moves at the same pace as the eye across the object. This idea of visually touching the object takes time and practice to convey.

Then we turn to any object in the room. I chose this rough carved panther head which is an unused book end for my book case. Lines don’t close off shapes and there are dozens of mistakes but there is some very deliberate observation in each line put down. If you add some color, it all pulls together.

Studio in May

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For my Elite Animation Academy virtual Urban Sketching class, I usually ask the students to sketch the room they are in. It is a good lesson in one point perspective and adding objects inside a space. I have been teaching seven days a week all summer, so I have done a few of these studio studies. The first thing I teach is to find a vanishing point and a horizon. Sine we are not outside the horizon isn’t obvious. a clue can be found in the lamp shade against the far wall. The bottom of the shade arcs down meaning it is below the horizon, and the top of the lamp shade arcs up meaning it is above the horizon. The horizon might be the top of the roll top desk, or just below. The vanishing point is above that small stack of books just to the right of THOR.

Since my students usually work much slower than I do, I tend to have time to add paint and push the piece a bit further than just the line drawing. This particular piece started with me blocking in all the foreground elements in a warm yellowish tone. The studio lights were on and the far room lights were not, so they got very different color treatments. The outdoors were painted pure white to start and light versions of outdoors colors were added over the white to keep the outdoors bright.

Like most of my sketches done on location, I had to finish in about 2 hours. When class was over, I closed up the tablet and had to consider it done.

239 Larch Avenue Dumont, New Jersey Reconstruction

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As an exercise with online Elite Animation Academy Art students, I had them look up their home on Google maps and then use a Street View to sketch a two point perspective view.  I sketched the house I was born in. Since our family left the home back in 1972, a second story was added above the garage and the second story dormer was replaced with a full second story. The resulting building is a simple cube shape with another cube shaped garage attached.

The building is a warm tan in 2022 but back in 1972 it was a steel grey. I thought it might have been grey simply because we only have black and white photos of the building. By older brothers and sisters however confirmed the true color. I got multiple details wrong in my initial pass at this sketch but brothers and sisters corrected my memories from back when I was 10 years old.

I was doing this house sketch exercise with one student and for some reason he was not able to draw any lines on his iPad. I went through a long series of checks vie our Zoom call to try and find out what might be wrong. We turned his iPad off and on again. We checked the opacity levels and made sure he had black chosen as the color for his iPencil lines. Finally I asked him to show me how he was drawing his lies. Maybe it had to do with how he held the pencil. I was surprised to see that he was trying to draw on the iPad with a 6B lead pencil. It left no marks on the glass surface. When we realized that this was the “Tech” issue we both had a good laugh. He has an iPencil and we will be using it next time we sketch together. When he said he was using a pencil each time I asked, he wasn’t lying. This is an example of the types of challenges faced by an Analog Artist in a Digital World.

Backyard

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I am teaching a sketchbook class with one of my Elite Animation Academy students. For this class, I asked her to get away from her desk and sketch something she sees every day.

I moved myself to the backyard for the lesson and sketched along with her. Ironically I have never sketched the backyard with its lush tropical plants and palm tree.

It was nearing sunset so I had to work fast as I added colors, with the tops of tree catching the fading sun.

The neighbors roof is covered with a blue tarp. They put it up after one of the last hurricanes. They have this interesting old stove pipe that sticks up, perhaps for a wood burning stove or fireplace. I am used to seeing these on the roofs of crematoria.

Colors were vibrant and bright as I began the sketch and gradually faded as the sun dipped closer to the horizon. I was in the shade the entire time.

This was a trial run to see how the new iPad is working. My old iPad‘s battery kept dying in an hours time even when it was plugged in. It made conducting classes a challenge. Ultimately I had to invest in the new iPad and a new laptop with enough power for Photoshop and video editing software. I am still working on the transition while backing up my files as best as possible.

I can say the iPad worked great for the duration of the sketch. I only stopped sketching because it as getting too dark and mosquitos started to bite.

Demo for Student

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I am teaching a virtual sketchbook class or Elite Animation Academy. This demo was used to show my student how to block in a sketch and start the painting. The idea was to use any items that just happened to be on the table.

I used an unfinished sculpture I started of a baby sea otter, some India ink, a magnifying loop, a pencil sharpener and an Apple iPad plug for a defective and broken chord.i the background is a Wacom tablet and several books. The tablet has overheated to the point where the screen is popping off and computer components are shoving out of a fissure in the bottom of the case. Maybe the battery is expanding and about to explode. The machine has outlived it’s usefulness though I am still limping by with it today. I vote two thumbs down for the Wacon Cintique.

I invested in a new iPad and laptop so that I am no longer panicking about he battery dying before I finish each painting. This past week I had to take brakes every time the computer shut off due to the battery dying. I am not a person who willingly takes breaks hen a painting is not yet finished. Hopefully the pace ill pick back up again next week when I the new machines up and running.

Much of my lesson plan included avoiding using horizontal lines and vertical lines. Background elements are all off kilter and at angles in my sketch. It seems impossible for most beginning students to resist the horizontal and vertical grid. I stress the point, demonstrate it and then hope that the principle is applied in action.

Pre-Pandemic: Panera’s

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Prior to the pandemic, I often took Elite Animation Academy students to Panera Bread. The lesson we learned this was was how to do thumbnail sketches rather than a larger sketch. Right now I am teaching classes virtually.

All of these thumbnails were done from the same table as we sipped a drink and watched people come and go. Some people spend time at Panera Bread doing work which makes them the perfect subject to sketch. If a group is just eating, then I pay attention to how much food they have and how high their drinks are to try and judge how much time I have to do a sketch before they leave.

I haven’t sketched in a restaurant or bar for over a year. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has allowed restaurants and bars to re-open at full capacity but I am not tempted to partake.

An MIT study showed that people who maintain 60 feet of distance from others indoors are no more protected than if they socially distanced by just 6 feet.  This study challenges social distancing guidelines adopted across the world. There really isn’t much of a benefit to the 6-foot rule, especially when people are wearing masks. The researchers have developed a method of calculating exposure risk to Covid-19 in an indoor setting that factors in a variety of issues that could affect transmission, including the amount of time spent inside, air filtration and circulation, immunization, variant strains, mask use, and even respiratory activity such as breathing, eating, speaking or singing. The most important factor is how long you are inside with an infected person. The longer you are inside, the higher the chance of transmission. Weather 6 feet or 60 feet, distant,  you are at a higher risk of infection if you are in the room with someone who is infected.

On April 23, 2021 Florida saw 5,464 new COVID-19 infections, and 63 more Florida residents died. 34,759 Florida residents are now dead.

 

Pre-Pandemic: Planet Smoothie

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I used to take my Elite Animation Academy, Urban Sketching students to Planet Smoothie after teaching them a lesson inn one point perspective. Who knew that one month after this sketch was done the world would be locked down in a pandemic thanks to COVID-19?

On February 15, 2020, COVID-19 had infected more than 67,000 people globally, the vast majority in mainland China. The death toll was over 1,520, including four people outside mainland China. A Chinese tourist who tested positive for the virus died in France, health officials confirmed which was the first recorded death from COVID-19 in Europe. On this day there were 15 reported cases of COVID-19 in the United States.

Meanwhile my student and I were slipping smoothies and sketching totally unaware of the freight train on the horizon.

With vaccines now available I am finally holding out hope that one day I will once again be able to relax indoors and sketch life as normal. However today case numbers spiked up, and in general have leveled off at around 60 to 70 thousand cases a day. With the new B.1.1.7 variant of the virus taking over in Florida it is very possible that the horrors of December and January case numbers might return.

I am teaching my Elite students virtually now and I love the process. I get to sketch along with them which allows them to see my every thought as I develop a sketch. When I taught a classroom full of students they didn’t get that same level of one on one attention. My latest students have been doing some amazing work. Rather than distract or slow me down, the pandemic has accelerated my creative output. I used to sketch everyday events but events of the last year have required sketching the unseen all around us. Elite Animation Virtual Spring 2021 courses are beginning March 29, 2021.

Pre-Pandemic: Craft Beer Fest

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I had a magnificent student in my Elite Animation Urban Sketching Class. She had noticed on the drive to Elite that a festival was setting up in Windermere, Florida so we decided to head over to sketch.

We set up outside the town hall an watched as a band set up their sound equipment on the main stage. They were lugging speakers a drum set and various guitars the entire time we sketched. I was getting my student to focus on capturing at least one active gesture in the final sketch. I chose to include one guy bending over holding a speaker.

Often people repeat the same pose again and again so I had her looking for this as well. As we settled in and added watercolor to the sketches, the band began to do a sound check and we got to enjoy a short concert as they listened to the sound levels.

Tents were being set up all along the main street as well. As we finished up and gt ready to return to the classroom, people had started lining up to order arm bands which would allow them to taste as many samples as they wanted. I am more intrigued by the moments before an actual event.  There is an energy in the panic and hurry of getting ready for a possible crowd.

Pre-Pandemic: Subways

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This sketch was done during an Urban Sketching Class I was teaching at Elite Animation Academy. The girl seated in front of the soda machine and sketching, was one of my best students. It is always a pleasure to find a student who has laser beam focus and a real desire to learn.

I usually take students here after instructing them in one point perspective. This sketch was done in an ancient sketchbook that was returned to me after being in someone’s attic for 30 years. The paper is brittle and thin but I am happy to finally be filling the book up.

The great part of taking students to Subways to sketch is that I can order a sandwich to eat while there. I always ordered a ham and Swiss with lettuce and tomato and a splash of oil and vinegar with a light sprinkle of salt and pepper. I miss those days of going on location to sketch. For now I am exploring the world virtually to do my rather political illustrations each day.

This last week of 2020 I actually got to instruct two students virtually and I am teaching them how too use photo reference to piece together ideas. Growing up I longed to find a decent painting instructor but never really found one. Perhaps I didn’t ask the right questions. I am trying t give my students the basic and fundamental instruction that I yearned for when I was young. Hopefully they will run with what I give them. I know the student in this sketch soaked in everything I threw her way.