Back to Basics: Design Fundamentals to Improve Your Drawings and Paintings

1. Introduction: [MUSIC] Hi, Melissa. Hi Paul. We are here for our back to basics class, design fundamentals for artists. I'm so happy to be here teaching with my friend Melissa again. Melissa, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself to everybody. Okay, Paul. I will do that. My name is Melissa Foreman. I am an artist and art director, a lover of all things creative, and super happy to be teaming up with my friend Paul, to teach this class. We love the idea of connecting artists worldwide through artwork. I'm Paul Richmond. I also do love collaborating with Melissa Foreman. We have been doing that for a long time, Melissa and I went to art school together about 27 years ago. We have done all kinds of things, murals, different types of collaborations, and now we love sharing our love of art with you through these courses. Thank you for checking us out and what exactly will we be doing today? What is this back to basics course all about? This is a good class for anyone that's creating artwork. There are basic fundamentals before you start designing something. Design goes into anything that you're creating. Whether you're creating a drawing, a painting, a sculpture, a giant mural. You're going to think about design first. You're going to think about the different elements within your artwork and how everything fits together, and how the overall piece works. You actually have so much more control than you might realize as an artist over how people perceive what you make. You can tell them where you want them to look, what you want them to notice, how you want them to feel. All through the choices that you make about design. That's what we'll be covering in this class. We're very excited to share what we've learned with all of you. You ready to get started? I'm ready. Let's do it Paul. Let's go. 2. Lesson 1: The Design Principles: Welcome to our back-to-basics class. Today we're going to be talking about design fundamentals for artists, so let's get into a Poly. I'm ready, let's do it. Let's go. [LAUGHTER] Let's talk about some basic elements of design. I think some of these will be pretty clear to most of us. We're talking about line, we're talking about color, shape, texture, and space. When we say space, we can talk about different sizes, we can talk about backgrounds, we can talk about foregrounds, so space can be a lot of different things. Wonderful. [LAUGHTER] Now that we know some basic elements of design, how do we use them to create art that looks good? That's where the design principles can really help guide artists through the design process. We're going to go into more detail about what does design principles are and how to use them in your artwork. Let's do an overview. We have unity, we have hierarchy, symmetrical balance, asymmetrical balance, positive space, negative space, emphasis, movement, contrast, and rhythm. These are all different ways that you can use line, color, shape, texture, and space in your artwork. Do you want to talk a little bit about each one of these, Poly? I think we should and the interesting thing I think is true of all of these is that they're all concepts that you are already using if you make art, or if you even just look at art. But you might not have necessarily labeled them this way or thought about them this way. A lot of these ideas contribute to the way you experience artwork, whether you actually use these terms or not. But it's a good way to break it down and really understand how you can take each of these ideas and incorporate them as you create your work. You want to start with unity? Sure. Like Poly said, I think you're probably using a lot of things already. This is just putting words to what you're already doing. Unity is harmony or creating something that feels like a unified piece of artwork. The elements feel like they go together. Did the shapes feel like they're all created by the same hand? Does the overall technique make sense? Does anything feel like design-wise, it fits together well. Beautiful and I'll take hierarchy because this is a challenging one for me, I tend to want to make everything important. [LAUGHTER] But hierarchy is talking about how you choose. It's like creating a sense of priority in your artwork, where do you want people's eyes to go first, second, third, what is the most dominant thing, what's the least dominant thing? I guess everything can't be the star even though I want them to be. [LAUGHTER] Sometimes you need some background answers too. [LAUGHTER] Let's talk about symmetrical balance. Symmetrical balance is a compositional technique. That just means the layout or the way you are arranging the subjects within your artwork or your drawing or you're painting, whatever it is. Symmetrical it feels obviously balanced. Whatever shapes you have, they're the same size, scale. Everything feels like it's centered, like it has a grounding point, like things could be reflected in a mirror and they make sense balance-wise. Where asymmetrical balance, as you might have a larger shape on one side and a smaller shape on the other side but visually it still feels balanced. One goes with the other. You can play with you through these and I still feel balanced, it's just a different way of approaching your artwork. Exactly. Positive and negative space are ways of looking at the actual elements that you're drawing or painting. The positive space is the stuff, [LAUGHTER] so you're making a drawing of a tree, for example, the positive space is the tree, and then the negative space would be the sky around the tree. We don't always think about the importance of the negative space, but we'll be talking about that more as we get into our projects today. The negative space is just as important as the positive space actually. I think that leads us into emphasis. Emphasis is creating a visual focal point, someone that looks at your artwork to notice right away. You can manipulate the way people look at your artwork by creating emphasis on one element. That's what you want to stand out in your artwork. Movement is something that's really interesting to think about when you're talking about a still piece of art, like a painting or drawing. But you absolutely can create a sense of movement by the way that you arrange the elements by repetition of elements, by the position of things on the canvas around the paper. We'll talk more about that in one of our future projects too. Contrast is the difference between light and dark. Obviously here we have black and white, but it doesn't have to always be black and white, you could have some darker elements and some lighter elements in the foreground, and maybe your contrast is more extreme than the background. That's one way to create depth in a piece of artwork. Or maybe the way you use contrast in a design is where you want people to look first. Something that feels heavier and darker, maybe will get people's attention before something that feels lighter with less contrast. It's just a way of getting people to look where you want them to look. Were so controlling. [LAUGHTER] As artists, we cannot let go. This is great for control freaks. [LAUGHTER]. I love it. Not naming any names here and [LAUGHTER] then rhythm. I love thinking about rhythm because it is a term that you normally would associate with music. I think that there are a lot of parallels between visual art and music that rhythm has to do with again the repetition of things on the canvas, the patterns, how people's eyes travel across what you're creating and the speed that they're moving, and how much back-and-forth, just that sense of repetition in, well, rhythm [LAUGHTER]. It makes sense right? Yeah, to me. [LAUGHTER] Hopefully, everyone else will see. Let us know. [LAUGHTER] Yeah. This is a very simple way of showing you visually how all of these things will come to life. Let's go through some examples in classical artwork as to how these can come to life and how they can be used. I don't know, when a landscape painting or a figurative painting or something that feels a little more like fine art. Let's look at some examples. We're going to talk again about all of these things we just mentioned. But now looking at them a little bit differently, you see how they can take shape in a more artistic way or in a more fine art way. That's cool. If you look at some of these examples, you can use brush strokes to create rhythm. You can use color to create movement. You can emphasize things based on contrast and color and shape and how you're using all of these things. I think this is a good example of some activities we're going to do in our next section. Yes, I'm ready to start making stuff. Can we get started? [LAUGHTER] Hopefully, everybody is as ready as you are Poly. [LAUGHTER] I think they are, I'll speak for us all. [LAUGHTER] Let's go. 3. Lesson 2: Geometric Shapes: Let's get started with our first project. What do we need for this one Melissa? We're going to keep it pretty simple Poly, we just need two pieces of paper. One white piece of paper, one dark piece of paper. It can be black, it can be purple or it can be blue. It can be any color you want, just different from white. Then we're going to need some scissors. Sounds good. This project is all about composition and also thinking about positive and negative space. Melissa is going to be teaching us here. I'm just going to sit back and watch and learn. No, Poly, you're going to be doing this along with us. Come with me, I will show you how. See what I mean about controlling? [LAUGHTER] Let's do it. Everybody, here we are and our first activity. I have my scissors here, I have my white piece of paper, I have my black piece of paper. Again, you can use whatever paper you have. If you don't have a black piece of paper, that's okay. Use what's in front of you. Use what you have on hand. Poly, you're going to do this along with us too. I'm ready. I've got my paper and scissors. The first thing I'm going to do is just get my black piece of paper. I'm going to think about a couple of different shapes that I'm going to cut out today. I'm going to cut out probably about five different shapes. If you want to do more or less, that's okay. But I'm going to start with a large rectangle. I'm literally just going to cut my paper in half here. I think the key with this is to go big on the sheets. You want enough to work with so that you can cover your white piece of paper in different areas. Because we're going to think about creating different compositions with these shapes that we're going to cut out. You want enough space to cover a lot of your white paper. You can think about positive space and negative space. We're going to fill a lot of this space with black paper so then our white paper will actually work as a positive space and a negative space depending on how you lay things out. I'm going to cut a large triangle next. Again, none of this has to be perfect. None of this has to be exact. I know it's funny. It doesn't Melissa, who are you? I know. It's funny to me saying that because that is my whole thing. Melissa is a bit of a perfectionist, but that's okay. As I'm saying that, this edge is not exactly correct on my triangle. I keep wanting to fix it and then telling myself I cannot. Wait until you get to the circle. No, oh my goodness. [LAUGHTER] I'm going to want to grab a pencil and draw it out. Just live on the edge Melissa, just cut it out with the scissors and whatever you get you get. I'm going to give it a shot. [LAUGHTER] Your shapes do not have to be just like Poly and I's. They can be whatever shapes you want. If you want to do a star, if you want to do something more exciting, feel free. Well, shoot. If I'd known that was an option. I already have mine cut out, I would have made a star. Oh my goodness, you're so fast. [LAUGHTER] Here's my circular shape. I don't know if I can call it a circle, but it's close enough. It's killing you, isn't it? It's killing me. [LAUGHTER] Melissa and I love to tease each other, mostly me teasing her, but it's all done with love. [LAUGHTER] Yes. How many do I have? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, I have five shapes. I'm going to cut this one slightly smaller just so I have a smaller one in there that I can play around with. Here's my different options. You can use all of your paper. You don't have to use all their paper. Totally up to you. Very loose and casual. Very chill. Very chill, yes. [LAUGHTER] I'm just going to start looking at my shapes. I'm going to think first about working symmetrically. What does a symmetrical composition look like? What does that mean? It means that everything is balanced from side to side. Both sides of your composition, your layout, your piece of artwork should be somewhat similar in layout feel, overall balance, I guess I make sense. Yeah. It's okay to overlap the shapes as you go if you need to, and then you can have some of the shapes sticking off the paper if you need them to you. I think it's worth saying to that in a symmetrical design, it doesn't necessarily mean that everything is perfectly symmetric. This more of the overall feeling of it. Let's talk about what balance means. Balance means that it doesn't have to be a mirror image on both sides. If you have similar shapes or you have shapes with similar weights. I don't know, see my square in my circle are somewhat balanced. They're somewhat similar in size. If I put one on each side, visually the weight is going to feel similar. It's not exactly the same, but it still feels balanced and that's okay. I feel like I'm the wrong person to teach about being balanced. [LAUGHTER] I'll be really good at the next one though. [LAUGHTER]. Yes. So there are different kinds of balance. [LAUGHTER] I don't know if we're talking about a stability here, Poly. [LAUGHTER]. I hope not. [LAUGHTER]. The idea here is just to play with your shapes until things feel like they work. What kind of shapes are you creating? Are you using some overlap? Does everything feel overall balanced even though your shapes aren't exactly the same? Keep playing until you get something. It's putting together a very weird puzzle. It is, it's a little puzzle for sure. Yeah. Think about how this could work in design or how these could work in a piece of artwork that you create or drawing. Think about different types of artwork that you've seen. Can you think of any symmetrical compositions? What does that? We see a lot in fashion too. You can have very symmetrical looks where everything is the same on both sides of the body or you have asymmetrical fashions where there's maybe something hang lower on one side than the other , hopefully intentionally. [LAUGHTER] Yeah. What do you think, Paul, did you come up with a symmetrical composition that you're happy with? I did. I'm thrilled with it. Thrilled, amazed. [LAUGHTER] Now, everybody else that's doing this don't feel like your designs have to look like Melissa's in this case. There are so many different ways of thinking about these concepts. Really try just doing it on your own and seeing what you come up with. Yeah, I could have immediately change my design based on the shapes I have and I could come up with a completely different symmetrical composition but it still works, so keep playing until you find something. My favorite thing to do. Would you think works? [LAUGHTER] That's symmetrical. Got it. Let's try asymmetrical. Okay. What does that mean? [LAUGHTER] Unbalanced. Perfect. Poly, you want to take over? [LAUGHTER] I'm not sure what you're implying [LAUGHTER]. No, you're doing great. Go right ahead. Asymmetrical can be a little bit trickier. It's not as straightforward. It's something that you have to use your instincts to feel. If something feels balanced. Visually, things can feel like they balance, harmonize, go together even though it's not completely the same on each side. You want to play with your shapes until things feel interesting. That's a good word for it because it's a very intuitive thing. Yeah, it really is based on instinct and what looks good. There really are no rules per se, it just can't be exactly the same on both sides, so it can't be symmetrical. [LAUGHTER] Can't be worried, just did. [LAUGHTER] I think it's really good the bolus is having a start off doing these things with simple shapes because it's a little bit easier to recognize and think about the concepts that way. But these things apply no matter what art you're making. When you're thinking about how to arrange elements in a drawing or painting, even if it's a very realistic piece, you still want to think about what composition are you making. You could think about this as an abstract painting or putting different elements in a landscape. If you had a horizon line and cut your image in thirds, how would you balance out that upper third, how would you add interests up there? How would you make it feel like it all went together, it didn't feel top-heavy or side-heavy or bottom-heavy. How would you make it feel more balanced? I think doing exercises like this can help people appreciate abstract or more because there is so much more to look at in an art piece beyond just. Does it look like something, that looks like I see a tree here, I see whatever this is a deeper way to engage with art. Also, think about the elements that we've talked about. Can you use line in an interesting way, can you use shape in an interesting way? You have so much to work with. I know we gave you so many things [LAUGHTER] I mean, we didn't personally invent them. No, but I mean [LAUGHTER] Maybe Melissa did it all [LAUGHTER] I will claim many things but not that, can't claim that one. I was able to get my asymmetrical design worked out very quickly. Yeah, and If you like what you have and you want to stick with it, that's fine if you want to try a different way so maybe you move things around, maybe you play with something else. It's so easy to come up with multiple different compositions that work. You might as well do it now while you can play with these shapes which is much easier than doing a finished drawing and having to do it later. We've got our asymmetrical composition, we figured it out we're good. We're good. Now we're going to think about positive space, so let's think about what positive space means. Positive space means subject matter. The stuff like Paul said, in this case, you can think about as the black shapes. The black shapes are the stuff that we're going to be designing with. Thinking about composition where you're using the black shapes to create some interest within your white background. This is the easier of these two I would say. Easier of these two, yes. It'll get slightly harder in the next one [LAUGHTER] I think maybe it's because we're used to thinking about whitespace as the background since we often draw on white paper or have a white canvas or something. Definitely. By doing this puts me right back in art school. I remember doing these projects like this. You can take the shapes that you've made and you can make other shapes by combining them, overlapping them. There are no rules, they can go off the page, they can stay within the page. Yeah. Just think about making a focal point, which will be your subject matter or your positive space, which would be the black shapes versus the background or the white negative space. It can be symmetrical or asymmetrical, doesn't matter in this case. Your composition's time. Hey, Jim Pauli. Got it. Looking good. I got it. We made some positive shapes, so now let's think about how we can highlight the negative space. We're going to do the same thing, the black is going to be our main way of moving things around. But we're going to use the black in a way where we're highlighting the white as the positive space so use your black space. Good luck with that [LAUGHTER] It's interesting to think about it. Arrange them in a way where you're making the white become the positive and this is trickier. Sometimes hard to wrap your brain around it like, wait, what are you asking me to do? [LAUGHTER] You have to, it's almost like you're doing a reversal. How do you make those shapes pop out of the white? By almost blacking them out with the shapes that you created. How do you turn that into a positive? I think this is such an important concept for people to think about though because when you're creating a composition that you want the shapes of the positive and the negative spaces to both be interesting you can if you are only looking at the positive space you're missing half of your composition so this really forces you to think about both sides. How do you design with both? How do you make both interesting, like Paul said. How can you make it so you notice the white shapes before the black shapes. Cover them with glitter? Well [LAUGHTER] That's what I was about to do. Well, always an option [LAUGHTER] Never forget about the glitter. When all those fails. [LAUGHTER] Yes. I think I've done it. How are you feeling Pauli? I'm feeling good. I've got it. Hopefully, all of you out there got it. Feel good. If not, please pause this video and keep playing around with this until it makes more sense to you and like we said, this last one was challenging, so don't feel bad if it was confusing. You almost have to flip the way you usually think about things and approach it a little bit differently. Look at it differently. Lovely work, Melissa. Great job, everybody. 4. Lesson 3: Thumbnail Sketches: Great job everybody, but we're not finished yet. We still have a whole bunch more projects for you today. Our next one is all about creating thumbnail sketches. What's a thumbnail? [LAUGHTER] Melissa? Well, it's not on your hand, like policing and something. Thumbnail sketches are just tiny sketches, so they're very small because you can do them quickly. Thumbnail sketches are just ways of working out what your artwork is going to look like before you actually get to the finished piece. It's a practice for most artists before they create the finish. Which can be challenging if you're an inpatient artist like myself, who wants to just dive in headfirst and get started on their piece. But it really is a worthwhile practice to stop and think about different ways that you can show that whatever image it is that you're trying to create. That's what we'll be doing here, and you only will need pencil and paper for this one. You're ready to get started, Melissa? I'm ready, Paul. Okay. Let's go. Let's do it. Here is our reference image for this project, and we're going to be doing a series of thumbnail sketches where we explore different ways of composing the image. I was saying before, sometimes I have to really fight the temptation to just jump in and start on the final piece because that's what I'm most excited about. But the thumbnailing process is a really valuable tool for thinking about composition. It's called a thumbnail because they really are meant to be small, things like size of a postage stamp or maybe a little bit bigger than that. But go ahead and draw five rectangles on your page. I'm going to make them pretty tiny. Now, if you want to, you could try, drawing a couple of them horizontally too. They don't all need to be vertical, like the reference image. Sometimes that can be a good way to challenge yourself to think about how you would compose the image if you were going to flip it, or if you're going to rotate it, I'm sorry. I'm going to do three vertical and two horizontal. You can do as many thumbnails as you want. There's no magical number. But it is a valuable process, I would say, to get into the habit up, and there's different ways of doing it. This is the very traditional way. Other artists, actually including myself, will do a similar type of process, but maybe designing with the elements in photoshop or with a collage. However, you are able to easily see what it would look like to move things around and compose it differently. Give you a minute to get your rectangles drawn. You're doing this too with me now Melissa aren't you? I am with you Paul. I got so many rectangles. [LAUGHTER] Good. Now it's my turn to be the boss [LAUGHTER]. Your favorite. I'm going to really enjoy this. I think the first thing to really think about is recognizing that when you go to draw something like this still life, you don't have to draw everything that's there. You can choose to focus in on just one particular element. In the first rectangle, let's try that. Let's try thinking about how we could zero in on something that would allow us to create maybe a very symmetrical composition. There are different ways you could do that. You can focus in on different parts. But for me, I'm going to draw the violin because that's already a very symmetrical object. I'm just going to put it right in the center, but allowing it to go off the page at the top and the bottom. Because I think that makes the composition more interesting when you do something like that. Paul, I think one important thing to remember when you're doing thumbnails is they're very quick and simple. You don't want to put a lot of detail in them. You're just getting a basic layout and that's why they're so small because you can do them quickly. You can get an idea of what it's going to look like without going into all the detail and the finishing and the shading. Make it quick, make it easy for yourself. Not only is there really a waste of time to do thumbnails in depth. But I also think that simplifying it is very helpful because then you're not getting distracted by the details, but you're seeing the simple shapes in the last exercise that Melissa just did where she used the geometric shapes. You can think about it a little bit more abstractly than if you're looking at a very detailed drawing. That's all I'm going to do for that one now, very easily, I can look at that and I can decide if I like that or not after I get some others done, you can see them all at once and then choose the composition that works best for you. Are you finished with your first one, Melissa? I am finished with my first Paul. I'm so happy. A+[LAUGHTER]. A++. Listen to that enthusiasm. [LAUGHTER] Now in the next one, see if you can create an asymmetrical composition. The image already somewhat is, but you could remove elements to emphasize that more, or you could zoom in and crop in a certain way. I think for this one, I'm going to focus on the vase of flowers only I'm going to scooch it all the way over to the left and let it go right off the page. I think with a lot of beginning artists, especially a lot of artists that I've taught, the temptation is to put everything dead in the middle of the page, like this first one, but not even like breaking the edge, just like drawing it exactly as you see it. I feel like it opens up a whole world of possibilities once you realize you don't have to do it that way, you can really play with how you position stuff on that frame of reference. Just because something is in a certain position in the photoghaph reference doesn't mean that you can't move it around once you draw it. You can put those oranges wherever you want. You can move the flowers. You can lay that flower on the table in a different position. Think about how you might set this up if this was a still life in your house and you were taking a photo of it. What would appeal to you? Exactly. I'm taking those oranges that are down on the table and rearranging them so I get to see a little bit of them. He can up over the edge here. Then, even though this one wasn't specifically focused around thinking about positive and negative space where you're going to find is that's a concept that comes up all the time. In my drawing, I have a lot of negative space that can make for a really beautiful and interesting composition. You don't always have to fill everything. I think that's the beauty of thinking more about positive and negative space. You recognize that the negative space is valuable. You don't have to fill it all. One thing to also think about as you're drawing this object is also think about those shadows and how they fall across the table. Does that add balance to your composition? Yes, everything is a visual element. It doesn't have to be an actual object. It could be the shadows, like Melissa said. Where are those little spots of highlight? Sometimes in my thumbnails I will do a really quick little, just shading in the dark area because then I can look at it and see very quickly how the contrast is going to affect the composition. All the things to think about. [NOISE] It's not enough time for the second one. I guess everybody can just work at your own pace now, you don't have to keep up with us. You don't have to have a specific design element in mind as you do each one, you might just see something that catches your eye and you want to explore that. With my next one, I'm thinking more about rhythm and movement. I'm focusing in on the repetition of the shapes of the petals and the little leaves. I'm going to do a close-up where the flowers are more here at the bottom. I want to see what happens to the way my eye follows those elements around as I pull up the leaves up into that negative space. You end up thinking about all of the different things that you draw as just being like little notes in a song. Some of them are loud, some are quiet, some are long, some are short. How do they all work together to create a sense of rhythm in your drawing? That's what I'm thinking about with this one, drawing something that has a lot of repetition of shapes and patterns to create that feeling of rhythm. Yeah, all of those design elements are available for you to think about in how to accomplish some of these design principles. Any of those things: line, shape, texture, color, any of those things will help you achieve whatever design principle you're going after. Whether you're going after that rhythm or the movement like Paul said, or whether you're still focusing on positive versus negative space. Whatever you want to achieve, use those different design elements to get there. Yes. I think it lets you be a lot more intentional about the way you create your artwork. It lets you decide how do I want people to experience this? That's pretty awesome. It can be overwhelming to at first. But like we were saying before, the more that you look at other artwork and start recognizing how other artists have used these ideas, then it becomes easier for you to do that to you. Yeah, the more practice the better. Feel free to do more than five thumbnails if you went to. The more the better. I feel like in college in a lot of my classes they made us actually do thumbnails and turn them in as part of the assignments and we'd have to do like maybe 20. Sometimes I'd be mad because it'd be like cool, but I like my first one. [LAUGHTER] I don't need to do 19 more, this is good. [OVERLAPPING] Sometimes that will be the case. Sometimes that will be, but then at least you know you've explored different. Just with the three that I've done already, they look like three completely different still-life pieces. You wouldn't even know that they were from the same reference photo looking at them this way. I think that's pretty awesome because it lets you see how many different ways there are to interpret the same thing. Now I'm about to go onto my fourth one here, which is a horizontal rectangle. Just switching the orientation of it makes you look at things really differently. Now I'm focusing on some of the elements that are laying down on the table, the oranges and that flower that's laying down there. I might make that more of the focal point here. In fact, let's talk a little about focal point because when you are arranging elements or when you're drawing elements on a thumbnail, you do want to start thinking about, where do I want people's eyes to go? What's most important here? How do you approach that idea of focal point, Melissa? I think that focal point is usually something I know going in. I know what I want everyone's focus to be, because usually that's the thing that you're most interested in drawing. I know when I do portraits of people, the subject is always the focal point, but usually I'm working things in around the subject to make it a little bit more interesting or help tell a story or get my idea across. I think that's something that you can work in around the focal point, but you always want the interest to go back to the main subject. Whether you're thinking about the oranges or the flowers. I think in this specific example you have several different focal points. Depending on how you use them and how you use your color or how you use your value, people might look at things differently as far as when they noticed first. But compositionally, you can choose to move their eye around the different subjects that you've created in different ways, depending on how you lay them out, your negative space, your positive space, all of those different elements and principles that we talked about. One thing that I will do sometimes when I'm making thumbnails, if I have ideas about focal points, like in this case, the way that I've drawn this one, I've decided I want this flower to be the focal point. Then I want your eye to travel back and then follow along the path of these oranges and then be pulled up through the other shapes. It is a good idea to think about not just the focal point, but how the eye is going to move around the piece, and you don't want to shoot people's eyes away from your drawing or from your canvas too quickly, you want to find ways of using the shapes and the elements to keep moving them around inside of it. But in this case, because I want the flower to be the focal point, lot of times in my thumbnails, I will make little notes off to the side. I'm going to make a little note here, yellow pop of color, meaning that I will use color as one of the ways to make sure that your eye goes right to that flower by really making the yellow very bright and maybe making everything else a little bit more subdued. Yeah. That also brings in the idea of contrast. That yellow will contrast with everything around it to the point where you're going to see at first because there is more contrast, there it does stand out, and then the other colors might be more similar. Yeah, exactly. For now, I'll just use a heavier line on that flower so that even when I just look at the thumbnail, my eye goes right there. I have one more to go, and it's another horizontal. Let's see what happens this time. If I do maybe a more of a close-up on the upper part of the violin this time. I'm really thinking about how it's using the positive and negative space. Again, I keep coming back to that one because I love thinking about that. I'm using it in a very asymmetrical way. I've got the violin over here more to the left. I've got this little bit of negative space to the left of it. Then I've got a lot here to the right. Then I'll start to just break that up with some of these interesting more organic shapes from the plant. You see now I have a problem, Melissa. I like all of these, [OVERLAPPING] which one am I going to do? I guess you have to do five paintings. I'm going to really know a lot about this violin by the time we're done. [LAUGHTER] You are. [LAUGHTER] Let me finish this one up really quickly and then I'll just say that it is a really good habit to get into once you finish your thumbnails, to just stop, take a minute and look at them and ask yourself, which one does your eye go to first? Which one do you find the most interesting? As I'm looking at mine, the two that jump out at me are this one and this one. I think in both cases it's because of the use of the negative space. I really like the asymmetrical composition in both of those cases. I like the pattern and the repetition and rhythm here. I like the really dynamic composition of this one with everything being pressed off to the side so even if you can narrow it down, that gives you a way to start thinking about which one you're going to do next. Do you have a favorite out of yours? Oh my goodness. I think I do. I really liked the oranges. I liked that there were three different oranges in different stages of being peeled. I thought that was really interesting. I thought it did create some interesting movement through time, but also movement from one orange to the next visually. Then I thought it created a nice rhythm, having three of them. Yeah, so you see how two different artists can look at the same thing, see totally different, be drawn to totally different things. I'm sure every single one of you that is doing the class has drawn something different as well. That's the beauty of being an artist. Great job, everyone. 5. Lesson 4: Creating Depth with Line: You did a great job. We have more to go. What are we doing next, Melissa? This next one is going to be a line drawing of a landscape. We're going to use this to learn a little bit more about hierarchy and creating depth through hierarchy. All you need is a piece of paper. I have some different markers in different sizes because you're going to do some different widths of lines, you're going to go from a very thick line to a very thin line. Whatever you need to get a very thick line or are very thin line, grab that. If you just have your pencil, that will be fine too. You can always go over the lines to make them heavier where you need them to be, this is very flexible. You can use whatever you have. Well, let's get started. Let's do it. Everybody, we've made it this far. Our next exercise is going to be all about hierarchy and creating depth through hierarchy. What we're going to do is we're going to do a little landscape drawing. The first thing I'm going to start with is drawing a rectangle on my piece of paper. This will just represent where I'm going to be drawing. I'm going to do something similar to the shape of this photo. It's got to be a rectangle that's more horizontal. I'm just going to draw that in the middle of my sketchbook here. Feel free to draw a rectangle for yourself. If you want to take up the whole piece of paper, that's okay. If you want to do something a little bit smaller, that's okay. You just want to leave enough room for creating depth. Drawing all these details with different weights of line, that's what we're going to be focusing on today. When you say weight of line, what does that mean? Good question. I have several different markers here. The reason I have several different markers is some are a little bit thicker. This one is really thick versus this one is very thin. I'm going to be creating thin lines and thick lines. Usually your thickest line is going to be something in the foreground and usually your thinnest line is going to be something in the background. That just helps create depth and it helps to tell people what they should be looking at first. Something that is thicker in line is going to stand out more than anything else. Specifically, what we're drilling today is we're drawing this little cabin on this beautiful lake in the mountains. Obviously, our focal point is going to be that cabin in the foreground. We want people to look at that first and then we want them to gaze into that beautiful background. The first thing I'm going to do after I made my rectangle is I'm just going to start laying in some of my objects here. Think about each of these different elements as shapes. Think about those mountains as shapes. Think about that cabin as shapes. Even though the cabin is our focal point, you don't necessarily have to start with drawing the cabin. You want it to feel like it's nestled into this landscape and the size and scale that makes sense with everything else. The first thing I'm going to think about is my horizon line. The closest thing to a horizon line in this photograph is that water line, so where the water meets the land in the background. I'm going to start making indication of where that's going to go in my drawing. Don't panic if you haven't done a lot of drawings before and this seems like a complicated image. If you can draw anything, if you just break it down into simple shapes and you don't have to do every detail that you see here which you can simplify to make it work. Definitely, I'm just focusing on those main shapes. I'm not focusing on details. I'm just going to draw some diagonal lines, some horizontal lines just to represent what I'm seeing. Do a lot of glancing back and forth between the photograph and your drawing just to see if you're getting things in the right spots. Things are starting to make sense as they come together. I'm drawing that mountain shape on the right and then the rest of that water line as it comes across. I'm going to start on some of my background elements and actually get some of those established before I start drawing my focal point. That just helps give me an idea of the scale of things, how everything fits together. It makes sense of all the shapes before I start doing anything more detailed like that cabin. Again, think about negative space. Think about positive space. Where did the two meet? What shapes do they make? What are those lines look like? Focus on the shape that the sky makes as it meets those mountains. Start drawing that. This is a really good, practical way of applying some of what we've been talking about so far. Definitely. You don't even have to think about these shapes as actual objects or mountains or trees. You can just think about the shapes that they create and how everything comes together. Think about scale. Think about how that space is created. Where things come together, where they meet. You can get as detailed as you want at the end. But I think right now it's best to just focus on large shapes before you start adding any complicated details because you could get very complicated with this. Or a lot of details in the trees and the mountains. But before you get there, make sure that you have all of your different design elements established. When you start working on that cabin, there's a lot of geometric shapes versus a lot of organic shapes that you're seeing in the background. Even though that cabin is the focal point, it's not going to be the largest thing. It's actually going to be one of the smaller things that you're drawing. But you're going to create that focal point through the use of line and line weight. It's cool that you can create a sense of depth in a drawing without doing any sheathing just using line. Yeah, and I think that's something that maybe beginning artists aren't aware of, that you really can use a line to create a landscape that has depth to it. It's something that you can look into and you know the foreground, middle ground, and background right away. I think we always think about color contrast and how we can use those to create depth or size or scale. But line is definitely something that you can use to your advantage. You might find as you go along that line is something that you really enjoy working with. Lines don't always have to be covered up completely in a painting. You can even go back in and add line to a piece if you want to have more of a linear look in a finished painting or drawing or something, the lines can become a part of it if you want them to. Yeah. If you think of pen and ink drawings or more graphic drawings, they definitely use a line and shape in different ways. You could definitely utilize that in here, in your drawings or your paintings or whatever you're creating. Something to think about too is usually something that's in the foreground. If you want to add depth and have it be the focal point, you are going to add more detail on that object. Think about that cabin as you're drawing it and you might want to add slightly more detail when you're creating that. That's a good rule too if we're just thinking about focal point. If you make it the most interesting thing in the composition, it will draw people's eye there. It's so many different ways of creating that idea of a focal point in a piece. There is another building in this photograph. There's a church right behind the cabin to the right side. You are definitely welcome to put the church in your drawing. One thing to think about is if you do put that church in there, you want it to have thinner lines so it doesn't take the focus away from that cabin. You also want it to have less detail than that cabin. This is a good test of using these tools to create that sense of depth. Because if you treat that little building the same way as the foreground building, it's going to just look like a tiny little toy church sitting on the roof of the cabin. You probably don't want that. It's not going to feel like it fits in that landscape so you definitely want to make it feel like it belongs there. You can do that through all of those different design elements that we talked about. Another thing you can think about is some of those tree branches that are in front of the cabin. Those might be even thicker in line than your cabin. I think it's good to make you think about that stuff because then your art is less likely to end up looking very flat if you're thinking about what's in front of what in space. Yeah, definitely. All of these tools that we're teaching you, you can use to create the type of image that you want. Again, it doesn't have to match what you're looking at exactly. You can change things, you could move things. If something works better for you in a different location, feel free to do that. If you want people to notice something else when your drawing first and not that cabin, feel free to change things. That can be a fun challenge too. To take a reference where one thing is clearly the focal point and try to change what the focal point is to something else. I have my basic drawing workout, I'm going to go in and start adding some line work. I'm going to start in the background knowing that I want the thinnest line back there. I'm going to start with one of my markers that has a very thin points on it and I'm going to start doing some very thin line work in the background. I had to test all my markers first because I didn't know what the tips would be like. Yes. That's the thing about markers, you never know what you're going to get when you open them up. Yeah. It stuff you haven't used them in awhile. Maybe some of you out there are using a fancy set of drawing pins or something. Like Micron pens are really good and you can get them with lots of different size tips. Then you know going into it which ones are bigger. But if you're like me and you just grabbed a handful of black markers, can do it take the time to do a little test first to see what you're going to get. Yes, definitely. Now as you're starting to do your line. You can use your sketch as a guide and start adding more detail where you want. Just remembering that you're going to have to do more detail and thicker line weight in the foreground. You could do less detail on the background until you get to some of the more focal points, then go back and add more if you want. Making sure you're not getting rid of all that depth that we're trying to create. It's a little more pressure when you're doing it with ink. Yeah. [LAUGHTER]. But having the pencil sketch definitely helps. Feel free to make your pencil sketches detailed as you want it. For the sake of time, I'm going to go in and just start playing with some ink. But if you're not ready that's okay. One thing to think about with waters, you do have a lot of those reflections and things on the surface that will help add some depth too. Especially when you're doing a line drawing, I think it's helpful to try and pick up on some interior lines not just outlines of stuff. Yeah, that will help define some of your shapes which could be difficult if there are no additional lines. Yeah. Okay. Probably going to have to leave out some stuff at least for the sake of this example. Since you could spend hours working on this drawing. Please feel free to if you get into it and you want to keep going with it. Yeah. We're going to give you a simplified version so you can get the concept. Yeah, we'll give you a little preview or a start. Yeah. Beginning of the drawing session. But feel free to go in with more detail. Okay. I'm going to get a slightly [NOISE] thicker marker. Found a good one here, this one looks pretty good. For my cabin to start putting in some of those elements. Basically, you want your lines defining the shapes to be thicker. If you want to add details within those shapes that are a little bit thinner, that's okay. That will take away from your depth. I might actually add to it if you're adding more detail in there. Yeah, that's a good point. Everything doesn't have to be the same. Aside from showing depth, a line weight can be a way of showing, where there's more light or shadow or what is more prominent? Yeah, definitely. You want to fill in some shapes, especially in the foreground, that can help draw your interests there as well. I can always add a shape for the reflections. Using a line like this is a great way of your drawing something in a hurry. I just got back from a vacation and I did a lot of sketching in my sketchbook and when you're drawing from life like that you don't always have a lot of time to sit and shade everything in detail or anything. Using a line is a way to represent or create the depth that you're seeing, helps you to still get that down in a quicker way than some of the other techniques. Yeah, definitely. You can help give an impression of something without going into great detail. You still understand the depth that you understand what's happening. Yeah Without having to add every detail or every element. Grab one of my markers here, put some of these tree branches in and then I think we'll call this finished drawings. The fastest piece of art you've ever made, mostly. I am moving, Paul, you would be amazed. [LAUGHTER] But I love it. You just need to give me a timer for everything I do. Hey, I like this idea. Normally I'm the timer but she just ignores me. [LAUGHTER]. That is not true. Trees are fun because they can really just be abstract shapes and they become trees when you look at them. You have a series of dots and lines and suddenly it's like true branches. It's a tree. It's a tree, yay. [LAUGHTER] I think even though you're working from a photo reference here, you can still think about balance, negative shapes, positive shapes. As you're putting those tree branches in the end, you can change anything. If it's not working with your composition, if you want something more asymmetrical, if you want to add depth in different places. Whatever works for your drawing is okay. Yeah, that's really what's awesome about this. It gives you so much more to think about and tools that you can use to really make your drawings in your artwork, your own. Okay. Well, I think about. done. How are you doing over there, Polly? I'm done too. Yay, we did it. Nice work. Yeah. Okay. Hopefully everybody else is feeling good about their drawing. I'm ready to move on to the next activity. 6. Lesson 5: Movement and Rhythm: [MUSIC] That was great everybody. Time for the next activity. Now we are going to be drawing some fish [LAUGHTER]. But not just drawing fish, we're using the fish as a design element to explore some of the concepts around rhythm and movement. The reason we chose fish is because we can draw a whole bunch of them. They all swim around together and we can see what it looks like when we draw them in different ways. The spacing between them, the size, that kind of thing. Get ready to go under the ocean with me. Sounds awesome. Well, here we have some fish [LAUGHTER] and this project, I don't know why that's so funny, but anyhow. We promised fish and here they are. We delivered. [LAUGHTER] But here's the catch. With this project, we don't want you to draw the fish as they are arranged in this reference picture. We want you to look at the fish as an inspiration, but then draw them in your own unique configuration on the page that incorporates a lot of the ideas that we've talked about so far. Thinking about movement, focal point, depth, then I think especially with this one, I'd really like for you to think about rhythm and repetition and how you can create that sense of the pattern in the movement and the rhythm by how you draw and how you group the elements on the page. Are they really tight together or are they more spaced out? Do they feel like they're some coming forward and backwards, or are they all moving in sync? You can have different spaces on the page where you do different things with them. Try exploring all of those ideas in one drawing. That's a lot. [LAUGHTER] Then we better get started. We better [LAUGHTER] I'm going to start down here at the bottom. I'm going to draw one fish first. You don't have to have a plan. It's better not to in this case. I think you want to dive in and you see all these words that, well, it fits so well with this dive in. Dive in. That is the catch. Yeah, let's dive in, and don't worry about making a perfect drawing because it's better to draw them quickly and get something on there. They're pretty simple little creatures. I'm just trying to get the basic shape. They might be insulted by that, Paul. [LAUGHTER] Yes, that's true. I don't mean to suggest that they are basic in any way, even though that is part of the name of our clients [LAUGHTER]. They're in the right place. Yeah. Here's one little fishy. To start with, I'm going to do a little grouping down here that is more repetitive, more balanced. I'm going to draw a group of fish that are all moving in the same direction that are evenly spaced. I think that this might be more of where people default to when they're making a drawing. You see it a lot. When people are starting to learn about maybe painting landscapes or painting something that involves repetition of things like blades of grass or leaves. It's very tempting to want to have you do one that looks good to make them all look the same. That's how I'm going to start. I'm going to do just a repetitive pattern of fish that are all roughly the same size, same shape, and then from there, we will break it up and go in a little bit more interesting direction. Note that that isn't interesting, that's a very, I would say calming soothing look [BACKGROUND]. I'm glad you picked an easy shape for us to draw Paul since we're drawing a million of them. [LAUGHTER] I know we should just made stencils [LAUGHTER]. You in my class to make us fish stencil. Let us know. Yeah. Or if you want to simplify the shapes even more, draw, goldfish crackers. [LAUGHTER] Pattern though, is something that's really interesting to think about in artwork because it can be used in so many ways. You can have patterns on fabric and clothing, but also the pattern is really anything that repeats. If you do a forest and you have a bunch of trees that look similar, that's a pattern and whenever you have a pattern, there's a rhythm automatically because the repetition, that's what creates that rhythm, like in a song. Not that I know anything about music, but I know that much. [LAUGHTER] I did try to join the band when I was in middle school, but [OVERLAPPING] I tried to play the trumpet. I say try because anybody that has ever played the trumpet knows that's an easy instrument to make sound terrible if you're not good at it. The band teacher actually asked me to pretend like I was playing up the concert [LAUGHTER]. That's when I learned, maybe music was not for me [LAUGHTER]. It's all right. I think you've found your place. I hope so [LAUGHTER]. If not, you're going to be seeing classes. I'm here, how to play the trumpet. [LAUGHTER] Maybe you should take some Paul. [LAUGHTER] Haven't given up the dream yet. Yeah, it's never too late. I have five little fish down here that are all very similar entering the page. Now I'm getting bored with that [LAUGHTER]. I'm ready to do something else. I'm going to take a fish now and I'm going to draw, I'm going to look at a different one for inspiration. I'm going to draw this one that's turned away from us. Instantly, when you have a pattern where everything is very repetitive and similar, as soon as you throw in, something different than that, automatically breaks that rhythm and it gives you a pause in the composition and makes you reorient yourself, figure out where your eye is going to go next. It could be an area of focus too. If you want to draw focus to something, you have a pattern, it could add emphasis. If you break that pattern. Absolutely, just looking at my drawing that I've made right now, my eye goes right to the fish that's different from the others. It definitely automatically became a focal point in itself because everything else is so repetitive. Now I'm actually going to draw another fish that is being overlapped by about one so you get a little bit more. Everything was so evenly spaced initially but now I've got this more tighter composition in this part using the negative space like us to create almost a little bit of tension. Which can be a good thing. Tension is not a bad thing in a drawing. Paul do you want to talk a little bit about tension and what that is and how to create it? Yeah, tension, probably the best way to describe it is when you have elements that are interacting with each other in a way that is maybe unexpected or there's the coming together of parts that draw your eye to that area. If you're talking about the rhythm of a piece, if everything is flowing in is very balanced, like what you see in the first five fish that I drew. That's maybe more of a calming soothing, repetitive look. But then the instant you break that you create this visual tension this your eye can't help but be drawn to that area. It could be used in a way that makes people feel uncomfortable in a piece if you want that to be the case, sometimes you do too if you're depending on what the piece is about. But it doesn't necessarily have to be a negative thing. It just means you're breaking from what's expected and that creates this focal point that pulls your eye toward it. Yeah, if you've set a standard in your piece or you have shown that a lot of things are symmetrical or balanced in some way and suddenly throw something in there that feels unbalanced or it feels different in some way. It can draw your eye there and it can actually become a focal point in areas of interest. Yeah, now what that's done is it's pulled my eye up and to the right. Now I want to just really go crazy. [LAUGHTER] That is not crazy. I'm going to leave a little gap here. So far all of my fish have been about the same size but now I'm going to draw a giant fish. I may even going to let it go right off the page here. This one is going to feel like it is much closer to us. Adding that sense of space and space doesn't necessarily have to be from left to right on the page. It can also be from front to back. You can open up your drawing by pulling some elements for a word like the barn and the last, or the Calvin and the last piece. This fish is like that. Coming forward saying look at me first. That's what I would be doing if I was a fish. [LAUGHTER] Melissa would be this one that's turning away, trying to get as far away from the cameras as possible. [LAUGHTER] I would be swimming as fast as I could. [LAUGHTER] Yes. Another interesting thing to think about when drawing these fish specifically is the black and white stripes. You could do a lot of interesting things both negative and positive with these stripes and repetition because the pattern within the fish repeats and then the fish repeats itself. There's a lot you can do visually with some of the elements in this photograph. Pattern is everywhere. It's the fish, but it is also the pattern within the fish. There's a lot to think about. Now I'm making the lines on this fish darker, like Melissa just taught us since it is closer to us. Isn't it interesting looking at my piece here, how the focal point immediately shifted. Before our eyes were down here and then our eyes peak went here and now, when you look at the page, your eye goes right here. If you have been working on a piece for a while and you're not sure what the focal point is any more or where your eye might go because it can be hard to see it in your own work, especially if you've been staring at it for a while, I suggest either flipping your paper upside down and then look away from it and then look back and your eye will latch onto whatever the focal point is right away or hold up your paper and look at it in a mirror that also can do the trick to you. Anything to disorient yourself a little bit so you're seeing it with fresh eyes and then you will appreciate those compositional elements a lot more. Now I'm going to do some overlap here. Overlap is another great tool to use to create, again, tension. Also depth in a piece. I should have said this sooner. Don't feel like you're drawing yours to look like mine. Just always know that's the rule [LAUGHTER] in these classes. That's a good general rule to follow. Yeah, we want you to explore and the idea is that you're using this photo for inspiration, but you're rearranging it in your own way. I think that is pretty fun really. Yeah, create the composition that appeals to you, not the one that you see on the screen. Yes, exactly. Now, I'm also really thinking about the negative space on the page to the negative space being the water around these fish, and how I'm using the positive space and the negative space to create an interesting composition. So far, I really like the breakup of the space here, but I've got a lot of negative space up top that I haven't done anything with yet. I'm going to move up here. Feel like our eye is traveling along this way. Maybe we'll put another somewhat large fish here. See what that does. It's always an experiment. This would be something where you might want to, if you were making a painting or something more involved than just a sketch with this, you might actually want to do some thumbnails first. Some thumbnail sketches to play around with the position of the fish. Or even cut out some little fish shapes and just place them in different ways on a paper so you can see what that does. Those are all ways of thinking about composition. Yeah, actually, I think creating a collage here would be a really interesting way to create that repetition because he could cut a lot of similar shapes and then arrange them in a composition that you think works. Yeah, definitely. Another interesting thing that you get when you're talking about movement and rhythm, there's always a direction to it, a directional pool and I think a lot of times when you're drawing animals or recognizable things that have people or anything with a face [LAUGHTER] you tend to go the direction that the subject is facing. My eye goes in this way, but then these are turning this way. I like to also think about how you're using the composition to move people's eyes back and forth or around the image. Sometimes what I will do too once I have a number of elements on the page, I might even go in and sketch just a very light line or two to give me an idea of where I would like to maybe see a little bit more movement and then that can help me to know where to place the remaining fish or whatever elements I might be using. I look at the positive and negative space and how I want people's eyes to kinda zigzag around. I've just drawn three little white lines that I can erase later and then I'll go in and place some fish along those. I see landscape artists will do this a lot. They'll just draw more abstract lines at first and then build the landscape from there. Comes a little fishy. [LAUGHTER] How's yours looking, Melissa? It is coming along swimmingly. [LAUGHTER] You were just waiting for that? I was waiting. I had a plan. I was just waiting for you to ask me. I've been waiting for so long. You're waiting for me to just shut up. [LAUGHTER] Can I use my pond yet, please? It was so worth it. Yes, I'm sure. It is interesting. I think as we're creating movement and thinking about rhythm to create something that feels dynamic. Yes. I think diagonal lines usually have a lot to do with that. I think thinking about diagonals and creating a composition that maybe feels a little bit more asymmetrical can sometimes help with adding movement and rhythm. Yes. If everything is very horizontal and vertical, then you get more of that, I don't know, it's stagnant, has a very negative connotation to it, but that's the word that comes to my mind, but I guess just it feels more still. Static and grounded. Yeah, static is a better word. If you want there to be more of a dynamic composition, then you do like Melissa said, and use a lot more diagonal lines and asymmetrical composition. I think it's interesting to think about the way that the fish are facing in this specific drawing because you're obviously going to see the movement going in that direction, so thinking about how they're moving, where they're facing, and how you can use that to your benefit. Another compositional thing that I always like to mention is it's really great if you're creating something that you want to feel exists in a realistic space. I think it's really good to allow some of the elements to go off the page that definitely will make it feel more dynamic. It'll feel like that scene continues beyond where we are looking at this. It won't feel like everything has just swim right here to pose for you. But we're more just observing a scene that is ongoing and continues beyond this particular frame of reference. Right. The way a camera would see something happening in the real world. You would only see part of what is happening because it's moving literally moving right in front of you. Yeah. That can be a tricky thing to do because our instinct is to, I think naturally, we want to line everything up, have it all be centered and balanced and perfect. Fighting that instinct will help make your pieces come to life more. Even just like the number of things that you use. If you use an odd number versus an even number, that will help to introduce more of that asymmetry. Yeah. Just because Paul and I presented certain design elements and certain design principles today doesn't mean that that's all the design elements, all the design principles. There's plenty more to learn. If you want to add different elements or explore different types of compositions or ways to use color or all the different things that are out there. There's plenty more to explore. Absolutely. I think I am finished with my little fishies. Beautiful. Actually erasing my guidelines here that I sketched in. Then I want to take a look at it and see now there's a little stole lot of nice use of negative space here, which I really like. But my eye is traveling all around that page in a really dynamic, interesting way. And I like the depth that you get from having some of the fish feel like they're really close, some feeling like they're farther away. This would be really fun to take even further and add color too. If you are getting into it and want to keep going, please put us on pause and spend as long as you want on this. But otherwise, I think we are ready to move on to the next project. Are you ready, Melissa? I'm ready. 7. Lesson 6: Focal Point: [MUSIC] Great job. You did it again. What's next, Melissa? Last activity for everybody. I hope you're ready. I hope you're feeling good. We're going to be [OVERLAPPING] drawing a tiger this time. So it's going to be a little more challenging, but that's okay. We're going to walk you through it step by step. We're going to be focusing on creating a focal point in our drawing this time. So how do we create depth? How do we create a subject that we want people to see first in our drawing? That's what we're going to be discovering. [NOISE] Everyone, we are on our last activity and I think this is going to be a fun one. Hopefully everyone enjoys this, but we're going to be drawing a tiger today. Our main focus when drawing this tiger is just creating a focal point. So how do you create something that is your main subject that requires people to look at it first. Think about how you can combine everything we've already done. How you can combine line or value or if you want to use color, you can. How do you use all these different things? Contrast, everything we talked about today. How do you use all these different things to create something that has a clear focal point, a clear area of interests that people will notice before they look at anything else in your drawing. So the first thing I'm going to do is I'm just going to draw a rectangle that's going to define the shape that I'm going to be drawing in. I'm going do something more vertical since my tiger is more vertical. I'm going to do something that matches his or hers proportions. [NOISE] Something long and skinny here. [NOISE] Then I'm going to think about how I'm going to create this composition to have my tiger really be the main element and take over this drawing. So I'm going to do a symmetrical composition in this drawing similar to the photograph we're looking at and I think that's just going to make that tiger pop out. The first thing I'm going to do is just focus on the shapes that I'm seeing. Obviously that tiger's head is more round. I'm going to make him fairly large in my composition just so I know that he's going to stand out. I'm going to draw the circle for the head and then I'm going to decide how large is the body compared to the head. Again, I'm just drawing some main shapes here. [NOISE] I can get my basic composition worked out. [NOISE] I'm going to center him exactly in my rectangle because I want him to own the space. Now, everybody that is drawing, you don't have to do the same thing again, like in my drawing, I'm just zooming in and doing more of like a portrait of the tiger's face and I have mine off center with portion of the face going off the page, so do whatever feels interesting to you. Yeah, like we were saying, there's no hard and fast rules. Use all those elements and those principles that we gave you. All those different tools to create something that works for you. Yeah. There are lots of different ways to do that. All the different elements that we gave you. You can use line, you can use value, you can use contrast. All of those different things. Texture. There's definitely pattern in this. Definitely [LAUGHTER] yes. Definitely repetition , definitely some rhythm. Yeah. While you're drawing, you probably want to focus on the positive shapes, but also the negative shapes. So as you're drawing some of these legs, they're definitely negative shapes created within them. If you focus on those, those will help you get the legs in the right position. Probably the right scale. [NOISE] Use all those shapes to help define your space. Space that you're creating around the lion, the space that you're creating for the lion. Sorry, I keep saying lion, it's a tiger, it's not a lion. [LAUGHTER] Paul tell me, you got to tell me, [LAUGHTER] what are you saying? [LAUGHTER] I've learned never to question. [LAUGHTER] Like oh, well, maybe it is a lion, what do I know. [LAUGHTER] Maybe it's a lion crossed with a tiger, it's a liger. [LAUGHTER] Maybe I'll just make it a lion. Yeah, there you go. See, that's the beauty of being an artist. You can do whatever you want. [LAUGHTER] Since my mouth has already turned it into a lion, [LAUGHTER] maybe my hand just wants to follow suit [LAUGHTER] and create a lion as well. [LAUGHTER] I love it. [NOISE] There's a lot of information here. Yeah, so a lot of shapes, I would say focus on the main shapes, don't focus on the stripes. But the stripes are so pretty. They are beautiful [LAUGHTER] but it's definitely something you can add later, and that's definitely something you can use compositionally, one of those design elements that you can use to help add interests and create a focal point. Yes. I think that maybe goes back a little bit to the idea of hierarchy. Even in terms of like deciding what you're going to draw first, you have to prioritize things and if you could draw the most beautiful stripes ever but if they're not in the right place, [LAUGHTER] if you haven't worked out the general proportions of the body, then it's really a waste of your time. So you want to prioritize getting the most basic shapes down first that will help you to understand what's going on. Try to have everything make sense before you start getting into the detail. Yeah. You know it's easy to get lost in that detail. [NOISE] That's never happened to you? Never. [LAUGHTER] Telling the story of my life. [LAUGHTER] That'll be the title of your autobiography one day. Yeah, I lost in the details. [LAUGHTER] Such a perfect title. [LAUGHTER] I think as we're talking about all of these different elements to the design, it's interesting to think about how every artist uses those elements in a different way and that's what creates their style. Some artists are really interested in say pattern for example and use a lot of pattern in their work, pattern with their brushstrokes bringing out every repetitive element. That becomes a hallmark of their work. You know it's that artist's work when you see it because of the way that they use pattern and for other artists it's line, or shape, or whatever. Yeah, definitely everybody has their own interpretation of how things work and how they should go together and those different combinations are what make every artist different. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that your art should look like everyone else. I think it's so important to find what feels right and what works for you. These are all just ideas and concepts and tools that are there for you to apply however you want to. Yeah, definitely. I have the main shapes of my tiger. [LAUGHTER]. Yes beautiful. Of my tiger's body figured out. Wonderful. Other proportions where they need to be the shapes in the right place from what I can tell so far. I'm going to start adding in some indications of where those stripes are. The stripes actually help shape the body, or add depth to it. Which is interesting. You can actually use those to help you figure out where the muscles are, figure out how those shapes move in space. Then again, think about if you want to use those as a design element, do you add more stripes? Do a different stripes? Do you create your own? This can be similar to the angel fish drawing that we did in the last exercise. If you want to change some things, you can. It's all about creating a composition that has a main focal point, but that doesn't mean that you can't re-interpret what you're seeing. Yeah. Even just how you choose to emphasize certain things. You could take this in a very bold graphic direction and just do ink black and white and make it all about the patterning of the stripes, or you could make it much more subtle and maybe do a very subtle drawing where you can incorporate all the different shades of gray that are there too. It's all about what you're see and what you want to bring out in the piece and how you choose to do that then. We started as a drawing, but you can add anything to this that you want. You could add color, you could decide to paint this, you could do a finished drawing with value and shading, you could do a line drawing like we did in one of our other exercises. Or you can do it all. Or you could do everything at once. Yes. [LAUGHTER] Mixed media. [LAUGHTER]. Little bit everything. Another element that we talked about, but initially in that first video we haven't done much with yet is texture. There's a lot of texture here too you that you can pick up on and bring it up. Yeah, definitely. If you want to add your own color you could do that too. I mean, just because of this, I almost said lion again just because of this tiger. [LAUGHTER] You knew angel fish [LAUGHTER]. I knew angel fish and yeah, I haven't gotten that wrong but for some reason [LAUGHTER]. You picked this photo? [LAUGHTER] I did. This was my pick. Let me have this one. Yeah. What did I have? Some bird, I think. A bird. Yeah. A very colorful tropical bird which seems right. Seems very me? [LAUGHTER] Yeah. I would also experiment. If you can add some background elements, I would just because we want to experiment with creating a focal point when there are other elements around. If you only draw the tiger, then obviously that's going to be an easy exercise in creating a focal point, but a better challenge would be, can you add other elements around the tiger and still have it be the focal point. I would also say, let's say you are using the approach that most is with the drawing the full tiger what is the focal point for you within the tiger's body? Because if it's taking up your whole page somebody's eye can't look at the whole thing at once so here do you want their eye to go first? You want it to go right to the eyes of the tiger now I want to sing that song from Rocky. The tiger. [LAUGHTER] You cannot sing it. I won't. I promise. It's in my head right now. [LAUGHTER] I think it's natural that we want our eyes, the viewer's eyes tend to go to the eyes of the subject if you're drawing an animal, or a person, but you could change that. You could redirect them somewhere else if you wanted to. We'll leave that up to you as to how you could do that. You know all the tools now, there's many different ways. Contrast, color, line. Any of those things would allow you to do that. A lot of stripes. A lot of stripes. If you want to add all the stripes you can. You can change this however you want. One way that I will sometimes in a drawing create a sense of a focal point, especially if I have a time limit, is go in and add the most detail, the most shading around the area that I want people's eyes to be drawn to you so if it's the face of the tiger, that's where I would put the focus of my initial energy. Because there's no rule that says what makes a piece finished it's only when it feels right to you so it might be that you just shade in the face in detail, but then you can let the shading dissolve as it moves away from the face maybe it just dissolves into lines and then the further away from the focal point they get, maybe even the lines become more sketchy. It can still be a very finished drawing and not be rendered in detail from corner to corner. It's finished when it feels finished. We're taking a set amount of time to create a drawing today and you can take as long as you want. Definitely. Paul and I are going to try to come up with something fairly finished. Given the amount of time we have, Paul is more likely to be in a finished day than I am [LAUGHTER] You're the leader here now, Melissa. Now, I'm in trouble. It's all on you [LAUGHTER] I know. I will see you guys mine there too at the end. It's not like I'm just laying over here on a recliner with a lemonade [LAUGHTER] That's what I'll be doing after we finish this class [LAUGHTER] Those are plans for later. This is a very interesting creature. Tigers are beautiful. I am definitely starting to add some more value to the face and that's going to help me create a focal point around the face, like what Paul was talking about. I'm going to make sure that I have plenty of time to add that detail. Once I'm happy with that, I'm going to add some more detail around the tiger, rest of the tigers body, but I know that I want my main focal point to be the tiger's face. Word to the wise, you never want to try and rush Melissa when she's getting into detail. I learned that the [LAUGHTER] hard way when we worked on murals together [LAUGHTER] Come on, are we done? [LAUGHTER] Just like this needs more detail [LAUGHTER] That's my thing. Just because areas in the foreground usually have more contrast than others, doesn't mean that you can't have softer values too. You would have a full range of values from softer to more harder, like thicker, heavier values. Sometimes, I mean, it really depends on the composition if you have an overall dark image like this one, then the lighter areas are what will become the focal point, but if you put this same tiger in a snowy landscape, then it's going to have a totally different composition. You also want to think about that too how you arrange the values to help give you the composition that you want. Is it more light out of dark? Is it more dark out of light? If you're drawing something, especially something that's complex, if you can break it down into that simple question, that can often be a way of just figuring out a good initial compositional strategy like overall, do I want the subject to be light coming out of dark, dark coming out of light. It doesn't mean that it can't have both. That song was from Rocky or did I just make that up in my head? [LAUGHTER] I don't know I never saw Rocky actually. I don t think I did either [LAUGHTER] That's probably why we have no idea. We're the wrong people to ask. I just picture that guy like running down the sidewalk while that song plays but that could just be in my head only [LAUGHTER] If anyone knows, please tell us in the comments. Yes, this is the real important takeaway from today's class. What song was featured in Rocky when the guy was running on the sidewalk [LAUGHTER] I got some details added to the tiger's face so I'm just going to click value and the rest of the tigers body. Object can always add to later. Yes Melissa is going to be working on this all night now. Probably, yes [LAUGHTER] But no hurry. No it's okay if any of you want to spend longer it's good to [OVERLAPPING] We love that. Or if you're quicker than us, that's okay too. Exactly. I'm just going to work on adding some more of these stripes. How can I define the form and the shape? Then maybe I want to keep those stripes more detailed or having more contrast towards the face and maybe less detailed towards the feet of the tiger. That's the way I can manipulate where people are going to look. Artist can be so manipulative. Yes, it's part of our power. We might as well use it. Exactly. One thing I can do to make the tiger's face stand out is put some dark around the face that is so light. I'm going to work on making some of my values richer here. Definitely just a process and be like, don't give up if you're drawing doesn't look perfect right away. It's a lot of times just continually adding layers and asking yourself what doesn't quite match the reference? Or where do my eyes need to go and if you're looking for the hierarchy and prioritizing things in terms of value, one thing that I like to do is squint my eyes and look at the drawing and then squint my eyes and look at the photo and see if the overall arrangement of lights and darks matches. Or if at least my eye goes to the same places. Or if the right emphasis is where it should be. You might be representing it differently on paper, but it should still work. One thing I just started doing was adding some dark areas around the tiger, especially up towards the face because that's where I want people to look. Once I get a little bit of that established and I'm not going to fill in the whole background. Just going to do a few indications and where that tiger would stand out from the background. Then I'm going to add just a slight indication of the plant life. Then I'm going to call this finished drawing. That's so exciting. Melissa, fastest drawing ever. I know. First time for everything. [LAUGHTER] I'm going to be very sketchy about how I draw some of my plants. Just want to make some very quick indications. It's a designer element back there. Very loose and sketchy. I wish we could get the copyright to that song so we could play it. [LAUGHTER] That would be perfect. [LAUGHTER] There would be a great way to end all this. I know it. Share your drawings with us. We want to see everybody out there. We want to see your fish and your tigers. [LAUGHTER] Your landscapes and your ships. But we did a lot today. [LAUGHTER] We did a lot. We've been very busy. [LAUGHTER] We took a whole year of 2D design class and compressed it into two hours, I would say that's pretty good. You definitely don't have to do this all in a day. [LAUGHTER] We tell them now as they finished the final video [LAUGHTER] As they're done. Yeah. [LAUGHTER] They're exhausted. They're passed out. [LAUGHTER] Poly, how are you over there? Are you finished? All finished. All finished. I think that's a wrap. Nice work, Melissa. That looks beautiful and I will show you mine now too. I'll give you a quick little time-lapse of it so that you don't feel like you missed out on what was happening over here on my end as well. Well, thanks everybody. Awesome job. Good job, Melissa. You too Poly. [LAUGHTER] 8. Closing Thoughts: [MUSIC] Oh, I'm so exhausted after all that work. [LAUGHTER] [OVERLAPPING] My goodness, Paully. You all did great. You hung in there, You made it through all of the lessons. Good job. [LAUGHTER] Good job, everybody. Thanks for hanging out with us. Thanks for making some artwork. I hope you're happy with the results. We'd love to see them. Please share them with us. We love to see your work and we would love to have you come back and take more classes with us. We have more in the works, so stay tuned. Yes, so there's plenty more to come, so please come back. Check often. Paul and I are hard at work. We hope to see you again. [LAUGHTER] Yes. In the meantime, keep practicing all those design fundamentals that you learned today. You will be amazed at how much they will help improve your work and also give you things to think about when you are looking at other people's artwork all around you every day. Very true, you'll start to notice it in artwork at museums, commercials, films, anything you look at, package design, it's everywhere. Start thinking about that every day and your artwork will be better immediately. [LAUGHTER] [LAUGHTER] Absolutely. All right, everyone. Take care. Keep drawing and we'll see you next time. Bye, Mellisa. Bye, Paully.