Learn how to render with value in your drawings!

Join artists Paul Richmond and Melissa Forman for a class focused on the fundamentals of drawing. Learn how to work with value to add a more realistic sense of dimension to your drawings. We'll start by looking at some examples from art history and discussing how the artists utilized light and shadow in their work. Then we will do a simple value scale to explore the range of values your pencil can create. Next, we will draw a sphere that looks three-dimensional with shading and a cast shadow, followed by a more complex still life set-up with multiple objects and a dramatic light source. For our final project, we will do a reverse drawing, covering the paper with graphite to create a middle value and then adding shadows with the pencil and highlights with the eraser.

This class is for everyone - from beginners to more experienced artists - with an emphasis on foundational skills.

As professional artists and teachers, Paul and Melissa have met many artists who commonly face a lot of the same issues when creating their art. Learn how to master those struggles and add refinement and polish to your work. It’s never too late to get back to basics!

Materials

You are welcome to work with any materials you'd like, but here's a list of everything we will be using in this series:

Drawing pencil set (4H-4B)
Kneaded eraser
Sketchbook

Lessons

Introduction
Value Scale
Sphere
Still Life
Reverse Drawing

About the Instructors

Paul Richmond is an internationally recognized visual artist and activist whose career has included exhibitions in galleries and museums throughout the United States as well as publication in numerous art journals and anthologies. His work is collected by individuals around the globe. As an illustrator, has created over four hundred novel cover illustrations. He is a co-founder of the You Will Rise Project, an organization that empowers those who have experienced bullying to speak out creatively through art.

Melissa Forman spends her time creating a richly visual world filled with characters created from an opulent, mysterious, and often eerie imagination. Her lovely, idealized figures seem lost in their own worlds, drifting between the 16th, 18th, 19th and 21st centuries. Melissa has been drawing and painting commissioned portraits since she was 14. She attended the Columbus College of Art and Design and graduated with a BFA in 2002. She now lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio. Her personal work has been shown in galleries around the world, from New York City to Seattle to Los Angeles to Berlin, Germany to Bristol, England.

Diane Bryson

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