This past weekend, I held my annual Drawing Bootcamp at Creative Arts Workshop. We cram as many beginning drawing skills into 3 hour blocks as possible.
For some, this is the first experience drawing standing at an easel. Most of us are used to drawing smaller, sitting at a desk or in a little sketchbook. Standing while drawing allows you to make marks using your whole arm, so you can create longer more fluid lines in your drawing.
During one exercise, we focused on using the negative shapes, the spaces between objects, to help us measure the proportions of a ladder.
The last picture shows a student hanging up a collaboratively drawn drawing. My students were so nice to humor me with this request. They each added to the drawing with a different color marker, relying on the previous person’s measurements and marks.