Drawing   

Course Overview

Do you like to draw and want to take your skills to the next level? Focus on drawing and painting the fascinating world of animals in this engaging and informative class. 

Through the development of keen observational skills of the natural world, learn to realistically represent animals in drawing and acrylic painting. Gain knowledge and understanding of animal anatomy to be able to make more realistic portraits. Subjects will include a variety of amazing animals such as mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, insects, crustaceans, mollusks, and more. 

Learn about form and function, highlights, shadows, details, proportion, three-dimensionality, value, contrast, and color. These basic principles in drawing and painting will help you learn to depict the animal world in a variety of vibrant and dynamic ways, and you will be able to use the skills gained in all other creative endeavors.

Supplies Needed

This supply list gives you the option to purchase a smaller selection of supplies, or a larger, more varied selection of supplies, depending on what you would like to use for class (and after class).  The more varied selections will be listed with the word "optional." For the drawing supplies, it will be good to have them for the first class, but for the painting supplies, you can wait until after we talk about them on the first day of class, since the first few days we will be drawing.

Drawing Supplies

• Pencils (Graphite): 2B, 4B, 6B; optional: 8B and 6B or 8B woodless pencil 
• Drawing paper pad - 70-90 lb. either 9"x12" or 11"x14"
• White vinyl eraser
• Pink eraser on the back of a pencil or (optional) a mechanical eraser (Tombow Mono Knock 3.8)
• Paper blending stomps - 3 or 4 in a variety of sizes, or paper towel/ tissues for blending for the first day
• Pencil sharpener - preferably with shaving collector

Painting Supplies

You can wait to get paint supplies after we talk about them in the first class. 

• Acrylic paints - you have the option of getting either:
  - an “Entry-level collection” of at least 5-6 colors: at least white, yellow, green, blue, red, black (i.e. Liquitex Basics is one brand); either 60ml/2 oz or 118 ml/4oz
  - or a more varied collection including titanium white, light yellow, medium yellow, medium orange, medium red, magenta, dioxazine purple, ultramarine blue, phthalo blue, phthalo green, and black; either in 118ml tubes, 250 ml tubes, or 400 ml jars.
• Watercolor paper pad - 8.5x11", 9x12", 11x14" or 12x16", and/ or canvases, stretched or canvas panel - 8.5x11", 9x12", 11x14" or 12x16"
• Brushes - small #1 round, a ¼" filbert brush, and a 3/8" filbert brush
• Optional brushes: ½" filbert, ¼" angle brush
• Jar or large plastic cup or container (like for yogurt or peanut butter) for water
• Paper towels
• Disposable paper palette pad (i.e., Strathmore, Canson, etc.) - 9x 12" or 12x16" (12x16" is better because it has more room)

Optional:

• 12 x 16" “stay wet” palette (to keep paints wet between sessions) or Hipiwe a4 file box (recommended) 
• Paper plates for additional paint mixing
• Acrylic matte medium 
• Spray bottle for keeping paints wet
• Small table easel or small drawing table (depending on preference for drawing/ painting on a table or upright)

Learning Objectives

• Depict a variety of animals in pencil drawing and acrylic painting
• Draw or paint 3D forms in animals through light, shadow
• Gain skills to represent proportions and details of subjects
• Develop and use observational skills to represent animals accurately 
• Draw and paint a wide variety of animal life

Who Should Take This Class

• Anyone who is interested in enriching their lives by drawing and painting animals
• People who draw and/or paint who would like to gain or improve their skills
• Scientists, naturalists, nature lovers, or anyone who is fascinated by animal life, and would like to become more acquainted with drawing and painting the natural world
• No experience is necessary; everyone is welcome

Class Overview

Have you always wanted to learn how to draw, or do you have you some drawing experience that you'd like to build upon? Join us!

This class is excellent for both beginning and intermediate students who want to improve their fundamental drawing and observation skills. Learn how to draw using a simple graphite pencil. Explore line, value, space, perspective and composition. Enjoy guidance of a professional artist and learn approaches to drawing that will help you get better with just a bit of practice.

Join a community of fellow art students and give yourself time to learn, practice and develop these rewarding skills that can give you endless hours of fun and satisfaction. No previous art experience is needed.

Supplies Needed

• Graphite pencil (HB or 2B)
• Sketchbook (no smaller 9 x 12", no larger 11 x 15")

Learning Objectives

• Explore fundamental drawing techniques
• Learn about different style approaches
• Practice and improve upon your skills under the guidance of an expert

Who Might Enjoy This Class

• Budding artists
• Working artists that would like to practice their drawing skills
• Designers who would like to improve their ability to sketch
• No previous art experience required

Class Overview

Drawing is the basis of all visual art, and it can provide a lifetime of enjoyment. In this class for beginners, increase your imagination, creativity, and perception through the practice of drawing!

Learn the fundamentals of drawing: light, shadow, proportions, details, perspective, and three-dimensionality. Practice drawing many subjects including animals, nature, people, and still life.

You’ll be surprised how quickly your skills will improve by observing and drawing along with a step-by-step class presentation! This process will make it easy to understand and put these techniques into practice.

Once you learn these skills, you’ll find them becoming second nature. This practice will greatly increase your ability to represent the world around you with a pencil or pen.

This class will be presented as a live, interactive video (Zoom), which is more similar to an "in-person" class because you get the benefit of seeing the art demos live, up-close, in real-time just like in an "in-person" class and ask questions along the way. You can also paint along with the instructor!

Supplies Needed

• Pencils (graphite):
  • 2B pencil
  • 4B pencil
  • 6B pencil
  • 8B (Optional)
  • Woodless Pencil (6B or 8B) optional
• Drawing paper pad - either 9"x12" or 11"x14"
• White vinyl eraser
• Mechanical eraser, or pink eraser on the back of pencil (for detail erasing and drawing white lines on gray areas)
• 3-4 (variety sizes) Paper blending stomps (or paper towel/ tissues for blending, if you can't find these for first day)
• Pencil sharpener (preferably with shaving collector)
• Set of colored pencils (24 to 48)

Learning Outcomes

• Learn the various uses for the tools and supplies for drawing
• Draw representational objects and scenes
• Represent 3-dimensional space through the use of light, shadow, and detail
• Learn various blending techniques
• Draw 3-dimensional objects -- the building blocks of all other drawings
• Combine three-dimensional objects to make more complex drawings
• Expand your use and understanding of form and line
• Gain a good understanding and ability to use proportions
• Represent three-dimensional objects and scenes using a simple perspective
• Utilize light and dark details
• Maximize the use of value, contrast, line, mark making, and details to draw with expression

Who Should Take this Class?

• Anyone interested in learning the joy of drawing
• People who would like to improve their drawing skills
• Anyone who would like to learn to express themselves through drawing
• Everyone who would like to gain the foundational skills of drawing to apply to any visual art medium in the future

Class Overview

Increase your imagination, creativity, and perception through the practice of drawing! Drawing is the fundamental basis of all visual art, and it can provide a lifetime of enjoyment. Get started drawing in this engaging class geared for seniors, but open to all ages.

Discover the fundamental concepts of drawing such as light, shadow, proportions, details, and perspective. Learn how to draw many subjects including animals, nature, people, and “still life” objects. Explore how you can use a pencil to create an image that looks like it has three dimensions.

You’ll be surprised how quickly your skills will improve by observing the instructor and drawing along in a step-by-step method. Class presentations make it easy to learn and put the techniques into practice. Once you learn these skills, you will find they start to become second nature. Increase your ability to represent the world around you!

Supplies Needed

• Pencils (graphite): 2B, 4B, 6B; optional: 8B; optional: woodless pencil (6B or 8B) 
• Drawing paper pad - either 9"x12" or 11"x14"
• White vinyl eraser
• Mechanical eraser, or pink eraser on the back of common pencils (for detail erasing and drawing white lines on gray areas)
• Paper blending stomps, 3-4 in a variety of sizes;  (or you can use paper towel or tissues if you can't find these for the first day)
• Pencil sharpener (preferably with shaving collector)
• Set of colored pencils (24 to 48)

Learning Objectives

• Explore the various uses for drawing tools and supplies 
• Draw representational objects and scenes
• Represent 3-dimensional space through the use of light, shadow, and detail
• Become familiar with blending techniques
• Accurately draw 3-dimensional objects, the building blocks of all other drawings
• Combine 3-dimensional objects to make more complex drawings
• Expand your use and understanding of form and line
• Be able to draw proportions accurately 
• Represent 3-dimensional objects and scenes using simple perspective
• Utilize light and dark details
• Maximize the use of value, contrast, line, marks, and details to draw with expression

Who Might Enjoy This Class 

• Anyone who is interested in enriching their lives with the joy of drawing
• People who would like to gain or improve their drawing skills and apply those skills to draw a variety of subjects
• Anyone wanting to develop new skills to express themselves
• People who would like to gain foundational drawing skills to support any other visual art medium

Class Overview 

Fantasy fiction and science fiction are fascinating genres for art. You’ve undoubtedly seen this imaginative art form captivate audiences in books, comic books, animations, games, and movies. In this class, learn to draw, paint and create magical fictitious fantasy creatures and characters with no limit to the creative possibilities.

Explore the rules of anatomy and how to realistically illustrate the proportions of fantasy creatures. Then learn how to bring them to life through movement, action, and three-dimensionality. Learn how to illustrate light, shadow, detail, and color in your fantasy creatures. 

Combine these skills to portray a variety of creatures, such as dragons, dinosaurs, robots, trolls, shape-shifters, cyborgs, mutants, insectoids, animal and multi-creature hybrids, and mecha. Learn how to illustrate all of the amazing actions they do such as running, flying, battling foes, rescuing heroes, breathing fire, etc. 

You will develop skills to use your mind to create entirely new species and worlds and bring them to life with your own hands!

Supplies Needed

This Supply List gives you the option to purchase a smaller selection of supplies, or a larger, more varied selection of supplies, depending on what you would like to use for class (and after class)!  The more varied selections will be listed with the word (optional). For the Drawing supplies, it will be good to have them for the first class, but for the painting supplies, you can wait until after we talk about them on the first day of class (as in the first few days we will be doing drawing).

Drawing Supplies:

• Pencils (Graphite): 2B pencil, 4B pencil, 6B pencil (Optional), 8B (Optional), Woodless Pencil (6B or 8B) (optional)
• 70-90 lb. Drawing Paper Pad - either 9"x12" or 11"x14"
• White vinyl eraser
• Pink eraser on the back of a pencil (for detail erasing and drawing white lines on gray areas) or a Mechanical Eraser (Tombow Mono Knock 3.8, optional)
• 3-4 Paper Blending Stumps (in a variety of sizes), (or paper towel/ tissues for blending, if you can't find blending stomps for the first day)
• Pencil Sharpener (preferably with shaving collector)

Painting Supplies:

For the Painting Supplies, you don’t need to get the Paints or Paint Supplies until after we talk about them in the 1st class, (We will be drawing the first few class sessions), so you won’t need the paint supplies at the beginning, and in class, we can talk about what collection of paint supplies would work best for you!)

• You have the option of getting either an “Entry level collection”: i.e., a small selection of Acrylic Paints (either 60ml/ 2 oz or 118 ml/ 4oz) of at least 5-6 Colors: (at least White, Yellow, Green, Blue, Red, Black)- (i.e. Liquitex Basics), or a more varied collection (optional), (in 118ml tubes, 250 ml tubes, or 400 ml jars), including Titanium White, Light Yellow, Medium Yellow, Medium Orange, Medium Red, Magenta, Dioxazine Purple, Ultramarine Blue, Phthalo Blue, Phthalo Green, & Black.
• Watercolor Paper Pad (8.5x11, 9x12, 11x14 or 12x16) and/ or Canvases (Stretched or Canvas Panel) (8.5x11, 9x12, 11x14 or 12x16)
• A small collection of Brushes - A small #1 round, a ¼ inch filbert brush, and a 3/8-inch filbert brush
• (Optional brushes): ½ inch filbert, ¼ inch “angle” brush
• Jar or large plastic cup or container (like Yogurt or Peanut Butter Jar) for water
• Paper Towels
• Disposable paper palette pad (i.e., Strathmore, Canson, etc.)- 9x 12 or 12x16 (12x16 is better because it has more room)
• (Optional): If you'd like a palette that keeps the paints wet between sessions, (optional), you can get a 12 x 16 “stay wet” palette, or another good option that you can find online which is cheaper/ better is the: "Hipiwe a4 file box (recommended)" (i.e. on Amazon) (If you get either "stay- wet" type palette, you'd still need a "disposable paper palette" (above) to put the paints on, inside of the "stay wet palette")
• (Optional) Paper plates for additional paint mixing
• (Optional) Acrylic Matte Medium 
• (Optional) Spray bottle for keeping paints wet
• (Optional) Small table easel or small drawing table (optional, depending on if you like drawing/ painting on the table or drawing/painting upright)

Learning Objectives 

• Depict a variety of fantasy creatures and characters
• Illustrate dynamic poses, motion, action, and facial expressions
• Gain knowledge and skills in the depiction of anatomy and proportions
• Utilize light, shadow, and geometric objects to depict 3 dimensionality
• Use color mixing, hue, value, intensity, and complementary colors to depict fantasy creatures in color
• Explore and develop your own fantasy creatures from scratch 

Who Might Enjoy This Class

• Anyone who is interested in enriching their lives with the joy of fantasy creature drawing and painting
• People who would like to gain or improve their drawing and painting skills 
• Anyone who would like to explore the world of fantasy creatures and create their own from scratch
• Anyone who would like to bring more realism, movement, and personality to their fantasy creatures

Class Overview

Cartooning is a joyful art form that delights viewers and tells stories with minimal lines. Learn how to draw in the dynamic and expressive style of cartooning in this class.  

Discover and practice the skills to draw engaging cartoon characters. We will explore the importance of anatomy and proportions, and key cartooning techniques such as simplification, squash and stretch, movement, line of action, gestures, and facial expressions. Follow along in an engaging series of step-by-step demos, making it easy and fun to build your skills quickly. 

You will also learn to draw caricatures, in which the exaggeration of characteristics brings out the personality and expression of that person, animal, or cartoon character. The focus of this class is on how to create cartoon characters and characters and develop your drawing skills to be able to draw in this style more confidently and successfully. Narrative and storytelling are not the focus, though you will be well-equipped to combine those elements.

Get ready for a fun and informative hands-on drawing class!

Supplies Needed

• Pencils (graphite): 2B, 4B, 6B pencil; optional: 8B and woodless pencil (6B or 8B) 
• Set of pens (like Pigma Microns) - .01,.02,.03.,05,.08
• Drawing paper pad, 70-90lb  - either 9"x12" or 11"x14"
• White vinyl eraser
• Mechanical eraser, or pink eraser on the back of pencil (for detail erasing and drawing white lines on gray areas)
• Paper blending stomps, 3-4 (variety sizes) 
• Pencil sharpener (preferably with shaving collector)

Learning Objectives

• Draw cartoon characters
• Understand how to simplify and exaggerate your character to amplify the comic effect
• Depict characters in action through the use of gesture and dynamic anatomy
• Draw cartoon characters in their natural environments, with props or other elements, and interact with each other
• Be able to produce caricatures of famous people or people you know through comic exaggeration
• Utilize believable yet exaggerated forms and proportions

Who Might Enjoy This Class 

• Anyone interested in learning to draw and interested in enriching their lives with the joy of cartooning
• People who already like to draw with an interest in gaining or improving cartooning abilities
• Anyone who would like to learn more about creating cartoons from scratch
• People who like to draw cartoons and would like to bring more expressiveness to their cartoon characters through action, movement, dynamic poses, and facial expressions
• Anyone who would like to gain cartooning skills to tell a story or narrative in the future

Class Overview

Would you like to move from drawing stick figures to actual figures? In this class, you will get personalized guidance and help to hone your observation skills.
Improve your drawing and sketching skills by drawing live models under the guidance of a skilled artist.
If you'd like to work on drawing proportions, structure, and movement of the human figure, this class is for you!

*** Course fee includes model fees for all sessions.

Supplies Needed

• 18” x 24” sketch pad
• Mechanical pencil (0.7 or 0.5mm) with B or 2B graphite

Learning Objectives

• Learn the basics of proportion and structure
• Practice techniques for capturing movement
• Work on drawings under the guidance of an expert

Who Might Enjoy This Class?

• Students interested in improving their human figure drawing skills
• Those seeking an enhancement of their ability to accurately draw proportion, structure, and movement

Class Overview

Pen and ink have been used for millennia and are still a favorite medium of artists today. These tools have their own personality and can add a unique flair to your drawing style. Learn how to use pen and ink in this fun hands-on class for all levels.

Even though pen and ink are simple tools, controlling the ink, and its permanence of it can be intimidating. In this class, learn the basic steps to get good results from your materials. Explore a variety of pen techniques and practice them to incorporate them into your drawings. Learn about technical pens and brush pens, and practice using dip pens.

We will look at some examples of pen and ink drawings for inspiration. Get ready to “go with the flow” and get creative with ink! 

Supplies Needed

• Pad of paper – Bristol smooth or mixed media
• During the first class, the instructor will bring several dip pens and inks to try; there will be a discussion regarding the other supplies needed to purchase for the class at that time.

Learning Objectives

• Be introduced to basic steps and a variety of pen techniques.
• Practice basic steps and a variety of pen techniques

Who Might Enjoy This Class 

• Anyone interested in learning how to use pen and ink
• People with drawing experience who would like to try a variety of new pens and techniques
• No experience needed; everyone is welcome