Our First Day- Simple Still Life

Since this was our first class together, I thought it would be best to start with some basic drawing skills and set up a still life for the students to draw from. The still life consisted of 4 glass bottles with one light source.



We talked about the size and shape of the objects and how they relate to each other. We went over how to measure and gauge the distance between objects and how the flat sided bottles differ from the round cylindrical bottle shapes. We also talked about foreground, mid-ground and background and how to draw objects that in a way that tells the viewer where the objects are in space.

I briefly went over negative space and how it relates to positive space and how it helps you draw objects. In our still life, the bottles are the positive space and the space around them is the negative space.

Here's some of the students work:




Next week we'll go over shading with light and dark with a light source and another simple still life.

In the future we'll do some projects, including watercolor, painting with either acrylic or oil on canvas, and also sculpture. We'll probably tackle some of these larger projects over the course of a few weeks after the first of the year. Between now and then we'll cover the basics of drawing, light and dark, and maybe introduce some color theory.