When I teach an art course, I try not to spend too much time doing demonstrations for the students. It’s helpful, to a degree, but wearying for them to stand around, watching, rather than doing it themselves. During the June 28-30 drawing course I taught at the North Cascades Institute Learning Center, I did do some quick demonstrations of drawing techniques which are posted and described below.
Here is a demo sketch of a deer skull drawn with graphite and charcoal pencil. To the right is the start of a stippled drawing of a beetle. The pencil sketch is used as a guide to adding fine ink dots to create a distinctly scientific-style illustration.
After working on more time-consuming drawings, the students were introduced to the more impressionistic gesture drawing technique. I demonstrated this by looking out the classroom window and sketching what I saw (rocky peaks and slender evergreen trees) in about one minute’s time. I then sketched Justin, one of my assistants, to show the approach to a gesture drawing of a figure.
Finally, I did two quick sketches with different tools, using sumi ink as the drawing fluid. On the left is a forest and mountain impression made by dipping a weathered piece of wood into the ink and freely drawing. On the right is a sumi painting “sketch” made with a traditional Asian brush. After their time-consuming, disciplined work with pencils and pens, the group really enjoyed trying out these looser techniques.
Jocelyn Curry 