Thursday 17 January 2019

Camp Creative Day 5

Sketches of students

Final day of Camp Creative - intesive work with the students to finalise their projects. No time for demos! But I managed a few little candid sketches of some of the students.



A great week at Camp Creative! Thank you for all my wonderful students who came along and made the class such a success.

Nature Sketches Camp Creative

I haven't had much time to do any sketching outdoors - and when I do have time am too tired from teaching all day! But I did do a couple of little things early in the week. Both of these subjects can be seen from the verandah outside my classroom.



Both have been done in aquarelle and graphitint pencils.


Camp Creative Day 4

Demo works from Day 4 Camp Creative

Black and Green Eclectus feather in Watercolour pencil wash/dry and graphite - One/Two Hours

Double Drummer Cicada in Watercolour pencil wash/dry - One Hour

Smiling Koala in Graphitint wash/dry - One Hour

Tuesday 15 January 2019

Camp Creative 2 + 3

Portraits in Colour Pencil

Tuesday
Tuesday/Wednesday the class worked on portraits in colour pencils.
To begin, each student needed to create a 'skin ball' of layers of colour pencils that would create the correct hue and tone for the ethnicity of their chosen subject.

Demonstration of skin tone 'balls'

Once the student had worked out the correct pencils to layer to create the appropriate skin tone, they spent time sketching their portrait in graphite then transfering it as a line drawing onto their cold press 300gsm paper using a mid-tone colour pencil.

Tuesday: Build up of hues after deciding on colour pencil palette. Looking a bit grey and corpse-like.

Wednesday
Hair and continuation of build of of skin tones. Once again, test swatches of hair.








Monday 14 January 2019

Camp Creative Day 1

Tests, tests and even more tests!

First day of Camp Creative in Bellingen was great fun - a wonderful class of 12. Some repeating students and some new, a good mix and all very nice people. I worked them hard and they said they enjoyed it! We spent the morning doing a variety of colour pencil test using wax based (standard) style of colour pencil. Lots of work on how to use primary colours, complimentary, blending, layering, etc. Then they put all those tests together and drew a marble - tricky subject but I was really happy with what they all did. Here is my quick 15-20 minute demo drawing along with some pencil tests I had done previously similar to what the class did today:


Then I asked the group to do a more difficult subject - one of the many silver spoons in my Op-shop collection that I have brought with me. They needed to observe the shape and sketch it first in graphite, once satisfied transfer the basic outline to a sheet of hot press paper. Then to look for different cool and warm colours in the spoon, noting how the reflections affected the various hues. They needed to create these hues with layers of colour pencil, blend the hues with a white pencil, then add any required tones with graphite. 
They did amazing work! Silver is a difficult subject and they created wonderful studies. Again, I was very pleased with what they did.

This was the very quick one hour demo I did to start them off.


We also discovered the joy of an electric eraser for adding highlights!
More tomorrow...

Sunday 6 January 2019

Camp Creative Prep


Camp Creative in Bellingen NSW starts next Monday and it looks like I have a full class! 
We will be working on colour pencils all week, layering, texture, reflections, form composition, colour theory, the difference between types of pencils - all the colour pencil questions answered!

We will be exploring the differences between 'standard' and aquarelle style pencils, focusing on the human portrait and on found objects. As prepartion I have done works for display and examination (powerpoint step by step) and will also demonstrate from scratch. Here is the example of a Macaw feather drawing done with wash techniques and dry aquarelle colour pencil on hot press paper.


It looks like it will be a fun week, beautiful weather and lots of drawing to be done! I hope to post a work everyday to show you our progress. 
Why not consider joining us next year in Beautiful Bello?