For adults.  Course duration: 2 weeks.  4:30-6:30 pm, Thurs, Apr 26; Tues, May 1; Thurs, May 3; and Tues, May 8; course fee: $40.

(Note: I’m still working on verifying the cost with Hudson Hospital and will post that information as soon as possible. Wanted to go ahead and get the dates out there.)

For more information or to register, contact Margaret Welshons at Hudson Hospital.

More About the Drawing to See Course

What Makes a “Good” Drawing?

First ask: “Why do I want to make this drawing?”

• to communicate an idea?
• to elicit an emotional response?
• for creative expression?
• for relaxation/meditation?
• to entertain yourself or someone else (for example, a 4-year-old child)?
• to record your impressions of a scene?
• to focus your attention and see an object or scene more deeply and fully?
• for the satisfaction of developing a skill?
• so other people will “oooooh” and “ahhhh” and exclaim over how talented you are (i.e., for approval)?

These are all good reasons for making a drawing, but a good drawing for entertaining your 4-year-old grandson would look very different from a good drawing for communicating how you want your kitchen cabinets to be installed. To make a good drawing, it helps a lot to know why you are making the drawing in the first place. When we set out to “learn to draw”, very often we judge our drawings as “bad” without even thinking about what would make them good.

Goal of the Drawing to See Course

The goal of the Drawing to See course is to:

improve your ability to use the process of drawing to

• better perceive visual information
• and record it in a drawing
• which is good enough for its purpose,
• without undue frustration.

 Why is this sometimes such a challenge?

Attitude Difficulties in Drawing

Some of the difficulties we encounter with drawing have to do with the attitudes we bring to the task:

We haven’t thought about why we are making this drawing, so we ask too much of it.

A “bad” drawing may just be a drawing that isn’t finished yet.  Maybe it still needs work to serve it’s intended purpose adequately.

We allow our dissatisfaction with a drawing to make us feel bad about ourselves.

A drawing is never a reflection on your abilities, talents, character or worth as a human being or an artist. Energy expended on worrying about whether or not you have enough talent, beating yourself up for errors in your drawing, or concerning yourself with someone else’s approval of your drawing is energy not available to continue to refine your perceptions and your drawings.

Instead, ask yourself ahead of time, “Why am I making this drawing? How will I know when this drawing is good enough for the job?” If the drawing isn’t there yet, then it’s not “bad”, it’s just not finished. If you know the purpose of your drawing, and the purpose matters to you, that helps motivate you to continue the process of refining your drawing until it adequately serves your purpose. In the course, we’ll cover tips and tricks for getting your drawing from “not there yet” to a drawing that serves your intended purpose. We’ll talk about how to find what is working, and use that as the basis for refining a drawing.

Mechanical Difficulties in Drawing

Drawing a straight line is REALLY HARD!

Purely from a mechanical perspective, drawing a straight line is one of the hardest drawing tasks we can give our bodies. All of our joints naturally move in arcs. To draw a straight line (or anything other than the natural arc of one joint), requires our brains and bodies to calculate two or more separate arcs that will add together in the right way to get the pencil to trace the path we want. It’s a complex motor skill!

Good news!—most of us have sufficient motor skills for most drawing purposes. If you can write or drive a car you certainly have sufficient motor control to learn to draw well enough for most purposes—including that one about your friends and family “oooh-ing and ahhh-ing” over your amazing talent! (And there are plenty of people who can’t write or drive who can still draw, so

We’re out of practice.

More good news! —motor skills improve with practice.

Even more good news!—using a ruler (or other drawing aids) is not a moral failing!

“Talent is a word we use after someone has become accomplished.”

—Richard Schmid

Perceptual Difficulties in Drawing

Our visual systems were not evolved to create 2-dimensional representations of the world (drawings). Most of us are generally unaware of how the workings of our visual system interferes with the task of drawing.

What we “know” can interfere with our ability to actually see what is really there.

Good news!—there are a bunch of “tricks of the trade” that can help us.

More good news!—understanding some basics about perspective, edges, light and shadow can help us produce drawings that are useful for a wider variety of purposes.

Even more good news!—we can stop feeling untalented or stupid just because our drawings reflect the way our visual system was evolved to work.

And, the best news of all—drawing with an awareness of our perceptual biases makes us more discriminating and often, more appreciative, observers of the world.

Course Structure

For the purposes of this course, we’re going to talk about drawings made for two reasons:

1. Rendering an accurate 2D representation of an object or scene for the purposes of conveying/highlighting specific information. (think of botanical drawing, for example).
2. Using the process of drawing itself as an aid to perceiving an object or scene more fully and accurately, and to illuminate the ways in which our brains perceive (and mis-perceive!) visual information.

The second purpose is really what the course is about, but attempting to produce an accurate rendering will help us learn to see more clearly, which will benefit both our drawings and our appreciation of the visual world. The “errors” in our drawings are often simply a record of the way our brains process visual information, so they’ll help us understand how our eyes and brains might sometimes be leading us to “see” something other than what is “really” there.

 What we will be discussing & practicing:

• relationships and measurements; positive and negative space
• perception of edges and the use of line(s) vs. shading in drawing
• basics of perspective and drawing simple forms in perspective (just enough to avoid some common pitfalls)
• how light and shadow define form, rendering values
• color perception, color mixing and accurate color rendering
• perceptual issues specific to seeing/drawing faces

What we won’t be discussing much (although I’ll be happy to answer questions):

• different drawing materials and techniques specific to particular media
• design and composition
• complicated discussions of perspective

 What you will need for your practice at home:

•  paper and pencil (copy paper and a regular #2 pencil will work just fine)
• eraser (a kneaded eraser will be very helpful)
• ruler (not for what you think!)
• easily portable sketchbook or sketch folder (not mandatory, but you’ll be more likely to keep practicing if you have something you can carry around and pull out when you have a few minutes; don’t get something too nice!)
• a lamp that casts a strong shadow (a desk lamp or reading lamp works well)

Questions about the Drawing to See Course? Click here to contact me.

Want to register? Click here to contact Margaret Welshons and sign up for the course, or click here to contact me. I’ll be happy to forward your registration information to Margaret for you.

Want to hear about future classes & workshops? Click here to join the email list for Dragonfly Spirit Studio.

4:30-6:30 pmhurs
4:30-6:30 pmhurs

I’m all set up to host workshops for 3-4 students here at my studio. Use the “Contact Me” button on the side of the page, or click here to request exactly the workshop you and your friends want, at the time that works best for you, in your home, or here in my studio. The options are endless, and it’s all tailored exactly to suit you!

The mini-classroom has space for 3-4 students, perfect for your next custom mini-workshop.

One of the paintings from my recent show at Hudson Hospital, now in its new home with an old friend.

It’s a great feeling when a painting is sold and goes off to enrich someone else’s life. Sometimes it’s a little hard to let go, but not this time. This was one of my favorites from my show last fall at Hudson Hospital, but knowing it was going to a new home with a friend from kindergarten made it easy. Not everyone is a fan of Facebook, but I have to love it for re-connecting me with old friends I would never have found again otherwise. And now I have an even more tangible link with one of them. Thank you, Laura! Every time I see this picture, it makes me smile to think of you looking at the original.

But, it turned out for me that all the fun was happening on my Facebook fan page.  I could talk about and show pictures of work in progress, share links to interesting resources and other artists’ work, post photos of workshops, and share little snippets of news.  People leave feedback on the work, other artists commiserate when the work is a struggle, celebrate when things are going well, make suggestions and offer tips.  It was like inviting people to come hang out in my studio.

I don’t want to try to make my website into my own little personal version of Facebook, but my experience with my fan page convinced me I didn’t want a typical, “professional” artist website/gallery.  Oh, sure, I want a place for you to see my finished work.  And I want one central location where you can easily find information about shows, classes and events.  But, I want it to still feel like coming to hang out in my studio.   The people who visit my site are my friends, students and collectors.  I want to invite you into my studio, to share the everyday life of an artist.  I want to create special areas with extras that only students or collectors can see.  I want my site to be more fluid, more easily changed and updated to reflect what’s going on in my studio.

And so, I chose to build my site with WordPress, and I chose to retain the default “blog on the home page” format.   I’ll still be posting on Facebook, but Facebook is suited to short announcements and comments.  My blog—and the rest of my site—will give me a place to go into more depth.  I’m not sure yet how frequently I’ll post to my blog, but I hope it will evolve as an ongoing conversation with students, fellow artists, art lovers and collectors.

I’m looking forward to having more of you hanging out in my studio from time to time.

p.s.  If you’re one of my students, artist friends or collectors there will be special parts of the site just for you.  As I build those, I’ll let you know.  All you’ll have to do is register (and let me know which category or categories you belong to), and you’ll get a password that gives you access to the special areas.   You can also sign up on my email list to get announcements of upcoming classes & workshops, shows, events, new work posted online and special discounts on artwork.