Wildlife Sketching Basics Workshop 5/2-3/09

Oops, missed my deadline... I'd hoped to blog the Wildlife Sketching Workshop before I held last weekend's Journaling workshop, but there's too much happening. F'rinstance, I'm sitting here at my computer damp and steamy from planting my little garden in a light misting drizzle. The poor little plants were getting wimpy sitting on the kitchen counter, and a rainy day is perfect to plant....so the blogging is just now beginning while I am trying to keep warm-though-moist.

On the other hand, hopefully, I have set out my cherry, grape and yellow tomatoes before they wilted ENTIRELY away, planted basil and cilantro, salad nasturtiums and a stevia (the "sweet" plant), and tried to get my sprinkler system going. Since it's raining, it's hard to tell if I got it right, though. It's a paltry garden this year. I have been too busy to poke my nose out the door (see last week's entry. And I'm working on a new project now, too.). That's the garden, big tree pots plunked down on my steep wooded hillside with a deer fence around it to keep out the wild turkeys and deer.

At any rate, about the Wildlife Sketching Basics workshop. I taught a similar class (Raptor Sketching) a couple of years ago for the Siskiyou Field Institute, and although the evaluations from the students were good, I wasn't satisfied. I didn't have time to teach them the basics of drawing properly before they were confronted by those imposing birds.

This time I had a full day to prepare them -- and it STILL wasn't enough. I'll show you how it went, then tell you how I think I'll fix it if SFI wants to try again next year.

On Day 1 I did a version of my basic drawing class, but with the sketching exercises oriented to things they might be sketching.

The first thing to do when sketching a living, moving thing is to study it quietly before beginning to sketch. I was actually very pleased with the way they were able to begin to see how to translate what they were viewing onto the paper. Here's one of the first exercises. They only had fifteen minutes to work on this, and they applied themselves to it vigorously. (And no, we didn't draw any frogs the second day!)

Next, I showed them a number of textures which they would find useful for not only wildlife feathers and fur, but many other subjects as well.

One particular goal is to avoid a lot of erasing, which slows you down considerably, and also can frighten away your subject. So, believe it or not, I taught them to sketch with ballpoint pens. The fascinating thing about that is that after the first fright about working in ink, the students quickly become attracted to the way you can get tonal variety and quality from an ordinary ballpoint, and the fact that since you know you will be drawing without erasing, you observe much more carefully and accurately.

Above is the texture exercise, which we did in both pencil and ballpoint with almost identical results. It was an epiphany for several of the students. I think I may have produced a couple more ballpoint converts with this class.

We quit at 2:30, all of us pretty worn out with the intense effort. This workshop was held at the Deer Creek Nature Center near Selma, Oregon, and although it was threatening to rain, I went for a walk along the creek to get some research photos for a trail signage project I'm working on for them. This is the Center, looking east. If you turn around toward the west, you see the huge old trees along the creek, and the mountain rising behind it. The side of that mountain is a tilted, boggy fen, covered with cobra lilies (Darlingtonia) which eat unwary insects. We sketched those in a workshop last September.

I couldn't cross the creek to see them since the water was pretty high, but the creek banks were beautiful, covered in mosses and populated by a gorgeous endemic plant found only a few places in the world. I forgot what I was told it is, but it grows in the water, standing more than two feet tall, and has candy pink pompoms of flowers at the top of thick, hairy stems. Any ideas?

Across the hillside, in dry serpentine soil, Indian paintbrushes of orange, red, and nearly yellow, dotted the stony earth. This is a fascinating environment. But it started to rain, and it poured all night (much to my dismay, thinking of our wildlife sketching scheduled for the next day). The rain made quite a racket on the canvas roof of the Center's yurt, in which three of us were sleeping.

Day 2. With all that deluge, I didn't have high hopes for the next day, but when you're doing a workshop you have to take what comes, rain or shine. We had prepared as much as we could for the possibility of rain, and when we met at Wildlife Images, Cyndee brought an owl, a bald eagle, and a Harlan's hawk (a variety of redtailed hawk) into the nice dry classroom for us to sketch for the morning. I think the students did remarkably well for a first try. Pat's sketch of the Harlan's hawk, here, is really nice.

After our break for lunch, it wasn't raining so we went out to try to sketch cougar, bears and wolves. The grizzly bear fascinated us by clutching a sappy tree and gnawing on it (see the picture) but it all happened too quickly to draw.

The students tried valiantly to sketch, but the animals were NOT pleased with the soggy day and weren't terribly cooperative. And I think the students were a bit overwhelmed, by then. Still, Richard turned out a nice cougar drawing, particularly considering that he had to look through heavy wire fence to see it.

At 2:30, getting sprinkled on and done in, the group headed back to the classroom for close-ups of Nubs the Badger. Nubs is a hoot, reminding me a bit of a furry, low-built tank. I got some quick sketches of him (see below), but without previous experience in sketching moving things, the students weren't able to catch much of this wiggly character. I encouraged the students to take lots of digital photos to work from later, so this turned out to be more a photo session than a sketching exercise.

So here's my thinking on this workshop. While the students gave the course a general thumbs-up, and did learn a lot about drawing, they also suggested that a half-day of wildlife sketching would be plenty. The brain wears out after so much input.

They also suggested that it might be helpful to spend the morning drawing from photos of the animals they would be sketching, just to get features and shapes firmly fixed in their minds and form mental templates of each animal. Then they could draw from the live animals in the afternoon. We had done a bit of hawk template drawing the previous day, but they would like even more.

I'm also thinking that we tried to cover too much ~ and that birds alone would be plenty to challenge the students. That would also mean that we wouldn't have to depend on good weather for the class since we draw the raptors in the classroom. We could hold that workshop any time of the year instead of having to wait for warm outdoor sketching weather. Excellent!

So next time, the class will be called "Raptor Sketching Basics," and I think everyone will be pleased as punch. Me too. I can hardly wait to try again.

Nature Sketching Details with W/C Pencils~10-25&26-08

Last weekend's workshop almost didn't go. Normally I have a lower limit of five, but when three signed up I decided to give it anyway since it was the first run of this particular workshop ~ one I had split off from the beginners' class in order to spend more time on details and watercolor pencils. [remember to click on an image to see a larger version]

So it was a teeny-tiny class, and I discovered the first morning that I already knew everyone! Helene was from the Basics class from two weeks before, Jackie was from the Journaling class I gave in September at the Siskiyou Field Institute, and Chris had been a fellow student (lonnnnnng ago) at Oregon College of Art in Ashland (OR). That made it a special treat for me, and fortunately, they all seemed to like each other.

This Intermediate class offers a more in-depth look at pencil techniques, using nature as a model. I emphasized the nature aspect with the new cover for the first day's workbook ~ sketches of red fox pups which I sketched at Wildlife Images, a nearby rehab center.

Starting out with an intermediate class with previous art experience was great fun, as we could skip much of the right-brain warm-up exercises. I enjoy those exercises, but they take awhile, and being able to jump past them gave us lots more time for drawing. Another difference is that with some experience under their belts intermediate students need less guidance, so they can select their subjects instead of everyone doing the same one.

DAY 1
After some instruction on making internal right-brain templates, and discussions and experiments with drawing fur, eyes, seashells, leaves, and pigeons, they settled into their day's project: to draw and shade a subject of their choice from the box of goodies I had brought.

One especially nice thing about a small class is that it has a very intimate feel. With just four of us, I could sit across the table from the entire group and we could watch one another work and I could demo a technique which could be seen with ease by everyone as I did it. Demonstrations are always a minor problem ~ I wish I could invest in a projector like the one I used to use in my scientific illustration classes as SOU. The camera picked up the tiniest detail of a demo and projected it onto a screen or monitor which could be seen by the students even better than if I had been showing them one on one. But I don't have one (they cost a small fortune), so, as nearly all art instructors do, I generally make do with walking around the classroom with results, working on the blackboard, or repeating the demo for several different groups.

Jackie chose a seastar, opting to tackle the challenging underside instead of the topside. Helene selected a buckeye pod and seed, and Chris decided to try a sequoia cone. Chris is a graphic designer in real life, and was taking the class to get back in touch with hand-drawn art as opposed to computer rendering. (As a person spending a LOT of time at the computer designing books, and workbooks for these classes, I sure understand THAT.) He became entranced by the amazing design of the sequoia cone after examining it carefully with the magnifying glass, and had to force himself to blur the clean design lines with shading.

The day ended with some good beginnings on their projects, and they took them home to finish. Here's Jackie the first evening, hard at work on her homework seastar.

DAY 2
The second day of this class is devoted to watercolor pencil painting, but before we began we admired and critiqued the homework ~ an exciting session with great results to show. Nice, huh?






As always, I had the student whose work was being critiqued explain what he/she did and didn't like about his/her artwork, then the rest of us suggested improvements or techniques that might make them even better.

After the critique, we got right down to working with the watercolor pencils. On the agenda was experimenting with color blending on a color wheel in the workbook, applying washes, trying out techniques unique to watercolor pencil renderings, the care and feeding of the waterbrush (filling the barrel with water constitutes feeding, wouldn't you say?), and other techniques.

Just to get the strokes ~ both pencil and paintbrush ~ down, we practiced on my usual orchid. Maybe I should work up another demonstration for returning students, as this was Jackie's second try at that orchid. However, I've painted it any number of times now and I haven't gotten tired of it yet ~ I find that I learn something new every time. So it may be okay. Here are their orchids in progress.

We also tried drawing a eucalyptus seedpod with ink, and using watercolor pencil over that. I discovered that the pens I'd selected weren't as waterproof as I'd expected, with a tendency to run ~ but that coincidentally gave us interesting effects with the seedpods and later drawings, so it was a useful experience anyway. Plus, it's a great object lesson in choosing the right pen if you plan to do a watercolor pencil painting over it..... These were razorpoints, and I think I'll just have to bite the bullet and fork over the moolah for micron pens. These were roughly 40 cents apiece, whereas the micron pens are $3-4 each.

Just before lunch I brought out some outrageously gorgeous orange, yellow, cream, chartreuse and deep green gourds I'd picked up at the market the night before. I had the students draw them with a modified contour technique in ink to free up their sketching moves a little. The results were loose and cheerful, and appropriate since I knew we wouldn't have time to do greatly detailed jobs on the gourds ~ this technique would make even an unfinished gourd look great.

After lunch, we did a short exercise on foliage techniques, and I showed them how to quickly and easily show light and shadow, sunlight and shade on foliage masses, then I turned them loose to do what they wanted with all they had learned so far.

Jackie continued on with foliage, while Chris and Helene decided to finish their gourds, and while we didn't have time to do justice to those beautiful things, the results were fresh and vibrant, and the students were happy. So was I.

As always, I was sad to see the class end at 2:30. The evaluations at the end (which they filled out in exchange for a chance to win the raffle of one of my books) produced encouraging comments:

"Though somewhat familiar with the tools and the exercise of sketching, I found that this class gave me some valuable new perspectives (and tools) for going at my artwork. A "gift of seeing."

"This intermediate class is chock full of information on techniques, stylistic shortcuts, etc. The color component is an exciting and wonderful addition. Instructor covers techniques fully. Use of pens are interesting aspect. I feel like I can obtain the materials and feel confident to begin drawing with added color."

I also got some good critique on the class. Here are some of them:

"I thought there might be a landscape component,"
and
"I'd like a brief outdoors session,"

"thicker [workbook] paper would be nice,"

"...with the critiques I would have liked to hear from the rest of the class more."

So, as always, I have areas to improve. The thicker paper in the workbook is easy. I'll have to give some thought to the outdoors part ~ it is a time consumer and cuts down on teaching time, so THAT might bring dissatisfaction.

At any rate, it was, overall, a good class and I think my students would agree. Hey students, chime in with a comment if you like. It's always cool to get comments from the students ~ particularly if you disagree with something or want to add to the story.