Is this the LAST Draw-mania! ?

Draw-mania! 55, on Tuesday, October 18th., will be the FINAL DRAW-MANIA!

It's been a great run! 5 years (longer than most jobs I've had!), and in that time, we've had artists come from all over the world to draw-with us, we've probably entertained you with 200 performers, 50 figure models and 2 renown DJs! Not bad, huh? But all things must come to an end. So if you've been putting off experiencing our unique artists' experience, please come and celebrate with us on October 18th!
For more details: https://www.meetup.com/FigureSketching-NYC/events/234498763/

So come and join us!
As always:
Over 21; Bring ID--they won't let you in without it
Bring you own art supplies

Tuesday, Oct. 18th, 8pm-midnight $20 at the door

Otto's Shrunken Head
538 East 14th st.
Between Ave A & B
New York City

Change It Up!

Figure drawing is an endless process of observation and refinement. The more we draw, the more we look for detail, and the more we look, the more we find. At the same time, we're always improving our technique (at least in theory!). The more we draw and get comfortable with out preferred drawing materials, the more we develop confidence that is reflected in our finished drawings. And sometimes it works out just that way.

Nevertheless, there are other times we feel stuck, or we're not happy with something about our drawings. Sometimes we know what that something is, other times we're just, well, stuck. A common complaint people have about their own drawings is they don't like the line quality, or they feel like they're not adequately seeing the subject of their drawing. Still other times, we're drawing well, but we just lose our enthusiasm.

For me, the process of drawing is one of endless learning. I had a painting teacher who said "the purpose of painting is to learn something to take to your next paining." I don't know if that's the only purpose, but I get excited to find something I can learn from every drawing I do. Maybe it's some anatomical detail I never noticed before, maybe it's something about shading or about foreshortening, maybe it's the way the marks I'm making on the paper better define the image.

One of there best ways to get out of a slump, or to challenge your way of seeing, even your way of drawing, is to just change up your style or materials! In figure sketching alone, we can draw big, or draw small, we an use pens, pencils, crayons, brushes, watercolors, even oil paints. Typically, we settle on one way of working and try to perfect that, but you can find a lot of inspiration and perspective by simply trying to draw the same thing in a new way!

So next time you want a little more input, just change up your usual way of doing things, and see what you see.

Feedback from You!

The New York Figure Drawing Group AKA The Summer Sketch Group, has been going strong for years before social media, but with the advent of social media, we've really been able to reach a lot of people in New York and around the world! Draw-mania!, our monthly draw-a-thon and variety show has become a vacation destination for artists from around the world (Brazil, Canada, Australia, Austria,Germany and France, to name a few).

One thing that makes us unique from other figure drawing groups is that we are willing to offer different kinds of events based on member suggestions. This year, based on member suggestions, we've added a long-pose class and brought back basic drawing classes with instruction, as well as workshops and special events.

What would you like to get from this group? I've set up a poll on our Meetup site to get some general feedback, and if you have a minute, please use it to let me know what you think! And if you'd like to email me with more specific questions or suggestions, I'd love to hear from you!
http://www.meetup.com/FigureSketching-NYC/polls/1225879/

Draw-mania! Sail 1 Sunday, June 28th.

 We had our first sail of 2015 (we plan to have several more this year). The weather was threatening -- in fact, when I arrived at the boat, it was misty and drizzly and looked like it wanted to pour. I had serious doubts, but we were already here and the boat was ready to sail. Due to the weather, we had a smaller than usual crowd, but everyone was excited to get out on the water.

The Schooner Pioneer is a big, old fashioned sailing vessel built 130 years ago to haul sand for an iron foundry, and not much has changed on the boat since it's working days. We motored away from the port, and then the crew enlisted some volunteers to help haul up the sails. And then the sun came out! The weather quickly and inexplicably became bright and clear, for the most part. The models posed around the deck, and the artists had to decide whether to draw the unique Manhattan skyline, the boat in operation, the models or all of it. Tough decisions artists have to make.
Below are a few highlights from the event. We'll be sailing again on Sunday, July 26th.--come join us!
You can find out more at
www.draw-mania.com
http://www.meetup.com/FigureSketching-NYC
www.facebook.com/drawmania

Jerry's Draw-mania! --a brand new weekly event in a brand new store

Starting on Tuesday, September 9th., we instituted a weekly figure drawing session in partnership with the Jerry's International Palette Shop!

The event is called Jerry's Draw-mania! and occurs every Tuesday, from 9-11pm. It's a fun, relaxed figure sketching session featuring one great model, for ONLY $5!!

 

Jerry's International Palette Shop is a great new art store in NYC at 111 Fourth Avenue (site of the original Utrecht Art store, for you old-timers). Jerry's offers a full range of art supplies, but it has a particularly full range of products for painters. More tubes of paint than you've ever seen in one place, I recon! They are the first New York outpost of the popular Jerry's Artarama chain. They also offer a number of exciting events and workshops in their store after hours. See their site for details: http://jerryspaletteshop.com/

 

 

Draw-mania! HOBOKEN!

April 3rd was our first real Draw-mania Hoboken event, and it was a resounding success! Our first event went as planned, but scary weather reports kept most people from attending. April's event was mostly smooth sailing! We has a great crowd in attendance, and people seemed to be really draing up a storm. We had 5 terrific models, including 2 new faces (but they will be back!) and entertainment provided by three outstanding comedians, Boris Khaykin (MTV, Bath House Brothers Variety Hour), Nathan Rand (Invitation to a Beheading), and Tim Warner (colleges and comedy festivals all over the place) and two musicians, Calem Ingram and Sho Handa, playing selections from their newly released album Making it Possible.

We'll be back at Teak on the Hudson May 1, 2013 for the next Draw-mania! Hoboken. You should be there!

Draw-mania! Goes INTERSTATE!

Hi folks!
Sorry I haven't posted anything new in a while. The Summer Sketch group has been going strong, still meeting a couple of Sundays every month (all year long, not just the summer), and attendance has been terrific--enough people to get a fun sense of community but not so many that it becomes awkward or overcrowded.

Draw-mania!, our monthly draw-a-thon and variety show, has really taken off! We're approaching our 15th event, and we're going strong into the coming year. If you've never been to one, just imagine a space filled with over 30 artists of all skill levels, from absolute beginners to seasoned pros, sketching, chatting, and, should they so desire, drinking, as they draw from 6 of the top art models for four hours! There's a break for the models every 20 minutes, and that's when a comedian, storyteller or musician takes the stage for a 10 minute performance. It' a blast!
We've been going strong every last Monday of the month in the East Village, at the possibly legendary and always amazing Otto's Shrunken Head (538 East 14th st.). Well, Starting in March, we're adding a second monthly Draw-mania!, just across the Hudson river, in Hoboken, NJ! If you're not familiar with Hoboken, you should be! It's incredibly close to Manhattan (The Hoboken PATH Train station is about 8 minutes from Manhattan's 14th st. & 6th Ave PATH station), and in the 80s it was where all the artists went after Soho priced them out. Nowadays, it's a cool, cozy neighborhood that features a lot of unpretentious bars and restaurants. We'll be at Teak on the Hudson (16-18 Hudon Place), a rather upscale place with a fun, exotic vibe, great cocktails and food, and an amazing riverfront view! Our first event will be March 6th, 8pm to midnight, and I'm putting together a great lineup of models and performers.

Hope you can make it, it's gonna be a blast!

for more info:
www.draw-mania.com

If you're on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/DrawMania

And if you're on Meetup.com:
http://www.meetup.com/FigureSketching-NYC/
http://www.meetup.com/Figure-Drawing-HOBOKEN-Draw-Mania/

Draw-mania! Testimonials

Sure, I have great things to say about Draw-mania!, our monthly art-a-thon extravaganza, but what do the people who come to Draw-mania! think about it? Watch!
http://www.draw-mania.com

Come To Our Events! NOW!

I guess I've been remiss in posting to the blog for a while. But as many of you know, We've been going strong out in the real world! Summer Sketch session are still meeting roughly every two weeks. You can sign up for the next one(s) here: http://www.meetup.com/FigureSketching-NYC/

And in concert with my friend Pedro Hernandez, and an incredible crew of models, we've been presenting the Draw-mania! draw-a-thon, which is now a monthly event at Otto's Shrunken Head on 14th street in Manhattan, the last Monday evening of each month. We feature half a dozen of your favorite art models (some of the top models in the city!), a terrific DJ, and a ever-changing assortment of performers to entertain during the breaks. For the latest on that, go to th website http://www.draw-mania.com and like the Draw-mania! page on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/drawmania

Drawing in 3D

Here’s a quick primer about shading, and the way to create a sense of depth to make your drawings look more “three dimensional.” This is going to be pretty basic and simple, so you’ll be able to start using it immediately.

But first, what is this image a picture of?


Is it a figure? A woman? A statue? The girl who invented cheese?

It’s a picture of a piece of paper with light and dark chalk rubbed on it! That’s all it really is, however, that chalk has been put on the paper in a particular, precise pattern so that your eye recognizes that pattern as a human figure. But it’s still a piece of paper, just like your drawings. Now, the pattern in which the chalk was put down on the paper was done in a very precise way, so precise that it can encode very specific structural details that a viewer’s mind can instantly understand to represent a figure when they look at it. If you look at the drawing closely, you can see how expertly the artist has captured on paper the texture, form, hair, musculature under the skin, shadows, etc. (This drawing is by Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, possibly one of the greatest figure-sketch artists of all time, and a favorite of Marie Antionette).

A computer, at its most basic level, processes everything, whether text documents, pictures or video, as a series of 1s and 0s which are called “bits” of information, and this is known as the “binary” numerical system. Similarly, all visual information can be broken down into 2 bits of information: light and shadow (use of color puts an added spin on the art, but when you understand light and dark first, color becomes much easier and more meaningful to work with).

Most of the time, if you’re drawing, you’re going to be using white or light-colored paper, and the substance you’re going to be drawing with, whether pencil, pen or crayon, is going to be darker.

A “contour drawing” is a line drawing where the line follows the contours, which is to say the edges and details, of the subject of the drawing.

Contour drawings can be great, and convey a lot of detail, but they can also look a little bit flat, since they only convey detail about the edges of what you’re drawing and not about the depth.
Now, when your eye perceives a three dimensional object, what it actually sees is the light reflecting off of that object and into your eye. Because the object is three dimensional, some parts of that object are closer to you than others, and are likely to reflect more light, and the parts farther away from you are more likely to be in shadow. If you’re only using absolute light and dark then the parts of a thing closer to you would be white, and the parts farther away would be black. Like this:



It creates a very bold image, doesn’t it? It’s powerful, but also a little bit cold and if it’s very detailed, it can be confusing.


Notice the transition between light and dark is very intense, “all or nothing,” and the edges all seem very sharp, don’t they? By adding a third, transitional value, we can modulate the intensity of the light and shadow, and create softer, rounder transitions.

The middle tone is half dark and half light—50% of each. And each tone represents how far away from you the object is. This is basic “shading.”
Now we have a lot to work with!

Try playing with this for a while in your drawings and see how many ways you can use this. Your darkest tone is going to be the farthest away, lightest tone is closest, and middle tone is in-between. From here it makes sense that you can continue to split the tones for greater detail as you need them.



Going further—styles of drawing
There are a few other ways of suggesting depth by way of light and shadow, the most common are:

Line weight: Darker, heavier line suggests darkness and depth. It’s an effect that’s used a great deal in cartoons and comics and also in some styles of Asian brush art. It’s also sometimes used in technical illustration.


Cross hatching: Etchings, line drawing and pen-and-ink art typically utilize only solid lines. In that case, the half-tone can be approximated by increasing the density of the lines or "cross hatching." By applying more lines in a particular area, it blocks out a certain amount of the light reflecting back to the viewer’s eye, say, 50% of the reflected light, which is the same thing that the 50% (solid grey) half-tone did earlier.










There are many ways to imply shading with line alone: cross hatching, stippling (little dots), and other textures you can make up yourself. Notice that they all suggest different surface textures to the viewer.




Look at all the textures the famous illustrator, Harry Clarke, used in this illustration for Poe's "Tales of Mystery and Imagination."

If you’re just starting out, you can take for granted that the brightest part of the image will be closest to you, in the way we’ve been discussing. But after you begin to get some familiarity with the ins and outs of shading, you’ll begin to notice that sometimes the light may not be closest to you.


Other Traditions
Also, be aware that that in different cultures, different rules may apply. In Asian Painting, for example, closer objects are often darker, while distant objects may be lighter, as if disappearing into a fog.


Further Reading:
Guptill, Arthur L.-- Rendering in Pen and Ink: The Classic Book on Pen and Ink Techniques for Artists, Illustrators, Architects, and Designers

Eisner, Will-- Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative

Simmons, Gary-- The Technical Pen

Now go and have fun with this stuff!

(c) 2010 Jeff Sauber

Harry Clarke illustration from http://www.grandmasgraphics.com/index.php