A Look at One of My Teaching Demonstration Sketchbooks

I have been a lecturer teaching in a university art department for more than 21 years, so I have many sketchbooks full of drawings that I've done during classroom demonstrations. Recently I uncovered a stack of these sketchbooks (14" x 11") and thought I should occasionally open one and share some of the contents. These drawings are ones I've done along with my students during in-class exercises. This is a little taste of the activities done in beginning drawing courses.

The Milwaukee Public Museum is one of my favorite field trip destinations for drawing classes. Of course the artifacts displayed are unique and interesting especially when compared to the usual classroom still life objects we draw. The items are carefully arranged and dramatically lit, making an ideal situation.

A Chinese Foo Dog  

sepia and black conte

This drawing of a Chinese Foo Dog, done in sepia and black conte crayon, demonstrated the creation of values using hatching in a consistent diagonal direction.

The quirky characters and unusual proportions of the South American ceramic figurines in the museum are endlessly fascinating. The group shown in the drawing below were done in Ebony pencil to show a contour-hatch modeling technique.

South American Ceramic Figurines
Ebony pencil

Summer sessions provide opportunities to sketch outdoors. It is always fun to take classes to the McKinley Marina to draw. 

Docked Sailboats 
black and blue ballpoint pen

Spatial gesture diagrammatic lines are used to feel the distance between sailboat masts in these ballpoint pen sketches.

McKinley Marina
blue ballpoint

I'm glad that I recorded the old Coast Guard Station on the lakefront which has since been demolished. My father remenisced about diving off of its roof into Lake Michigan as a teenager. A landfill had since been made to extended the park into the lake where he swam. A covered picnic area has replaced this building.

Old Coast Guard Building
blue and black ballpoint pen

When weather allows, my classes will walk a few blocks to the Edith Hefter Center to practice linear perspective.

Edith Hefter Center
pencil and micron pen

Early in the semester, classes will spend a day focusing on negative shape seeing. In this exercise we only draw the holes framed by positive forms.

negative shape drawing of a pile of chairs
Sharpie marker

Cross hatching is done using extra fine Sharpies when the class is learning about making optical grey values. The viewer's eye blends the black ink marks with the white of the paper to create the illusion of grey values.

The students' first experience drawing the model is often pure contour drawing. Outer and inner contours are "felt" using a slow, tactile line.

contour drawing of seated nude female

black conte crayon

Systematic cross contour lines are explored in addition to outer and inner contours.

Dynamic gestural line is used to capture the action and general observations such as proportion, placement, and mass during rapid one-minute long poses.

A very difficult exercise involves students drawing portraits of each other using vertical cross-contour lines to help them concentrate on the continuous surface of a form. This helps students think in a more sculptural way when they cannot use the common symbols for facial features.

Contour-hatch modeling builds value while sculpting form with topographical marks in these figure drawings.

Shape defined by lines functions as planes in both portrait s and full figures in the planar analysis demonstrations seen above and below.

Value is then added to the planar shapes (as seen below).

The "tooth" of the paper grabs particles of the media when side of the drawing tool is dragged across the surface to suggest value, mass, and form in these quick sketches.

A subtractive process was used to erase out the highlights in this figure drawing after the page was covered with a mid-tone grey value in vine charcoal.

This last set of figure drawings were done with a quick gesture using the side of a sanguine conte crayon then a contour in black conte was superimposed.  The late Jerry K., a professional life drawing model for 40+ years, was one of the best I've ever worked with. I have drawings and paintings of him dating back to the mid 1980s. Perhaps one day I will compile a blogpost featuring Jerry through the years. 

Thanks for letting me show you a few selections from one of my sketchbooks from my stack. 

Don't forget to check out my artwork available at my Etsy store, Facebook page, as well as my Instagram feed.