Grape Leaves

My Chair

I've been trying out using a dark brown colored pencil and white charcoal on toned paper. My painting chair was my first victim.

Anyone Can Sketch - Part 4

From this point on the most important part of our summer sketching project is going to be time.  Although their will be specific goals to the exercises we do my main goal will be to get my children to spend hour long segments of time sketching in their sketchbooks. Sketching and drawing are like any other disciplines, the more you do it the better you become.

Today's  exercise were done with just the smaller kids because they were the only ones art home!


Exercise 1 - Copying Shapes

The purpose of this exercise is to help the children realize that when I'm talking about shapes I am not just talking about the shapes they recognize (squares, circles, triangles).  It is also to help them see, that when they need to, they can carefully measure a shape to get closer to what it really looks like.

I began by drawing some random shapes at the top of a couple of sketchbook pages and ask them to copy the shapes in the space below.  Although they both did a fantastic job they found it to be mentally challenging. This is  a great introduction to the thought process involved in drawing.... it is a mentally taxing challenge even to the seasoned artist.

At one point they were both very frustrated so I introduced the ideas of treating the shape as a connect the dot exercise. If you can accurately place the dots drawing the lines between is simple. When they struggles with this concept as well I introduced a ruler to help them line up the proper placement of the dots. This is very similar to what an artist will do with a plumb line when painting from life. The eight year old did well at this. This six year old was ready to draw monsters.

He's the happiest monster I've ever met! It looks like he is doing some type of dance! I can't find Cole's monster but trust me.... it was scary.

I next asked them to draw a scene that had a house and a tree swing. Here are the results.

The children do very well at sketching from their mind and it is a great way to get them drawing for long periods of time and the crazier the suggestion the better: train crashes, a dog climbing a tree,  a bear being chased by a mouse.... Use your imagination.... if it's really silly they will enjoy it!


Our last little project on this trip was to combine sketching from out heads and using our water colors to brighten things up. I have two words of advice here:

1. Buy them some better water color brushes. The ones that come with cheap water colors are terrible.
2. Try and teach them NOT to press down hard with the brush. Your will have to watch them on this. Most children like to scrub and this will destroy the brush and cause them to have little control. Once they get used to lightly applying the paint (several paintings from now!) they will be able to put it on as freely as they did with the old smooooshy method!

Here's what my kids did with a butterfly.

In our next trip the children will be sketching several objects from life. I've got by doubts about how this will go but we'll give it a shot.

Firewood

The only positive thing about April 27th Tuscaloosa Tornado was that it knocked down and old tree near my drive way that had been dead for several years. I didn't want to cut it because I was fearful the dead branches would fall on me as the tree began to fall. It turn out there is still a lot of usable wood and I did this little drawing to remind me of the real work I will have to engage in before winter.

Science Needs Art

As I've been going through the process of trying to help my own children fall in love with sketching, I've found myself wondering if sketching is valuable beyond the meditative enjoyment. It's a silly question really. Wired magazine has done a nice article on the value of drawn field notes. Thanks to James Gurney for the heads up.

Cabin - Cades Cove

This little sketch was done in about five minutes as my family toured the inside. The inside only had one room so it didn't take long. The sketch was done with a fine point sharpie.

Smoky Mountain River

I'm sure this river has a name but I don't remember it. I think I would need at least a week of sketching moving water before I would be satisfied with any of the results. This proved to be a real challenge. Despite the difficulties it will go down as one of my favorite sketching experiences. Just sitting in the NOISE of nature was a welcome relief from the noise of humanity.  I did feel a little on edge because I had been told by a fly fisherman that a bear had been seen earlier. I figured that must be a rare occurrence..... and then ten minutes later I came up on a mama bear and her two cubs....... thankfully I was in my vehicle at the time!

Living Room Light

Most of the positive feedback I get on the images that I post on Sketchbook7 are on the sketches that are closer to a drawing than a sketch. That is encouraging because drawings take much longer than sketches and it's always nice to get positive feedback on hard work. With that said here is a sketch that took me about ten minutes and it's the type of sketching I find the most refreshing. It's a scribble sketch! For those of you who are following my family sketch journey this is a good exercise for older children who are already fairly accomplished. Just have them scribble in the large masses of dark without the use of lines to mark the edge of different shapes. It's fun!

Anyone Can Sketch - Part 3

Choosing Materials and Overcoming Our Fears

10 Reasons Why Sketching is The Best Hobby on The Planet!

1. You can do it anywhere
2. You get to look at the world the way Monet, Renior, Sargent, Piccasso, Degas, Wyeth, Russel, Homer, Davinci, Rockwell and other great artist did.
3. You begin the life long process of learning to see
4. You begin the life long process of learning to draw
5. You have hundreds of options on "how" to sketch
6. It's relaxing
7. If the digital world comes crashing down you will still have something to do.
8. You have a unique way of making a memory
9. Because we sketch to render a "general" idea about a subject are sketching is never bad
10. IT IS VERY INEXPENSIVE!

So let's take a look at these inexpensive supplies.

Although there are countless options, on what you can sketch with and what you can sketch on, here are the tools that my children and I will be using.

• Pencils -any #2 pencil will work. I prefer the softer art pencils anything labeled with a "B" in the softness description.
• Pen's - any ballpoint pen that doesn't get sloppy while your sketching.
• Markers - one that's not dried out.
• China Markers - you can get these at officemax/ office depot, there about a dollar a piece.
• Kneaded Erasers - you will need to go to an art supply store for this. They are fantastic for removing charcoal and graphite.
• Charcoal - not needed but it can be fun. VERY MESSY!
• CHEAP water colors - The brushes in these cheap sets are worthless so I have bought some better brushes at Michaels.

I am going to give all these mediums as possible options and let the kids decide which works best for them, but our first day consists of trying some of them out while gaining some confidence (overcoming our fears). 

My basic approach to overcoming the fear of sketching is to help them realize there is really no fear to overcome. Since sketching is a general rendering of an idea there is really no bad sketch or good sketch, but to add confidence we begin with activities they already know how to do disguised as trying out our individual materials. 

Exercise #1

I first ask them to scribble on a separate page with each of their materials. So we will have one page full of pen scribbles, one page full of marker scribbles etc.. 

Encourage them during this exercise to try applying different amounts of pressure to they're sketching tool. "See how lightly you can apply the pen". You soon find that certain tools can be used very lightly, other tools can be applied in a heavy handed manner and others break when you press to hard. This fall I plan on teaching the kids to draw and "light pressure" is a crucial skill in drawing will. So allow them to scribble away with the sketching tools you have picked and ask them to describe which one they like best and why they like it. 

NOTE: As a parent your response to what they sketch should always be GREAT JOB! This will change when we move into "drawing" in the fall where the goals will be more quantifiable. 

Exercise #2

I then asked my children to take then sketching tools they enjoyed the most and to simply fill up a page with different size squares.

Karis age 6

Cole age 8

At this stage in life so much of there ability to move the pen or pencil where they want to has everything to do with experience. Miles of lines on paper will equal an increased ability to put those lines where they truly want them. They don't need to know this at this point  - but it is the truth of the matter.

Exercise #3

We then did a little drawing from our imagination. I simply asked them to choose their own subject and sketching tool and to put down on paper what they wanted. Most children are great at doing this. It really allows you to see what is most important to them. (you'll often find in younger children they will leave out the torso when drawing a human. This is because the parts that they notice are arms, legs, and faces)

Cole - A Dog

Karis - a dinosaur

Exercise #4

This exercise was to cover our paper in charcoal and then remove shapes out with our kneaded eraser. This is not a very practical way to sketch on location but it does introduce they idea that in nature we observe overlapping shapes as opposed to well defined lines..... and it's kind of fun!

This is Cole drawing around the
shapes he made with the
eraser. He like defined shapes!

Karis went with a symbol she is familiar with.

My older children did these exercises as well but were not as easily as entertained. If you have teenagers you are introducing to sketching you might want to teach them longer and encourage them to draw abstractly with all of the mediums to really get a handle on how they feel.

Exercise #4

Our final exercise of the day was to draw a piece of fruit from life and introduce the concepts of light and shadow. I did this just to start making them familiar with the light family and dark family so that when we start drawing in the fall, it will not be a new concept. So I simply used a pencil to point out where the light side of the fruit was and where the dark side was - showed them by drawing the two myself - and then let them have at it.

Cole's Orange

Karis's Orange - Note that she added an arrow
at the top right corner indicating the directin of
the light. This is because I had done this on my
drawing when explaining the light and dark families.
Observant kid!

Once again, it is important to remember that this is all about familiarity.  They are going to want to sketch things that they can be proud of and that emotional enjoyment for the most part comes from a positive response from their teacher.  There is a chance you will have a perfectionist on your hands who cannot satisfy his desire to record what is in front of him.  This can be frustrating but it is actually a good thing. It means that he has a keen sense of visual spatial relationships ..... he will have an excellent chance at developing great drawing abilities if he can hang in there!

You can add to the excitement about the next sketching trip by encouraging them to find something to store all their stuff in! I did this by simply exposing them to the small pencil box I keep my pen's in.  As sad as it is, one of the things that gets me out of the door to sketch in the mornings is having all of my supplies in a nice tidy package. It just makes me want to sketch.

Next Trip - A more detailed exercise in sketching from the imagination.

Anyone Can Sketch - Part 2

Anyone Can Sketch, and Here's why!

This is a fun little thing I sometimes do with
the kids. They make up a story and I sketch it
while they do. (I have to make them slow down)

It would seem that a word as common as "sketch" would not need to be explained or expounded upon.  But experience tells me that when people hear the word "sketch" they are thinking  of the word "draw" and when they think of the word draw they are visualizing the words "sistine chapel".  So now the illogical conclusion is at hand - "I can not draw or sketch anything resembling the Sistine Chapel, therefore,  I cannot draw or sketch". The truth is, anyone can sketch - but here is a familiar refrain.

"I tried sketching once. I bought a pad of paper, sharpened my pencil, took aim at doing a portrait of my wife, put the pencil to the paper and created a beautiful rendering of a squirrel who has just been hit by a car….I told you I couldn't sketch."

-Nick Nopractice

Sketching is not a miracle. Just as we had to work at speaking intelligently we also have to work at sketching in a way that communicates.  Often a beginners sketches are hesitant and clunky because his inner "sketcher" has been in a coma since he was six or seven. It does take some time and practice to get the brain to join with the eyes and hand to create sketches in a comfortable manner but sketching can certainly be learned by people with normal abilities. Here is something that may give you some hope.

Drawing is specific. Sketching is general. 

Here is a beautiful specific drawing by artist Susan Lyon (you can see more of her work here)

Here is an equally beautiful general sketch by Adebanji Alade (you can see his work here)

If we are shooting for a general idea of what we are seeing there is no way to determine that the sketch is bad or wrong other than by what we ourselves are trying to accomplish in the sketch. So if my 4-year-old daughter records her general idea of a person, and shows it to me with delight in her eyes , she is officially a sketcher. This is despite the fact that her sketch has no torso and one of his eye's is so large it looks like it has a nasty infection. She has not "drawn" the person well but she has "sketched" the person in a beautiful manner that is sure to go down in the annuls of art history. MAKE A NOTE OF THIS -When she is sketching she is having a blast! Thankfully, it's a quiet blast…..which all parents love. Sketching is a blast, even for adults, when we get past out mental hangups.  Drawing is specific, sketching is general. Here is a little diagram to help you see the difference.

Though there is no authority set up to define the difference between the two, most artists consider sketching to be a general idea of something you wish to portray (even if it is an abstract idea) and drawing is considered to be the specific idea of what you want to portray. Between the two concepts we have innumerable possible overlaps. For instance, artist Shane Wolf considers the image below to be a sketch because his specific ideas look more like the image at the bottom.

So depending on your own development and skill, what is considered a sketch by you may be considered a drawing by someone else. The important thing to remember is that a sketch is a quick general rendering from your perspective.

If they kept statistics on bravery I'm pretty sure my daughter and I would rank somewhere in the top 5% right behind guys who have climbed Mount Everest. Almost everyone above the age of 8 or 10 is afraid of sketching. There are more people afraid of sketching than flying or public speaking combined (not proven). My bravery has come from confidence built up over time. Her bravery has comes from the constant positive reinforcement from her parents. She instinctively knows more about the true nature of sketching than you or I do but at some point down the road her confidence will drop in a moments notice. It will be the result of some snotty nosed boy who proclaims - "that doesn't look like a horse!" In his ignorance he will place on her his own misconceptions and her sketch-journey will face possible derailment.

So the greatest barrier to getting back in touch with your inner sketcher is three-fold. One, we think sketching is a magical, superhuman feat that only a few "artist" are allowed  to enjoy. Two, we have confused the specific nature of drawing with the general nature of sketching. Three, we have been told by others that we can't sketch well and we did ourselves the disservice of believing them. If we desire to become great sketchers we can. With a little direction, both we and our children can enjoy the benefits of sketching. We may even produce a few masterpieces along the way. So put aside the poor definitions and the bruised ego and begin to enjoy the peace and quiet of sketching.

Tree's Out Back

I did this sketch looking out the back window of our condo in Gatlinburg while Elizabeth was cooking. It was nice having someone to talk to while I was working.

Catarace Falls

Here is my morning sketch done just behind the visitor center at The Great Smoky Mountain National Park. I had been wanting to sketch a waterfall. There is so much to sketch up hear that choosing vantage point is going to be the most difficult part of the process. Here are a few notes from this mornings trip.

• I was sketching on a fairly heavily traveled trail and it was fun listening to how loud people were until they came upon me sketching. I felt like I had a "Quiet Artist At Work" sign on my back. The reverence was in a way very encouraging because I believe that I'm involved in a sacred activity.
• I went to college only a couple of hours from here and I was not doing artwork at the time. I never made it over here while there, so I am experiencing a sense of "lost opportunity".
• The contrast between Gatlinburg and the park is stunning. It's as if humanity vomited into this valley and then you abruptly come to the end of it at the Park. The national park system is a huge blessing.

Anyone Can Sketch - Part 1b

Personalizing Our Sketchbooks


Today's Trip:

• Making The Covers
• Decorating The Covers

Friday's trip: 

• What is Sketching?

Now that we have our sketchbooks we are ready to try and decorate them.  I tried very hard to pawn this off onto my two teenage daughters because they are both much more creative than I am but they left it up to their pragmatic father. Here are the steps for preparing the sketchbooks to be decorated.

1. Take a piece of rough sandpaper and scratch up the printed surface on the front cover. Sand it just enough to were is no longer has a slick waxy feel. This will provide a better surface for glueing cardboard to the front cover.
2. Cut a piece of card board the size of the front cover. The cardboard I used was brown on one side and white on the other. If your cover is going to be decorated with any kind of water media the surface needs to have some weight to it. If it is just going to be colored or glued to white card stock should due.
3. I then spread a thin coat of elmers glue on the brown side of the cardboard and glued it to the front cover. This leaves the white side for the children to decorate in just about any fashion they desire. Make sure and sit some books on top of the sketchbooks until the glue has set. (30 min)

Finished Cardboard Cover

As I have eluded to earlier, crafty things are not my strong suit but I had to come up with some way for my 6 and 7 year olds to personalize there sketchbooks without it taking an entire day. Here is what I came up with.

Step one was to take masking tape and construct very simple block letters on the front of the book. If you are skilled with an utility knife you could go a step further and round out all the rough edges.

I then set them up with some VERY cheap water color paints with a jar of water between their two stations. The only rule I gave them was that they had to cover all the area's between the tape so that the letters would show up well.

They jumped into this with enthusiasm and we quickly found out that the cheap water colors were cheap for a reason....the brushes were awful. We plan on using these when we go out sketching so I'm going to have to get them some decent brushes. Despite the sorry brushes they both did a great job. Our biggest hangup was removing the tape. I did not wait until the cardboard was dry and as a result the tape pulled up some of the top layer of the cardboard. I'm not sure if waiting for it to dry would have helped much but we made due.  Here are the results.

The letters were still a little abstract for my taste, so I added a little outline to define them better - and Karis added some stickers.

The final step to our decorating was to covers them up with clear packing tape...... I know you crafters out there are probably going crazy with all the better ways this could have been done but we went with what we had.  

The most interesting part of this process was that as I helped Cole and Karis put there sketchbooks together my teenagers were plotting to figure out how they could make theirs look better. Here is what they came up with.

Nothing like a little competition to stir the creative juices.

Now I have taken a lot of time showing what we did with the sketchbooks but I can't emphasize enough how much this part of the process helped the kids to get excited about sketching.  I spent the next several days holding the little ones at bay because they were ready to use their new sketchbooks (I actually had to stop Karis from filling up the whole thing in one afternoon).

On July 22nd  I will do a post on just what sketching is and how it is that anyone with normal abilities can learn to sketch and then on Monday July 25th we will take a look at how my kids did with their first sketch lesson.

Anyone Can Sketch - Part 1

Welcome to Our Journey Into Sketching!

Today's Trip

• The Value of Sketching
• Buying Your Sketchbooks
• Splitting it up

Tomorrow's Trip

• Sketchbook Decoration

I am going to begin and end this 10-12  post segment with a little philosophical content. The more practical information begins with "Purchasing Sketchbooks" but knowing why sketching is valuable may help you through the lulls in guiding your own children. If you have happened upon this post by happenstance, the introduction is here.

Sketching is addictive.  I find it to be the most relaxing activity I am involved in and the one area that I wish I could devote more time to. When you become comfortable with your own personal sketching style there is a rhythm that develops during a sketch. This rhythm allows you to think about the days problems, dream about the future, pray for people and most of all you begin to habitually see what is going on in  the visual world. During one of my biology classes in college I remember the instructor asking us to look at a fish and write down everything we could observe with the naked eye. As you may have guessed, when we were asked to reveal our observations our lists fell woefully short of the instructors learned observations. If I had been an avid sketcher at the time, I would have forgone writing anything at all and simply sketched the fish. Spending 5 to 30 min or more observing something for the purpose of sketching releases tidal waves of visual information and you begin to realize just how much you have actually been missing.

Photographs record  two-dimensional documents. Sketching the same scene with your eyes and mind  involves you in a process of revelation! The best way to understand this is to take an object you are very familiar with and try and sketch it. I would guess that even if you sat down to sketch the face of one of your children you would be amazed at what you had never noticed; a mole here - a dimple there - or just the unique slant of their eyes (you'll be better off trying this while they are sleeping). What is revealed by this exercise is that there is visual information available all around us that we have never noticed. As busy human being  we tend to develop mental filters that get rid of the things we are not interested in and when your life  is saturated with the urgent  it is nearly impossible to notice much more than the big picture: small- large- green, blue-ugly-pretty. Just as a sunset is meant to be watched over a period of hours and not just with a glance, so the rest of the visual world has treasures that are revealed when we sketch them.

Hopefully the next few weeks of posts will provide you with the tools needed to become an avid sketcher. At the end of this  little experiment we will go beyond the pragmatic aspects of sketching and learn what it means to "begin to see". Until then lets begin by taking my own children on this "Sketch Journey" and find out if any of my ideas actually work.

Purchasing Sketchbooks

The most important part of getting your children excited about learning how to sketch is having their own sketchbooks. Please avoid the temptation of getting a stack of printer paper for them to draw on each day.  Making the sketchbook a Big Deal will help them through the exercises they are less interested in. For this series of blog posts we went a step further and had them personalize their sketchbooks before we picked up a pencil. This gave them ownership over the process and motivated them way beyond what I was excepting. Even the older children, who were reluctant at first, jumped right in.  But before I show you what we did with the covers let me tell you where this professional artists gets most of his sketchbooks.

Yes, Foodworld. This is were I buy my everyday white paper sketchbooks.  These are the very same sketchbooks that I design my large paintings in. I avoid the art stores. They tend to over price the necessities and discount the things you don't really need. Almost all of the sketchbooks made these days, and labeled as "sketchbooks", are well suited for our purposes and Foodworld has them at the lowest price (you can also buy these same sketchpads at Walmart). I paid under five dollars for the one shown above. This sketchbook is about 8 x 11 inches and is priced one dollar higher than their smaller sketchbooks which are half this size and, unfortunately for us, children do much better with smaller sketchbooks.  We solved this problem with one of these.

Below you will find my photo-guide for splitting a large sketchbook into two smaller ones.

Please you caution during this step!
1. Use a straight metal edge that the knife will not cut through.
2. TAKE YOUR TIME!
3. Used just enough pressure on each stroke to cut through a single sheet of paper.
4. Make sure you have a sharp blade.
5. Make sure the surface under the sketchbook is something you don't mind cutting into.
6. cutting through the area near the binding is tricky....it just takes some time.

If you have any questions about this process feel free to ask in the comments section. Tomorrow will we look at what the children did to personalize their individual sketchbooks. Although we didn't do anything complicated, the process generated the needed enthusiasm!