How to draw and paint an eye:

Study the drawings and paintings of the masters:  Here is one of Michangelo's drawings:

Study the art of artists you admire, see how they draw and paint eyes:

Look at different angles of how eyes are drawn:

Painting eyes:

There are expressive eyes that don't need much detail:

Learning to see again.

Our left side of the brain efficiently creates symbols in our minds for the objects that we see.  This is very ingenious of "Lefty" and is useful for storing and memorizing large amounts of information.

Yet, these same symbols cause havoc on our ability to create.  We must constantly fight the symbols in our minds and really see again what things in our world actually look like.  For example, we have created a symbol of what a tree looks like in our mind.  Usually a brown trunk, with a ball of green at the top.  Go look at a tree today.  Tree trunks are not all brown.  They are usually a grey and greenish color with hints of brown here and there.  Look at the top of the tree.  The branches reach out in all directions and the leaves create a roundish shape but not a ball.

When we try and draw a tree our left brain wants us to draw that symbol in our mind. It wants us to neatly tie up our seeing in a tidy symbol.  We have to fight the urge to look at our world symbolically.  We must study true shapes, color and form.

*Today's exercise is to go outside or look out a window and make a study of a tree.*

*Supplies:*
iPod or boom box with your favorite music
Sketchbook
Paint
Paper towels
Small bottle of water

Sit comfortably, do the relaxation and breathing technique first.  Play some music and let go.  Begin painting a tree with your fingers.  That's right!  Finger painting today!  Paint only the shapes and colors you actually see.  Paint the tree and it's surroundings.

Only paint shapes.  This is not to be a detailed painting.  Although you can use a fingernail to catch a few details if you like.

Below is my finger painted tree.

 Drawing and painting negative spaces:

Negative space is the areas of the picture that are the background spaces surrounding the main subject (positive space) of the image.  These are the shapes and spaces that define the subject and various elements within a drawing? Painting or photo.

As an exercise in negative space drawing and painting, choose one or more of the photos below to paint.

Forget about the subject of the image and concentrate purely on the shapes and angles that make up the picture plane. Leave person or subject as a blank space, only adding tone and detail in the negative spaces. You should produce some pleasing drawings and paintings as a result.

Drawing and painting negative spaces helps you learn how to forget about the recognizable objects and features in your pictures and instead focus on a truer representation of the visual world.

You may draw, color or paint the photos.  Do as many drawings or paintings as you like.  The more you practice seeing negative space the better you will develop your eye for shapes and skills for drawing and painting.  Focus only on the shapes and their colors.

You may draw or paint in the positive subject after you paint the background shapes.  Do not add details.  We will let these dry and add details later on.

Here is my negative space painting.  I find negative space paintings quite delightful in their simplicity.  It's a pleasure to paint shapes without having to focus on details.

Some tips for drawing and painting:

Although this is an online workshop and I must use photos as examples for you to work from, try and do as much drawing and painting from real life.

1) Draw from direct observation.

This sounds so simple, and yet I’m always amazed at how many artists don’t work from direct observation when they are looking to improve their drawing and painting skills. Photographs are convenient and easier to work from. Yet, the amount of information that a photograph has pales in comparison to seeing a subject in real life.  This is not to say that one should never ever work from a photograph; I work from photographs all the time now. However, I’m able to do this because I’ve developed skills based on many, many years of working from direct observation.

When you work from life, you experience your subject matter in way that a photograph could never allow you to:  you can touch your subject, smell it, walk around it, and see the subject within the context of its environment. This overall sensory experience is vital towards your understanding of your subject matter and will always translate into your art.  Drawing and painting is as much about learning how to see as it is about the marks that you put on the page.  Experiencing your subject in real life will teach you how to hone your skills in observation. The skills that you will gain from working from direct observation will tremendously inform and support your ability to work from all sorts of other references.


2) Practice daily.

Drawing and painting is very similar to athletics and building your muscles.  We must invest the time.  If you were an athlete, you would have a rigid schedule of training.  Art the same way: it requires serious focus, rigorous training, and intense physical stamina. Every time you sit down to draw or paint, it’s an opportunity to sharpen your eye, and become more proficient in coordinating your mind and eye with the physical movements of your arm and hand.

Many people get impatient with drawing and painting and expect results right away.  You have to be committed, and be able to recognize that improvement is a slow and gradual process. One would never expect to be an Olympic level skier after one week of training, the same way you can’t expect to be a master of drawing or painting after working for a few days.

It takes time to develop your seeing first before you can effectively draw or paint an actual likeness.  Let this workshop open your eyes to seeing your world as it actually appears.  Let the lessons inspire you to expand your skills.

Give yourself a break.  Art is fun. Even in the beginning when you feel shaky and unsure.  If you feel yourself getting frustrated it's time to put the art supplies away and come back when you are feeling relaxed and open to the process.  

Don't give up!  It's taken me a lifetime to develop my skills as an artist:  I've had years of good and bad art results.  I've learned to simply enjoy the process of making art and let go of the results.  The process is where the joy and love for art and creating lives.

Tips for learning to draw and paint:.

1. Draw a lot.  How much is a lot?  Malcolm Gladwell says its takes about 10,000 hours of doing something to become an expert at it.  So the more you do every day, the faster you’ll get good.

Fill up one sketchbook a month.  What?!!!  That's too much!  I hear you!  It is a lot but Ive done this for months at a time and was always amazed at how quickly I progressed when filling up sketchbooks monthly.

This is your best friend.
This is your best friend!

2. Slow and Steady. Especially when learning to cleanup your work; whether it be with pencil or brush, go slowly.  It’s just like practicing a musical instrument. You start as slowly as you can without making mistakes, then you speed up. Go as slowly as necessary to have control over what you’re doing on the page.

3. Learn from the best. Find the artists you admire from history and artists alive today.  Look at their art, study it closely and figure out how to replicate it.  Just one caution: make sure and give the original artist credit if you show your studies to anyone else.

4. Fix it until it’s right. When working on a difficult piece, redraw it until you get it right. Especially if you’re starting out, I recommend using mechanical pencils with a good eraser. They erase easily, and you can re-work and readjust a drawing until you get it right. Set a high standard for yourself and work to achieve that with every piece. Look at your drawing in front of a mirror, or flip it around and hold it up to the light. Seeing it in reverse will reveal problems in the drawing. Don’t take this suggestion too far. If you’re really hitting a wall, abandon the drawing, or start over. It’s more important to draw a lot than get stuck on one drawing.

5. Study the Fundamentals. Study the best books and videos on perspective, construction, anatomy, rendering and color theory. Go to the zoo every week, or more, if you want to learn to draw animals. Ernest Norling’s Perspective Made Easy will teach you everything you need to know about perspective. There are many anatomy books out there but I'm not satisfied with most.  Michael Hampton’s Figure Drawing: Design and Invention is probably the best I've found for beginners.  It’s a great introduction to construction and drawing with form and it does a fantastic job of breaking down and abstracting the human form in a logical and methodical way.

I’d also recommend Frederic Delavier’s Strength Training Anatomy. It’s a fantastic reference for anatomy in motion with call-outs to muscle groups and other landmarks with every image.

Last, I’d recommend Elliot Goldfinger’s Human Anatomy for Artists – an exhaustive technical reference that leaves no stone un-turned.

6. Repeat until you die. This is probably the most important step. There’s always something new to learn. One of the greatest joys of drawing and painting is having those break-through moments that come from constantly challenging yourself. Keep at it. The fun is in the process, not in the prize.

*Paints and sketchbooks to use in this workshop and a bit of color theory:*

You will need a *mixed media sketchbook* or *canvas paper* if you can't find mixed media sketchbooks.  Canson and Strathmore are the brands found in American arts and crafts stores.  Fabriano also makes a mixed media sketchbook but the paper is very thin and does not work well for adding thick layers of paint.  Also, it is a soft cover book and may be more difficult to use than a hard covered one that you can sit upright or lean on.
You may purchase a separate drawing sketchbook if you like, but it's not necessary because you can draw in the mixed media book.

*You may use other mediums such as pastel crayons, water-soluble crayons, watercolor pencils etc.  I find paint will be easier to use for the lessons in this workshop.*

*Paints to use:*
Acrylic paint
Water mixable oil paint
Gouache paint

*You may use water color paint if you really love watercolors.*  However, I find watercolor is a delicate medium.  People tend to think watercolor is an easy medium to use.  It is easy to use but it's also difficult to create details unless you have experience.  Also, when painting with watercolors, you must leave room for the white spaces and highlights and paint around these spaces first.  Usually, watercolor artist's first make a drawing and then add the watercolor paint over it, erasing the pencil lines as they go along.  This is very careful painting and the way we are going to paint in this workshop is much more free style.  It may be harder for you to do the lessons using this medium.  When using acrylic, water mixable or gouache paint you fill in the white spaces first and add the white highlights last.  So watercolor is a very different approach to the painting style of acrylic, water-mixable oil or gouache paint.

*Gouache paint* is a watercolor paint that is more opaque than watercolors.  You can fill in the white spaces first and then add white highlights last.  This is why I recommend gouache paint instead of regular water colors.

*You may buy a small inexpensive set of acrylic paint if you like.*  I recommend instead of those small sets that contain many colors, to buy the larger tubes of acrylic paint and only buy the primary colors red, blue and yellow plus a tube of white and black.  You can mix the primary colors to make all the other colors.  The small tubes in those sets are fine but I find you will run out of paint very quickly buying the small tube sets.  But it's your choice, this is only my recommendation.

*Water-mixable paint* is a wonderful medium to try.  It so oil paint but is pigment blended with an oil that breaks down with soap and water.  This paint is very much like acrylic paint that way but the pigments are more vivid than acrylic.  The only objection you may have to this medium is it dries slower than acrylic.  It takes a day or two to dry completely.  So if you choose this medium you will need two sketchbooks so you can paint daily, leaving one sketchbook to dry while you paint a new painting in the other sketchbook.

*Color Theory:*
Mixing the primary colors:
Red and blue = purple
Red and green = brown
Red and yellow = orange

*Adding white to:*
Red = Pink
Purple = Violet
Black = Grey
To all the other colors, mixing them with white makes a variety of softer hues of that color.

*Red and brown = black*
Adding small amounts of black to any color will give you a greyed version of that color.