About a century ago (well I exaggerate a little); I was a college student studying art at McDaniel College in Westminster, MD. I had a brilliant and successful art teacher named Steve, who demonstrated how the practice of art making and the hatching of new ideas could be brought to life. He taught me many useful things, such as how to keep an art sketchbook pasted with photos of art work by artists I admired, and how to write about my art in a way that expressed my unique artistic voice. Above all, his most important advice was that I should draw every day. At the time, that task seemed quite difficult. I was always an inpatient artist as a student and I often rushed through the drawing stage to hurry up and get to the painting. Now that many years have passed since my graduation from McDaniel, I can truly see the wisdom of his advice.
With hindsight, I realize that he was so right about drawing every day. I no longer rush art work and I have learned to love drawing, whether it becomes a painting or not. In fact, I have embraced his advice of a daily drawing habit and I have worked on several art challenges for both human portraiture and pet portraits on my Instagram account. One of these challenges is called 100 faces in 100 days, in which I drew a pre-selected photo of a celebrity using only pencil and paper. I did not add in a lot of detail or shading and I limited myself to 45 minutes a day.
At present, I am struggling to carve out time for drawing. Sandwiched in between working, and other responsibilities, I am striving to make time at least 1x a week to draw. This time, I am focusing on making simple graphite sketches in my sketchbook, mostly portraits or figures.
The most important take away I can say about drawing and getting good at it, is that it really helps your art practice to flourish. For instance, once you have the drawing and composition mastered, you can enjoy the next step more fully, whether its collage, painting or some other art form such as graphic design or sculpture. With an accurate drawing, you won’t have to worry about continuing to fix it and can fully embrace your next steps.
If you want to put this idea of drawing as a practice into effect, you are in luck! I will be teaching two drawing classes at Delaplaine Art Center this Fall. The first class, Drawing for the Absolute Beginner, is tailored on those who have never taken an art class, and need the basics such as shading, measuring, and drawing techniques such as contour and blind contour drawing.
And the second class is for more seasoned artists who want to learn how to draw a portrait. This is a great class for those who have always wanted to draw portraits but don’t know where to start. I will teach you construction techniques such as using shapes to construct, the Loomis Method and anatomy to give you a solid foundation to build upon. Check out this links to learn more: https://delaplaine.org/class/?id=25-2-DR06 (Drawing for the Absolute Beginner) and (Advanced Drawing: How to Build a Portrait): https://delaplaine.org/class/?id=25-2-DR07.
Art of Schmidt 