How do we get from the gesture sketch, at left, to the finished drawing, at right, in four steps?
March 11
Claude Cookman to present a charcoal lesson
Bloomington Watercolor Society will meet Monday, March 11, at the First Christian Church, 205 E. Kirkwood Ave. The business meeting will begin at 6 p.m. Enter through the Washington Street door; the door code will be sent by email. The meeting will not be on Zoom.
Three, two, one – DRAW!
BWS member Claude Cookman will present the March 11 program, featuring a four-step drawing process using vine charcoal. He sends this prospectus:
Drawing is fundamental to the human condition. All children draw to represent their world and express themselves. Adults have been drawing to communicate for many, many millennia. The ability to draw realistically is not talent that a lucky few receive at birth. It’s a skill anybody can learn. All it takes is practice and the will to persist when your early efforts fall short of your expectations.
I have been trying to learn to draw since 1994. I’m still trying. I am a firm adherent of Frederick Franck’s statement: “I have learned that what I have not drawn, I have never really seen. …” For me, drawing is about concentrated, purposeful seeing. But that deep seeing is not about details but rather shapes, forms, light and values.
I will introduce you to a four-step process, give you an indispensable drawing tool and share some ideas about drawing. Most important, I will get you drawing. Even if drawing is not your primary mode of artistic expression, the ability to see more deeply should improve your paintings.
We will draw with charcoal for several reasons: It’s cheap. It yields a wide range of values. It produces rich blacks, much darker than graphite. It’s extremely malleable, letting us easily and continually correct our drawings. It lets us establish a base of tone on the page so we can draw negatively with erasers. The finished drawing can be exquisitely beautiful with delicate tonal modulations and seamless transitions. It’s fun to get our fingers dirty.
Most amateurs and even some artists equate drawing with creating an outline then filling it with tones or color. It’s difficult to escape the tyranny of those coloring books from our childhood. Instead, working from a simple still life, we will approach drawing as a four-step process:
1. Gesture. We’ll start with a gesture drawing, trying to capture essential shapes and relationships with spontaneity. Then we’ll rub it out with a tissue. Using the charcoal residue as a guide, we will do a second, more accurate, gesture drawing. Then rub it out again.
2. Refinement. With this pentimento as a guide, we’ll transform the objects in our still life into structural forms: spheres, cubes, cylinders and cones. We’ll use a bamboo skewer as a tool to refine proportions, angles and alignments. We’ll perfect the contours but try to turn most lines into edges.
3. Lighting. We’ll identify the light source and how it creates highlights, middle tones and shadows. Then represent them with correct tonal values to establish the forms in space.
4, Detail. As the final step, we’ll add detail with charcoal pencils.
Please watch these videos:
Emily at The Pencil Room Online on gesture drawing.
Proko on gesture drawing: Using C, S and I to capture gesture. This video is about figure drawing, but you can extrapolate it to objects for our still life. Caution: This video contains photographs of semi-nude models. If nudity offends you, please do not view it.
Proko on structure: Seeing spheres, cubes, cylinders, and cones.
The Virtual Instructor on shading.
Materials
Please bring:
- Vine charcoal sticks
- Kneadable erasers
- Kleenex or other tissue
- One object you would like to draw
Optional, only if you have them:
- Compressed charcoal and charcoal pencils
- An apron; things might get messy
- Handwipes and/or Purell
- A table lamp
BWS will provide charcoal paper, at least one charcoal pencil per table and other items.
Please watch for Laura Brown’s email announcement of the meeting. It will include a PDF handout on drawing. I hope you will read it; that will let us spend more time drawing and less time listening to me talk.
Right: Gail Fairfield with her painting, “Insight,” which was awarded Best of Show. Gail received a $100 award from The Vault. Left: “Flower Power 2” by Char Dapena was awarded Silver Second, an award that comes with $75 from BWS.
2nd reception
WE PAINT … Peter, Paul, and Mary!
BWS hosted the second reception for “WE PAINT…Peter, Paul, and Mary!” at March 1. There was a very nice turnout at for Gallery Walk in spite of the cold weather.
The show, inspired by the varied styles and eras of Peter Max, Paul Klee and Mary Cassatt features psychedelic color, cubism, and domestic scenes. We are pleased to announce that two paintings have sold. Congratulations to Don Madvig and Julie Boyd.
The exhibit is on display through March 29 at The Vault Gallery Mortgage, 121 E. 6th St. in downtown Bloomington. Gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, but please call ahead 812-334-9700.
Also note that all sales benefit Teachers Warehouse, a worthy organization that provides free classroom supplies and furniture to educators in nine counties.
Many thanks to the BWS members who welcomed the many visitors at the reception!
Penny Lulich shows an early version of her painting from the Tom Lynch live workshop that BWS artists gathered on Feb. 24 to view. The live workshop presented by Tom Lynch, nationally known artist, was compliments of Cheap Joe’s https://www.cheapjoes.com/ . Many thanks to Barbara Coffman and Carol Rhodes for organizing the event.
If you were unable to attend the Tom Lynch online demo/paint along, or are just curious, the video is now posted on YouTube. If you would like to paint along with him, look up “Cortona Path of Light Tom Lynch” for the photo and sketch.
Member News
Joe and Bess Lee present a reboot of Professor Animalia’s Menagerie of Endangered Animals.
Bess Lee will be the featured artist at the Cancer Support Center in March and April.
“SHELL MANDALA,” a watercolor by Sara Steffey McQueen, was accepted into Aquaventure Exhibit 2024 hosted by the Kentucky Watercolor Society. The show’s juror was Mary Seymour Neely. The Exhibit is from March 4 to April 26 on the fourth floor of Artists’ Attic, 401 W. Main St., Lexington, Ky. A reception is scheduled for 4 to 5:30 p.m. March 15 with a “Gallery Hop” going until 8 p.m.
“Fixing the Outrigger” by Tim Lewis
Lewis has a watercolor, “Fixing The Outrigger” accepted into the 2024 Midwest Juried Art Exhibit. The show will be at the HCCA Gallery, 195 S. 5th St., in Noblesville from March 1 through March 30 with an opening reception on March 9 from 6 to 8 p.m. The painting is of three workmen repairing the outrigger on a shrimp boat in McClellanville, S.C.
Left: “Sweet Owen Courthouse” by Tim Lewis. Right: “The Dance,” by Tim Lewis.
Tim’s watercolor, “The Dance,” was awarded third place out of the 87 entries in the Brown County Art Guild “2024 Can You Paint Challenge.” These are two sandhill cranes “dancing” in a snowy field in Nebraska. Tim donated “Sweet Owen Courthouse” to the Indiana Bar Association for its project to collect paintings of all 92 Indiana county courthouses for permanent display in its yet-to-be built headquarters in Indianapolis. This is the Owen County courthouse in Tim’s hometown of Spencer.
MarySue Schwab has a painting in the Indiana Watercolor Society at Brown County Art Gallery, which is hanging now through March 28. MarySue is a signature member of WSI and of BWS and a member of OWS, NAW, and NAWS.
“Cutting Corners,” a watercolor pastel collage by Lynne Gilliatt
Beyond BWS
Calendar
March 5 Arts Alliance of Greater Bloomington, Arts Alliance Center in College Mall, 6 to 7 p.m.
March 9 Reception for Professor Animalia’s Menagerie of Struggling Species, Art by Joe and Bess Lee, Arts Alliance Center, 4 p.m.
March 9 Reception for 2024 Midwest Juried Art Exchibit, HCCA gallery, 195 S. 5th St., Noblesville, 6 to 8 p.m.
March 11 BWS Monthly Meeting, First Christian Church, 205 E. Kirkwood Ave. 6 p.m.
March 15 Reception for KWS Aquaventure, Artists’ Attic, 401 W. Main St., Lexington, Ky., 4 to 5:30 p.m.
April 5 Reception for “HeArt is Where the Home Is…” by Bess Lee, Cancer Support Center, 1719 W. Third St., Bloomington, 4 to 7 p.m.
April 13 Pastel Workshop by Avon Waters, Arts Alliance Center in College Mall, Bloomington, Sponsored by Artists for Climate Awareness
April 20 Watercolor Workshop by Rena Brouwer at Delphi Opera House Gallery pf Contemporary Arts, Sponsored by Artists for Climate Awareness
April 27 Art Journaling Workshop by Pauline Kochanski at Ivy Tech Bloomington, Sponsored by Artists for Climate Awareness
