In my last post, I had talked about an incredible source for lessons in Painting. Charles Sovek has very generously made his book, The Basics, available on the web, for free, from the very beginning. You can have a look at each lesson and if you find them useful maybe pick up a copy from his site. There are many more resources there for you to discover and I had covered a few of them in an earlier post.

Line
Contour and Gesture
Overlapping
Sight Size Drawing
Drawing a Complex Object
Drawing with Shadows
Tonal Drawing

Tone
Painting a Value Scale
Painting Blocks in Tone
Line to Tone
Square to Round
Painting a Solid Form
Patterning a Composition with Tone
Painting a Solid Form
Patterning a Composition with Tone
Popping Your Lights
Basic Lighting Conditions
Dissipating Light
Different Kinds of Light
Crest Light
Hollows, Accents and Highlights

Color
Color Values
Painting Blocks in Color
Reflective Color
Color Temperature
Color Intensity
Underpainting
Averaging Lights and Shadows
Keying your Color
Edges
Reflections
Color and Atmosphere
Painting Fleshtones
Painting a Vista
Overcoming Regularity
Pushing Value Contrasts
Patterning a Composition
Painting from Photographs
The 4-A-Day Plan

A couple of days back there was comment asking for help on starting to draw and paint. I’d asked him to join the WetCanvas! Classroom forum and to look up some additional sources from this site.

This morning I got a newsletter from drawspace . I find that it is growing to be a wonderful online resource for drawing lessons. These are divided into 3 levels – beginners, intermediate and advanced. drawspace also has a forum which is slowly growing and the activities are focussed on drawing with pencil, charcoal, color pencils and pen & ink. All the lessons have been written by one person and you have a choice of viewing it for free online or downloading the pdf version for a small fee. Brenda Hoddinott whose lessons populate this website is amongst other things a self taught artist. She is currently working on a new website along similar lines for Fine Art.

Today, Mayank has got an update with details of this site as an alternative and few other suggestions one of which I shall put in a fresh post as it is worth its weight in gold for anybody wanting to paint.

Haven’t had a go at making art digitally? There are at least two really great pieces of software out there for you to try. One that I’ve mentioned in an earlier post and Corel’s Painter IX.5. You can download a two month trial version. It is the fully functional version, nothing has be disabled. Here’s a WIP that i’ve made with Painter.

Betty Edwards book has been a huge success. While putting together the last but one post I found a thread on the CGTalk forum based on the exercises in the book. Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain was the first book on drawing that I purchased and it got me started. This was over two years ago but I haven’t got around to finishing the exercises in the book. I’m hoping to do so sometime soon and this thread will come in handy then.

This is the 3rd in the series of Figure Drawing Resources that I find fantastic and which has been provided freely online.

Rey Bustos teaches anatomy and figure drawing in Los Angeles. I enjoyed the Flash based resource of figures with the musculature overlaid, provided for students of art and anatomy. You can see an example of it here here. Rey’s Anatomy is just one part of the site. You’ll also find his blog, figure drawings and many other resources on his website.

“As an educator I have worked hard to make my passion for anatomy more accessible to more students and professionals seeking a more interactive mode of studying or using anatomical reference. In this web site, I along with my designer Yariv Newman,have tried to give a taste of what I am striving to achieve but in a larger scale sometime in the near future. Please use my email to reach me if you are interested in any of the work that you see here or for any help that I can avail myself to you.” - Rey Bustos

I plan to return soon to study it at leisure. I hope you find it useful too.

Technorati Tags: figure drawing, resource, blogschmlog, rey bustos, drawing, charcoal, pencil, graphite, ujwala

This post has taken far far longer than I had planned. As promised this is another great online resource for figure drawing . This one is by Rebecca Kimmel – the 3rd Rebecca.



She is an artist and an illustrator and the Anatomy Forum Leader at CGTalk where she has put together a bunch of assignment and links for beginners. “Rebecca Kimmel draws on her extensive formal training under master instructors Burne Hogarth, Harry Carmean, and Richard Bunkall to instill the basics required to accurately and faithfully interpret the human form” as aptly described by CGTalk. You can find her work here. She holds a 9 week workshop – Figuratively Speaking, Annalysing the Human Form but that’s isnt for free . You can see some of her work on the forum here.

You will find a bunch of other useful links about Artistic Anatomy and Figurative Art from Kirk at CGSociety here.

UPDATE : July 21, 2006: I had written to Rebecca asking her for some additional links on her work and received a prompt reply. Here they are.
Portfolio – on CGTalk
Drifting – her blog

While there have been visitors I havent had much feedback in terms of the usefulness of this site or the posts. I found this rating box on Guy Kawasaki’s blog. Please rate this post in terms of its usefulness as a figure drawing resource and if you have the time do leave me a comment.

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Technorati Tags: figure drawing, resource, blogschmlog, rebecca kimmel, drawing, charcoal, pencil, graphite, ujwala

I’m beginning to get the feeling that i need to change my name to Rebecca! There seem to be many successful artists, who also share their expertise, with that name. The last post was a link to a site by Rebecca Alzofon and this one is by Rebekah Lynn and I’ll be putting up a link to a 3rd one, Rebecca Kimmel, soon.

This is a link to the tutorial on understanding the art of shading and the beautifully shaded horse above is an example of Rebekah’s expertise. I agree wholeheartedly that there are 2 P’s to do before getting to shade well – Pressure and Practice! I only wish I’d take the hint! Rebekah Lynn has several other tutorials too. I liked this one the best.

Tags: art drawing shading tutorial rebecca lynn maya ujwala

This is the first in a series that i’ll be putting together of resources available on the net to learn figure drawing. Rebecca Alzofon of Academic Figure workshops and classes has put together a tutorial on Gesture drawing, what it is, why it is important and how to go about it. The tutorial is animated and easy to understand.

I had tagged her site a while ago but remembered it again only when i saw a reference to a study that she’d put together on Pierre-Paul Prud’hon. The article is on her interpretation of his style, technique and approach to figure drawing. She has subsequently updated the article here.

Tags: gesture figure drawing anatomy rebecca+alzofon ujwala

Ingres to Degas
Originally uploaded by HughPee.

The Essence of Line is a collection of drawings by 19th century French artists. The drawings are part of the collection of a couple of museums and are available for viewing online. There is a My Gallery feature allowing you to collect your favorites to enjoy at leisure.

These drawings are in a variety of medium including watercolors. There is a very nicely designed search function which allows you to search by artist, medium, style etc.

Other than the two mentioned above this exhibition has works of over 900 artists including Delacroix, Cezanne, Manet and Daumier.

3 complete sketchbooks have been scanned and are also available. Take a look.

Technorati Tags: drawing, french, 19thcentury, Ingres, Degas

I’m in love with Art Rage 2.0 and you will be too if you try it! And you can easily do that from here as they have a free version. Not diabled, not watermarked but with fewer functions.

You click on the icon and you are ready to begin. Play around with oils, chalks, pencils, felt pens, and other tools! Art Rage 2.0 is a painting program with a difference. Its free, easy to use and it reacts to you instantly. Just the ease of use and speed make it like none I’ve tried before. For about $20, it is a steal. And if you’re happy with the features in the free version then you have an even better bargain.

Dont take my word for it, go try it out. or check out these reviews of outrageously good at Apple Matters and Amazing by Windows user From the Eyes of an Artist

I’m waiting for my tablet to arrive to post better results but the pict posted is of me trying my hand at painting, using my mouse, with oil as the medium and brush, knife and felt pen as my tools.

design.com/artragedown.html”>Download Art Rage 2.0

Technorati Tags: art rage 2.0, software, mac os x, windows, outstanding, painting, brush, tablet, free

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