Hey! If you read this blog often, you may well be into drawing, so why not have a go at entering the inaugural Derwent Drawing Prize?
The Prize is open to all living British and international artists over the age of 18 years old on 1 July 2013 and there’s a total of £8750 in prize money. Closing date is 11:59PM ON 1 JULY 2013.
You can use any pencil including water-soluble, pastel, graphite, charcoal or colouring pencils on any 2 or 3 dimensional support.
KEY DATES
1 July 2013: Deadline for entry
15 July 2013: All artists notified of first stage selection process
w/c 9 September 2013: Delivery of work
16-21 September 2013: Exhibition opens to public
18 September 2013: Private View and Prize Winners announced
October – December 2013: Exhibition tour
The work selected for exhibition must be available from September to 31 December 2013.
Let me know if you win!
I went to Brussels in Belgium on the Eurostar Train this week and I took my sketchbook with me. I thought it was a great way to share the experience with you as it is a record of my thoughts and things that catch my eye as I go along.
I was visiting the British International School in Brussels, which is in a wonderful old house full of Art Nouveau and Art Deco details. I had a great time there meeting the children, who come from all over the world, telling them stories and showing them how to draw stuff!
Thanks to everyone at the school for arranging the trip and making it both possible and memorable.
Requested by @TheWarden43 from YouTube, this video shows you how to draw a pizza from above and from the side with a little extra painting at the end. Enjoy with pepperoni, mushrooms, tomatoes, anchovies and olives!
What’s your favourite Pizza?
Learn how to draw a Pepper Mill uand shade it with stipple shading. This is created by drawing a lot of dots. It’s a lot of work – enought to drive you dotty, in fact! But you get a great effect when it is finished.
Here is a wonderful infographic I came across that explains everything about making art for other people, either as a professional or as someone who wants to have their work seen and appreciated by others.
What EVERY Creative Person with a Product or Service Absolutely NEEDS to Know – A graphic by Alex Mathers at www.redlemonclub.com
© 2013 Red Lemon Club. All rights reserved
click for larger picture
Follow the instructions on the video and when you are ready to draw click on the picture for simple drawings of the main stages of construction. Have fun… and may the force be with you!
I was really pleased to be contacted by Paul on YouTube today, who asked me what I thought of this video by Myron Barnstone, who teaches drawing at the Barnstone Studios, which I’m sorry to say I’d not come across before. Myron so perfectly encapsulates my thoughts about drawing and art teaching, I really wanted to share this video with you too.
I was lucky, my very first teacher, when I was 18, sat me down and showed me how a pencil works and showed me the shapes in the things that I was drawing. I only had that teacher for five or six months, but he literally changed the course of my life… in one lesson!
After school I went into a small print shop where I pretty much had to work it out myself. I learned a huge amount about type and the technicalities of Letraset and and wonderful machine called a headliner that produced crisp type on a strip of photo paper. All the time I was drawing and teaching myself with books from the library, trying stuff out. I then worked with a sign writer who really did instruct me. Like Myron says of his students in this video. I still feel him breathing over my shoulder as he points out where I’m going wrong all these years later!
Later I I worked for the land registry and had very strict training in watercolour wash techniques, which have stood me in good stead ever since.
Art college was three years of working it out myself. We received no instruction at all. In fact I often had to teach the skills I’d learned in the real world to my fellow students and on a couple of occasions to visiting lecturers! Our Lecturers “didn’t want to spoil out raw talent,” so they gave us a project and went to the pub for the rest of the week. Looking back, we floundered. Most never bothered coming in to college – there weren’t any classes to attend and if a lecture was arranged we’d got so out of the habit of attending no one ever went. It must have been soul destroying for the lecturers.
Myron is right. If you are serious, learn and get trained somehow. Then rebel after you know what you are doing and add your bit to the world of art and it’s body of work, but if you just rely on talent, you have a very long and hard and lonely journey ahead of you.
Nick Strehle from Florida emailed me ask when I was going to do a video using the bic biro that I emptied doing a few drawings earlier this year, like the http://www.shoorayner.com/durers-rhinoceros-drawn-from-memory-with-bic-biro or http://www.shoorayner.com/how-to-draw-a-snake-for-chinese-new-year/ or http://www.shoorayner.com/how-to-draw-an-angry-wolf/
Well, this video is what I had in mind. The biro works as an embossing tool. I’ve drawn a wedding disco with everyone dancing, but I’ve only drawn their skeletons. When you rub over the top with a graphite pencil a picture of the disco comes to life. I’ve rambled a bit with the story of the wedding party Im afraid!
YouTuber, Jamie Webb, asked me to draw a pear. I decided to draw two – the first in watercolour and the second showing how to construct the shape of a pear and how to draw it with stipple shading. You can see that video below
Meanwhile YouTuber, Mimorsi, asked me — Shoo I really want to be an illustrator like you but I don’t have much skill, I want you to help me “practice,? practice, practice” but without copying someone else’s work (your work). What I’m trying to say is that I want to know how to draw stuff by checking reference, but then give it my own twist. The bad thing is I just can’t understand the basic shapes constituting my subjects, I find it difficult to get the essence of a subject to then transform it my own way. HELP PLEASE
This video starts with a bit of a discussion about using reference, where to find it, how to keep yourself safe with copyright and how to adapt the images you find to your use. Hope it starts to make sense. I will go into this subject more in other videos.
this is followed by quite a lengthy video of drawing and painting a pear with watercolour. I’ve not edited it too much because I know some people like to see the whole process and I haven’t doen a video like that for a while. Enjoy
This is not the easiest thing in the world to draw, but with a bit of practice I worked out the basics to get it looking right. Follow the instructions and see how you do!
This is for the British International School in Brussels, where I visited this week. We had a lot of fun and they said they would be drawing the Eiffel Tower very soon, so this is to help them all. Good luck guys!
