Elizabeth Reed - Trouvaille (Something lovely found by chance)

This Thursday we will experiment with opposite thinking about light. You will be drawing with white chalk on black paper. This exercise makes you think about light as pattern more clearly. You will make value strips to gauge your levels of grey to white. As you can see from Megan's work (link below), White chalk drawings create an erie mood and can be quite subtle. From black, you may want to work into any dark color such as blue, brown or even red. Please bring some black paper and white chalk. (I will bring extra for back up) White chalk and pencils can be purchased at Utrecht. They are very inexpensive and are a great addition to your charcoal collection. I will be bringing objects to draw. Please feel free to bring anything interesting you have at home. I stress drawing from life on this exercise. Anything can make an interesting drawing. You will see. Check out the white on black artwork of Megan Greene http://www.katharinemulherin.com/dynamic/exhibit_artist.asp?ExhibitID=94 S

It's out! Thank you Nila Do and David Degner

Value and composition Last week's theme was value and dominance. Thursday will be more value practice and the idea of Unity or Balance I will show you an exercise from a practice called "Notan" Simple ideas to help with composition. I will bring some unusual objects from my travels Please bring some charcoal and charcoal paper. Vine and pencils will be a great start in soft and hard. You can purchase a selection of your own at Pearls, Jerrys or Utrecht. I will bring my big box of charcoal and extra paper. Check out the incredible drawings of Ian Ingram http://ianingram.com/ Also, we were talking of the scientist who had a stroke, knocking out her left brain Here is the link to her interview. Great stuff! http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104154403&ps=cprs

Small dear portraits of my kids with silk drawings stretched on top. Such and interesting study to draw my 53 year old face over that of my teenage kids. I struggled with imagery and deep meanings until it dawned on me that this was the perfect solution. The challenge has been to stay light handed when drawing myself and placement of images over each other. The beauty of this medium is to let the underpainting shine through. Can't wait to finish the next batch. I photographed my wedding dress for lace and found wonderful doorways from my Venice pics. Almost done with this group.

This Sunday started with the departure of my husband, Phil, on a seaplane to Haiti. He is a marine salvor and an engineer. He and two others will fly to Great Inagua, the southern most Bahamian Island. From there, they will fly to Port au Prince, Haiti, anchor the seaplane and take the custom dinghy to shore to find a place to land the company's very large barges full of supplies near the ravaged docks. I have faith they will be safe. I did buy them masks and gloves. Value Sketches I will discuss how light falls on objects. We will discuss the anatomy of a shadow. My handouts deal with small value sketches of our compositions. I use Ed Whitney's book as inspiration. We will use paper of various values to cut or rip sketches to be made into finished drawings. I will bring a bouquet of flowers and some satin material as models. You are welcome to bring your own objects, photographs or use the gallery space for inspiration. See you there! Check out the work of Catherine Murphy. I

Informal Perspective (and perspective 101) Measuring, sighting and proportion I found a book while I was in design school that describes perspective visually. Basic Perspective Drawing, A visual approach by John Montague ISBN: 0-442-01263-2 I will bring handouts of the most important information for your files. This is a great addition to any artist's library. Montague draws diagrams of the vocabulary of perspective. The back of the book is filled with solutions. Objects and scenarios drawn from imagination with the help of perspective. We will be drawing in the gallery. Bring a piece of board to hold your paper as we will be moving around the gallery. I will encourage you to find unusual perspectives, ie. sitting on the floor and looking up. We will define station point, picture plane, horizon line, vanishing points, etc. Informal perspective is the skill of observing perspective by sighting and measuring proportion.) I will demonstrate how to look for these in my own drawing. Thi