Summer class roundup!

My summer Evening Basic Drawing class at the St. Louis Artist’s Guild has recently wrapped up, so I thought I’d share some images of my amazing students’ work!

The first few drawings of teacups are from the first class, before instruction began, then pictures of a few of the classes, and finally, the drawings from the final project of the last class.  So proud of everyone’s progress!

 

 

Evening Basic Drawing SU17 – Drawing before instruction

Evening Basic Drawing SU17 – Drawing before instruction

Evening Basic Drawing SU17 – Drawing before instruction

Evening Basic Drawing SU17 – Drawing before instruction

Evening Basic Drawing SU17 – Drawing before instruction

Evening Basic Drawing SU17 – Drawing before instruction

Evening Basic Drawing SU17 – Drawing before instruction

Evening Basic Drawing SU17 – Drawing before instruction

Evening Basic Drawing SU17 – Negative space exercise

Evening Basic Drawing SU17 – Negative space exercise

Evening Basic Drawing SU17 – Negative space exercise

Evening Basic Drawing SU17 – Negative space exercise

Evening Basic Drawing SU17 – Negative space exercise

Evening Basic Drawing SU17 – Negative space exercise

Evening Basic Drawing SU17 – Negative space exercise

Evening Basic Drawing SU17 – Negative space exercise

Evening Basic Drawing SU17 – Negative space exercise

Evening Basic Drawing SU17 – Negative space exercise

Evening Basic Drawing SU17 – April Berry, Chiaroscuro, Pt. 1 exercise

Evening Basic Drawing SU17 – Rebeca Thornhill, Chiaroscuro, Pt. 1 exercise

Evening Basic Drawing SU17 – Ashley Troutman, Chiaroscuro, Pt. 1 exercise

Evening Basic Drawing SU17 – Matthew Troutman, Chiaroscuro, Pt. 1 exercise

Evening Basic Drawing SU17 – Chiaroscuro, Pt. 2 exercise, final class

Evening Basic Drawing SU17 – Chiaroscuro, Pt. 2 exercise, final class

Evening Basic Drawing SU17 – Chiaroscuro, Pt. 2 exercise, final class

Evening Basic Drawing SU17 – Chiaroscuro, Pt. 2 exercise, final class

Evening Basic Drawing SU17 – Chiaroscuro, Pt. 2 exercise, final class

Evening Basic Drawing SU17 – Chiaroscuro, Pt. 2 exercise, final class

Evening Basic Drawing SU17 – Chiaroscuro, Pt. 2 exercise, final class

Evening Basic Drawing SU17 – Chiaroscuro, Pt. 2 exercise, final class

Evening Basic Drawing SU17 – Chiaroscuro, Pt. 2 exercise, final class

Evening Basic Drawing SU17 – Chiaroscuro, Pt. 2 exercise, final class

Evening Basic Drawing SU17 – Chiaroscuro, Pt. 2 exercise, final class

Evening Basic Drawing SU17 – Chiaroscuro, Pt. 2 exercise, final class

Evening Basic Drawing SU17 – Chiaroscuro, Pt. 2 exercise, final class

Evening Basic Drawing SU17 – Chiaroscuro, Pt. 2 exercise, final class

Evening Basic Drawing SU17 – Chiaroscuro, Pt. 2 exercise, final class

“No Ceiling, Only Sky” Exhibition at SOHA Gallery. Opening night is June 2, from 6-10 pm.

I will have a piece in an upcoming show, “No Ceiling, Only Sky”, which opens on Friday, June 2, at the SOHA Gallery in the South Hampton area. The gallery address is 4915 Macklind Ave, St. Louis, MO 63109 (S. of Chippewa, at Neosho).  Here are the details from the event page:

No Ceiling, Only Sky | SOHA Gallery Celebrates Women
June 2 – June 18.

 

Facebook event page for “No Ceiling, Only Sky”

Opening Night:  Friday, June 2, 6pm – 10pm

Regular Gallery Hours:  Friday 4-7, Saturday and Sunday 1-4.

As SOHA approaches its sixth anniversary, we want to honor the collaboration of our team Julie Malone, Megan Rieke & Kat Dunne. As a Mom & Mom & Mom business, we strive to make SOHA a home for St. Louis artists and art lovers.  

“No Ceiling, Only Sky” includes diverse works that represent some role, identity, form, or moment with a woman at its center. 

Artists participating include: Eugenia Alexander, Gregory Booth, Isadora Emma Cryer, Jen Goley, Bob Hartzell, Terry Hinkle, Theresa Hopkins, Stephen Ingraham, Tiffany Johnson Cade, Kim Keek Richardson, Kit Keith, Alicia LaChance, Julie Malone, Tim Meehan, April Morrison, Carmelita Nunez, Lindsay Obermeyer, Lola Ogbara, Renee Raub-Ayers, Megan Rieke, Mark Regester, Fern Taylor, and Elizabeth M. Willey.

 

This is the piece that was accepted into the show:

 

Elizabeth M. Willey – “Idun’s Apple”, Encaustic Mixed Media on Panel, 8 x 8 x 1.5 in, 2015

Will be shown in “No Ceiling, Only Sky”, opening June 2, 2017.

 

Next class begins June 8!

I will be teaching Evening Basic Drawing again this summer on Thursday nights from 6-8:30 pm beginning in 2 weeks on June 8.  The class is 8 weeks long and runs through July 27.    If you are interested in joining, sign up today!  The deadline to register is Wednesday, June 7.  There are still seats available & I’d love to see you!

Here is the link to sign up on the St. Louis Artists’ Guild website:  Evening Basic Drawing – Summer 2017

Summer 2016 Gershon Spector – Chiaroscuro project

Summer 2016 Connie Farhang – Chiaroscuro project

Spring 2017 Evening Basic Drawing

This past February and March 2017, I was honored to teach another class of wonderful, dedicated Evening Basic Drawing Students at the St. Louis Artists’ Guild.  We had a big class, 8 people, and I was very pleased with everyone’s progress.

 

First class 2.9.17 – Gesture Drawing

Another angle – first class, Gesture Drawing

Fourth class, Intuitive Perspective

Mary Forrester was our gesture model for the first class, who inspired us with many elegant poses.  During the first meeting, I introduce gesture drawing as a way for students to start loosening up their drawing motions and to connect what they’re seeing in their visual field with what their hand is doing on the page, with the goal of eventually looking at the subject more, and the drawing on the page less.

For the fourth class, we did Intuitive Perspective, during which students learned how to gauge accurate perspective by noticing the angles of the edges of surfaces and how they relate to one another, as well as the angles of the empty spaces between or around the objects, so that they could create a convincing depiction of depth.  For a couple of the still lifes, I had the students either move closer to the objects, or to the side, so that they could understand just how much the perceived angles of rectilinear objects change when viewed from different vantage points.

Extended line drawing exercises, and exploration of negative & positive space

Extended line drawing exercises, and exploration of negative & positive space from another angle

Perceptual Grid and Mondrian Tool exercises

Perceptual Grid and Mondrian Tool exercises

Perceptual Grid and Mondrian Tool exercises

For the sixth class, we started by doing extended line drawings of simple objects that had a lot of empty spaces between legs or rungs of objects so that the students could learn how to further enhance their drawing’s proportion by sketching how the different angles of each part of the object align with other parts, helping them notice the shape of the spaces in between the physical elements.  To further enhance that idea of negative and positive space, I had the students shade the area around and between the various parts of the object dark, so that they began to think of those spaces as the object of their drawing, and then I had them erase out the object itself, as if it had been cut out of the picture plane.  Many students expressed surprise at just how much this activated the various shapes for them, and really helped them to understand that if all the angles and spaces between the various parts looked proportional, then the object itself would by default then appear more proportional.

During the next class, we further explored that idea by using the Perceptual Grid/Mondrian exercise by starting with a gesture drawing, as they normally would, and then using rulers to add a fine grid of lines horizontally and vertically across the picture plane, to help analyze the spacing between objects, making corrections along the way.

We first began with the newsprint that we had been using, toning the paper with charcoal to create a mid-range tone for the background

My demo for chiaroscuro drawing using toned paper, drawn while the students observed.

For the second half of the class, I had the students draw on Kraft paper, using the brown of the paper itself as the mid-tone.

We studied Chiaroscuro drawing for the last two classes, giving the students time to really delve into understanding how continuous tone and dramatic lighting can be used to create a wide range of lights and darks and convey a greater sense of depth, even atmosphere and emotion.  Chiaroscuro is a classic technique used since the Renaissance using high-tone, mid-tone and low-tone mark-making to depict shape and volume in drawings and paintings.  The first part, chiro means ‘light’ and the second, scuro means ‘dark’, in Italian.

For the first half of the final class, I had the students tone the paper with charcoal, so that they could use that as a mid-tone background to help better gauge the range from light to dark.  The lights were created by erasing out areas (and some students later added white conté), and the darkest darks were created by adding more charcoal, black conté, or compressed charcoal to the surface for rich, deep blacks.  I seem to have missed taking in-progress photos of the charcoal mid-tone drawings from this portion of the class, unfortunately, but you can see some of my prior students’ Chiaroscuro drawings here:  Summer 2016  and here:  Fall 2016.

For the second half of the final class, I added the additional challenge of using toned paper (paper that has a noticeable color other than white) as the drawing surface, so that the brown of the kraft paper acted as the mid-tone, rather than a layer of medium charcoal.  Not only was the surface texture toothier than the smoothness of the newsprint, causing the mark-making to act differently, but converting the idea of a color other than grey as a mid-tone when we’ve only been working mono-chromatically added another element of difficulty.  My students were up for the challenge!

Here are some finished pieces from the Spring class:

Carol Fichtelman – Chiaroscuro charcoal drawing on newsprint

Isaac Akers – Chiaroscuro drawing on toned paper

Domonique Taylor – Chiaroscuro drawing on toned paper

Barbara Winters – Chiaroscuro drawing on toned paper

Thank you to all my amazing students!  It has been a joy to have you in class!

Stay Tuned!

Over the next few weeks, I will be working on updating my current work to the site, adding more of my prior work, and adding more photos from my Spring 2017 Evening Basic Drawing class.  Come back and visit often to see what’s new!

End of 2016 Wrap Up

2016 was a wonderful year for me artistically, as I began to teach at the St. Louis Artists’ Guild, in addition to creating, showing, and selling artwork.  I’ve written about my summer class previously, but I didn’t get the chance to write about my Fall Evening Basic Drawing class yet.

Fall, being a super busy time for many people, had a much smaller class enrollment.  While a little unusual at first, ultimately, it led to a really one on one, personal connection between my students and I.  We had lots of great conversations about life and art while they were working on their drawing projects, and I was very pleased to see how much they had learned and grown in confidence by the end of the session.  Here are just a couple of photos of the lovely work that my students did during class:

Carol Fichtelman, Chiaroscuro still life, final class

Carol Fichtelman, Chiaroscuro still life, final class

Carol Fichtelman, Chiaroscuro still life, final class

Jean Jensen, Chiaroscuro still life, final class

Jean Jensen, Chiaroscuro still life, final class

Jean Jensen, Chiaroscuro still life, final class

I will be teaching Evening Basic Drawing again during the Winter/Spring session, running for 8 weeks on Thursday night from February 8 through March 30, 6 to 8:30 pm.  There’s still plenty of time to sign up if you’re interested in joining in the fun, so be sure to sign up through the St. Louis Artists’ Guild website:  http://www.stlouisartistsguild.org/new/node/2461.  I believe you can sign up all the way through the first night of class.  The fees and supply list are included on the class webpage.  Hope to see you there!

Deadline to Register for Fall 2016 Basic Drawing – Sept. 7!

If anyone is interested in taking Evening Basic Drawing with me through the St. Louis Artists’ Guild on Thursday nights from 6-8:30 from Sept 8-Oct 27, the deadline to register up is Wed., Sept. 7.  😀  Sign up today!  See my prior post for pics from all the fun we had this summer!

Evening Basic Drawing through the St. Louis Artist’s Guild – Round 2!

I will be teaching  a second Evening Basic Drawing class through the St. Louis Artist’s Guild on Thursday evenings during the fall, from 6-8:30 pm beginning Thursday, September 8, and running for 8 classes through Thursday, October 27.  Sign up today!  I’d love to have you in class!

http://www.stlouisartistsguild.org/new/fall-2016-evening-basic-drawing

This is the supply list:  Basic Drawing Fall 2016 Supply List – Elizabeth M. Willey

Below are some photos of my summer students with their work.  The teapots were drawn at the beginning of the summer session, before any instruction began.  The chiaroscuro drawings at the bottom are from the last 2 class sessions.  I am so proud of my students!  We had a great time and they all worked really hard to continue to develop their skills!

Summer 2016 Gershon Spector – Chiaroscuro project

Summer 2016 Connie Farhang – Chiaroscuro project

 

 

Basic Drawing through the St. Louis Artist’s Guild

I will be teaching Basic Drawing through the St. Louis Artist’s Guild on Thursday evenings from 6-8:30 pm beginning this coming Thursday, June 16, and running for 7 classes through Thursday, July 28.  There’s still time to register!  Sign up today! 😀

http://www.stlouisartistsguild.org/new/summer-2016-evening-basic-drawing

This is the supply list:  Basic Drawing Summer 2016 Supply List – Elizabeth M. Willey

Artist’s Reception tonight at Fountain View Manor Memory Care in Granite City, Illinois

These pieces are currently on view through March 11 at Fountain View Manor Memory Care in Granite City, IL in an group art exhibition with 5 other artists. If you’re in the area tonight (Friday, 2/19) between 6-8 pm, I’d love to see you at the Artist’s Reception!
A big thank you to Mary Duban, Executive Director (and Fontbonne alumn) for inviting me to participate in the show!
http://www.fountainviewmemorycare.com/

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