Introduction to Abstract Drawing
Lesson 1 from: Abstract Drawing: Getting Started with 7 Abstract Art IdeasAmy Wynne
Introduction to Abstract Drawing
Lesson 1 from: Abstract Drawing: Getting Started with 7 Abstract Art IdeasAmy Wynne
Lesson Info
1. Introduction to Abstract Drawing
Lessons
Introduction to Abstract Drawing
08:42 2Materials and Surfaces for Drawing Exercises
09:09 3Drawing Blind to Sound
12:54 4The Big Squeeze: Clay as Muse
11:54 5Drawing from Memory
13:01 6Making a Drawing Machine
12:33 7Visceral Charcoal Drawing/Object Lessons
15:41 8Micro/Macro Worlds
10:49Lesson Info
Introduction to Abstract Drawing
(upbeat music) Hi, I'm Amy Wynn. And I'm really excited to have you here in my historic Rhode Island studio where we are going to draw together and we're going to explore abstraction. So I'm an artist and an educator. I was trained a couple decades ago in New York City painting and drawing in a realist tradition. We went through hours and hours of working from the figure, learning anatomy and learning how to render things just so like the masters. And it was an incredible training. And I'm so grateful to have it in my tool belt. But over the last couple decades, I've been exploring and finding new ways in. I'm happy to have that training, but artists evolve. People evolve, people evolve into their aesthetic over time and we have to allow that evolution. And sometimes the evolution involves loosening up. Sometimes it involves experimentation. Often it involves making an edge for yourself or doing something risky or maybe working past your habitual way of working. So this course and th...
ese exercises we're gonna do together are really fun. They're very hands on and anyone can do them, no matter what your experience with making is. So, what I'd like to show you are some examples of artists in the history of art who have worked with abstraction. And some of these artists, like for instance, Mondrian this is a famous series that he did where he worked with trees, and you can see how the trees evolved from something somewhat realistic to maybe something a little bit more dynamic and abstract a little bit more abstract still. And then here quite an abstract rendition of trees through drawing and a little bit of painting media, in this Picasso, this famous Picasso bowl picture you see the bowl sort of on a realistic end and then evolving into something quite simple. So, artists have toyed with this and you know what, there's a spectrum between realism and abstraction. We'll be working with sort of launching from realism and loosening up into abstraction but we'll also be working with pure abstraction just putting marks down in different ways. So I'm really excited to do these exercises with you because they are really part of my core practice of making. And one of the things that we'll be working with is actually experimenting with new ways to make marks through the senses. And the sense that we're gonna use is sound. So I love putting music on in the studio and having it on as I'm drawing. But what we're going to do through drawing to sound is listen to a series of sounds, choose materials that feel like they pair well with that, close our eyes, and then draw and just see what the sound makes us feel like making marks. So this is sort of an example of that kind of loose mark making which is really meant to just liberate you beyond what you might normally do in terms of drawing. Another fun exercise we're gonna do is we're gonna work with a piece of clay and we're gonna squeeze it and mold it and use that as our muse. So sometimes working with something that's unfamiliar, something that you've never seen before, sometimes actually the tactile sensation of working with a malleable object and then drawing that object over and over again can also be a way to loosen process and really dive in. One of my favorite exercises that we'll also be working with is actually drawing from memory. So you might think, oh shoot, I don't have a really strong memory or what are we gonna work with? But I'm gonna lead you through this step by step and show you how I often use layers of translucent tracing paper to make drawings one after the other sourcing a particular memory of a place. And what's beautiful about it is you'll see. And this is an example of perhaps what an outcome could look like is that there's this temporality through the layering of marks and almost a sense of atmosphere through these layers of translucent paper. One on top of the other that really speaks to memory, I think, and I love drawing that way. We'll also be working in multimedia, working with drawing significant objects. So, sometimes working from particular objects that have meaning to you as opposed to just any old thing can heighten your connection to your process and actually heighten your feeling for the drawing. So, I'm gonna be working front with three objects that I love that I have in the studio and doing a series of drawings that will ultimately be turning and reconnecting racing into drawing into painting into to make a very dynamic sequence of interconnection. So that's another really great way to loosen into abstraction is to move the paper around and add different media and take away media and put it back in. So we'll be working with that as well. We'll also be working with scale change where you might have an object that you're interested in working with but you really wanna push it a little bit further. Sometimes what I'll do is sort of take a micro macro approach where I have my object and I really zoom in on certain aspects of it. And that'll be a catalyst for us to be able to like work larger in a grid and make associated drawings with charcoal of a very small object, but really blowing it up large. Two other things we're gonna work with in this class are window tracings. So, sometimes drawing industrial things or buildings can be daunting like, oh I don't know how to draw perspective. I'm not gonna draw that building, but actually, through tracing on a piece of transparent plastic on a window, you can actually capture a view without really knowing how to draw the view. And we're gonna play with that in terms of collecting raw material and then play with how those drawings could actually be used to make an abstract combination of images through transferring an image. So I'm gonna talk about transferring an image and then finally, we're actually going to make our own drawing machines and a drawing machine. You might think, what is a drawing machine but we're gonna make drawings that aren't really up to us, drawings that might be made for instance by a hex bug, moving across a surface with its tail dumped in ink making marks. And this is a really amazing experimental way to make marks where you're not actually using your hands. You're actually activating a machine or in, we're also gonna be using the power of wind to make drawings. So that's a really great way to make unexpected marks make effects that you would never have predicted and really explore the possibilities of abstract drawing. So all of these exercises are really meant to loosen up your process, to loosen ambition to allow yourself to really go beyond this like product based idea of making, using the bedrock of drawing as a catalyst for experimentation, for exploring and really finding a new way in to drawing abstractly. So let's get started.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
user-0e865d
I recently became interested in abstract drawing and painting. This is a great course for beginners. I filled my art journal with several new creative and thought provoking techniques. The “drawing to music” with eyes closed was just the first of several cool ideas. The course will jumpstart your own creativity! Thank you for your experience and knowledge, Amy.
Rachel Franklin
Yes- relaxes your creative efforts! Love her