Betsey MacDonald, Animalia: Pencil & Paint - 5 Week Watercolor/Drawing class (Intermediate-Advanced)

Class Description: If you love animals, this class will give you the opportunity to draw them from life and then do a final watercolor portrait. There is no better way to learn about animals, as well as improve your drawing skills in general, than drawing them in person! My dogs will serve as models for contour line drawing, gesture drawing and longer poses in the first two classes. We’ll use both graphite and charcoal as we learn how to capture the essence of a subject quickly but accurately and we’ll have fun doing it with real dogs! Then for the next three classes, we’ll work on watercolors from your photos of your favorite animals or from my own photos of dogs, horses or even African animals

Course Objectives

• Improve observational skills through drawing
• Use line and/or value to render objects quickly
• Acquire skills for drawing with different drawing media
• Observe, critique and discuss student work and master drawings
• Experiment with charcoal as a means to draw quickly
• Discuss how line and value can be used to create form
• Use watercolor to capture the essence of an animal
• Understand color mixing and how to create beautiful neutral tones
• Use a split primary color wheel to produce clean secondary colors
• Gain a greater appreciation of the other beings who share our world

Materials student will need to provide: For drawing: pencils, 2B, 4B and 6B, erasers, vine charcoal and charcoal pencils, stomps, mixed media paper, Instructor will bring lots of drawing materials as well. For the last two classes, a watercolor set (an inexpensive tray is fine but a set of tubes with palette is great, too), variety of brushes, masking fluid, watercolor block or pad (at least 140 lb, at least 9 x 12 or larger) or a few sheets with a gator foam board for stapling or some other support or 300 lb paper which doesn’t need mounting , hot or cold press or even rough can work, jar or two for water, spray bottle, sponge or two, #2 pencil or mechanical pencil, paper towel but we can discuss painting materials in class first.

Materials provided by instructor: Dogs and drawing materials to share

Betsey MacDonald Bio