Art Work lesson #1 (learning to see and draw) 3 hours

On Summer of July 7, 2008 i enrolled in an Art instruction School in Minneapolis, Minnesota and later got accepted, i received lesson book number one by mail in about a week since it is a distance education and training council thing. I then opened the lesson book called; learning to see and draw. On page one, i started to read a few steps in how to begin sketching simple designs for a beginner artist. It showed a lot of examples on these pages so i studied them carefully and looked at it in a way how they wanted me to sketch it.


As a practice i got a 2B lead drawing pencil with an extra eraser a molding eraser at side which is a nice eraser to have to erase small spots usually a normal eraser wouldn't be able to do, so i read the instructions and it read for me to begin sketching all shapes of every kind, square, circle, triangle, octagon, Etc. But before i could do all that it told me to hold the pencil correctly by putting the pencil in between the index finger and the first finger with the thumb just right under it setting against the pencil, making it comfortable as could be for the artist.


So i began to draw shapes on a blank page inside the lesson book i began to draw lightly as possible so if i were to make a mistake it could be erased easily when needed as it said in the book. After finishing drawing them i turn to the next page and read more in tips in to being an artist and to have the right tools in drawing for example like a drawing pencils of different kind of lead in them from medium pencils, hard soft, light2H, Hb, to HB1, Hb2,7B, 6B, 5B, 4B. every kind to making a drawing as perfect could be for shading, next it said for me to have was a T-ruler which is shaped like a T for better measuring in drawing.


As i kept reading, it showed pictures of drawings to show as examples made by artists using shapes as i did in different features you could use like a shape of a dogs head, you would first lightly draw a circle as the head and then the body, oval shaped and so on, to completing a drawing such as that. im reading more and more about that untill at the end of the lesson it said to for me to draw a certain picture for them to test my skills and see what i have learned so far.

I read the instructions and it read, for me to draw the picture which was a cartoon dog only face area,it said to take my time, and when finished to mail it back to them for it to be graded, when done reading i grabbed my drawing pencil eraser found a quiet place with no noise got comfortable, cleaned my area so the drawing would not get messy with food or dirt or so, and i began, first lightly drew the shape of the head circular, then sketched in the eyes, almost oval liked, then slowly drew the ears messed up the first try erased it and got the second time wanting the ears to be perfectly aligned and shaped right using the T-ruler perfect as could be, the nose was next oval shaped vertical after finishing doing the simple shapes i needed to begin on filling in the shading and details.

I got a 4b pencil to shade in the eyes making them really dark, leaving some small white spots so as if the eyes were to be shiny, then used the same pencil to fill in the area of the nose it was just all black. and the rest of the face was light gray color so i grabbed a light lead pencil a number 2H lightly shading everything. since the dog had spots that were black i used 4B pencil again drawing in mid-sized spots, aslo same pencil to shade the ears black, after all that i was finished and so i erased all uneeded marks cleaning messy smears on the paper, when finished i mailed it.