Hi, I'm Steve Huston. Welcome to New Masters Academy. This is
our course for beginners. Welcome aboard. If you've never
drawn before, never painted, never done any real art, this
is going to be a good course for you. We've got all sorts of
information to give you and it's going to come out in a
slow easy process that you can absorb. We'll give you a pacing
to it, we'll give you exercises, plenty of demonstrations. We've
got artists that have done almost everything there is to
do an art. Every teacher here is terrific, they're enthusiastic,
they're grateful that you've joined them. They love talking
about their favorite subject as I do too. If you want to
eventually be a fine artist, an illustrator, if you want to be
in animation, in comic books, and whatever else is out there to
be as an artist we have someone who's done that and
often times many of those things so they will not only
know the craft of art, they'll know the job of being an artist
and can help you through that process. As you get proficient
here, you can move on into our more advanced courses and we've
got literally hundreds of hours to offer you. It's in every
genre, every medium lots, of fun here. There's a lifetime of
learning to be had here. And that's the wonderful thing
about art. You don't become an old man like a sports star does at
35, you can do this till you're 95. And that's my plans. And before
we get into some of the nuts and bolts about the course, I
want to talk about art itself and the kind of the why of
art.
Art's really just an idea. And when I think of an artist, I
think of somebody who has an idea about the world. You look
out there and you say I see beautiful colors and I'm going
to paint that idea about the world. I see beautiful shapes.
I'm going to capture those shapes on a canvas or on paper
and that will be how I talk about the world. And the
interesting thing about this idea, it's not just any idea.
It's meaningful. And that's my feeling. It's one of the reasons I
started art, although I don't think I could have articulated it at the time.
It's certainly one of the reasons I stay in it and teach
it because I think art like very few things in life gives
meaning to life. We need to have some kind of purpose. And
so when I strategize about how to live a good life, I realize
that art gives me something that very few things give me.
It gives me a chance
to not only have something that I love and enjoy, something
that's potentially meaningful, but I can pass that on to other people
and that might sound like a little high-spirited there, but
just think about it. When you go to a theater or you walk into a
gallery with art or you open a novel or you turn on the music,
go into that theater what are you hoping for when you go into
that theater? You're a hoping you find artwork that's more
beautiful, more magical, more spiritual, more deeper than you've
ever seen before. Y actually hope that artist is doing something
that will change your life. When you go into that theater
you watch that movie hoping or you listen to that play hoping
that by the end of that story it will have changed your life.
We're looking for things that give us grounded meaning, not
just diversions. We can have more people like our social
media page, we can get a brand new car, we can make more
money. It's not going to make us happier. The real joy
comes from a sense of meaning, a sense of connection. So think
about it. We've got
me here and the world around me. I'm in this body. You're
out someplace past that camera lens. We feel so often
disconnected. Art's a way of connecting back. In fact, one
of the ways we think about art in New Masters Academy is the
fact that we have the different parts of the body or the parts
of the still life and then the art is how those parts come
together. The still life is not six peaches and a pear. It's
one still life. The story isn't a bunch of disconnected
characters and disconnected scenes. It's one story line. It's
not a bunch of notes, it's one melody. It's not a bunch of
steps, it's one dance. Art is the connective tissue of its
form. And so if we can get not a color, but all the colors
to connect together, to work together, they're harmonious.
We've built every art form we have in this connective way,
this binary way of taking the separate part and bringing it
back into the whole. And we've done that in art because that's
our experience and that's our deepest wish in life. I really
believe it, that we feel disconnected when we're not
happy and we feel connected when we are happy, when we are
joyous, when we have meaning. So art is working with these deep
roots. These deep powers here. They can really add pleasure to
your life. And it's one of the few things in life that if you
do, if I take my paintings, if I
get these little framed characters and I put 30 of them
in a gallery, almost every single person in there, if not
every single person, is going to walk through those doors hoping
I created 30 masterpieces. Now, how often in life does that
happen where everybody around you wants you to succeed,
they desperately need you to succeed. They want to walk in
and find paintings that are so amazing it changes their life.
They want to come out of that theater having seen a story
that is so amazing it changes their life. It gives them
meaning, it shows them a way through the difficult times.
When life is tough it's going to get better. That's what art
does for us. So what we're after is that connective
tissue. We're going to talk about shapes, how to get all of
those separate lines to build a shape, all the separate
shapes to build a form, all the separate forms to create a
composition. That's art. So that's what we're dealing with
here. We're dealing with something that's fun and
enjoyable and a craft and has a set of skills to be learned but
it's something deeper, it's something that moves from here
to here and when it gets down here, there's just nothing like
it frankly. Here's the thing though. That's the good news in a
way. That's the exciting kind of pump you up,
get you ready for the course kind of information. I've met a
lot of people - I'm sixty years old, I've been doing this for
40 plus years, I've stayed in at all that time because I love
it, but I've seen so many people leave the art or never
begin to do art because it's been too hard. They've been too
hard on themselves. And so what we need to do is find a way
that art isn't only something that we can create
masterful work with but we can also take the pressure off
ourselves so that when we are going through the process,
especially when we're just beginning that it's enjoyable,
that we have fun and we don't talk ourselves out of it. We
want to do something for our self that is kind and
sympathetic. In other words, we want a strategy to make art
fun. And hopefully the course will be fun for you. But what I
want you to do is think about a couple things and I'm gonna give you
an example here. If we look at meditation, you quiet things
down, you don't necessarily lock out all the thoughts but you
quiet yourself down in some way and when you get into that
quiet place your brain waves change. They go from the beta
which is waking, what's going to get me, what do I have to do, to
the alpha where you're in a more a calm state. It's the
same pattern that kicks in right before we fall asleep
when we relax out and things get easy and we kind of forget
the cares and then we start to slowly drift away. When we
meditate well, but we get into what's called the alpha state.
When you can get into that alpha state, that meditative
quiet state, the chatter doesn't go away it slows down
and you're not as self-critical and you can relax, your
breathing changes. Often times you get into that alpha state
you'll see it sometimes with the instructors when they're
doing a demo all of a sudden they'll go ahhhh
and you'll kind of feel the relaxation and that stress goes
away and their conscious mind
moves back a step and then the unconscious kicks in there and
they get into this flow and things start moving and even if
they're talking they can be talking to you and still it'll
come through and you're in this lovely place and all of a
sudden you can - the control room and the demo will say, okay,
that's a wrap. We really got to stop we've done it for two
hours and you go wait, I thought that was 15 minutes. So
the same sense of release of stress, relaxation, breathing
change, loss of time, this connection to time that you get
in meditation, guess what? You get all those things in art too.
You get to that place where you relax out. So what we're going
to want to do is try and get to that alpha state. Well, how do
you do that? What we really want to do is make sure that
we're relaxing,
they we're relaxing out and breathing.
In a way in meditation breathing is the key and that
can be the key to move into a place in art where you're relaxed
and things - you get into that flow as they call it, all that
good stuff that happens there. The real problem is we're often
times way too hard on herself. And that's - whenever I've seen
people abandoned art, whether it's a career or a hobby, a
class, it's because they're too hard on themselves. They can't
get past that critical self, that monkey mind that chatters,
it that goes after you. So what we want to do is come up
with a strategy that we can kind of trick ourselves into
being in the right frame of mind and it's not that hard
actually and I'll explain how.
Psychology tells us now that 85 percent of the population
came from a dysfunctional family. You have something in
your past that's baggage, that works against you, that subverts
you in relationships or jobs or health or whatever it is.
You've got some baggage there that it
wounds. It's a wound. That hasn't healed. Not only
that 90% of us if we feel joy, I got a new job, I really drew a
great sphere that time, look at my little child ride a bicycle
for the first time, when they have that joy, that great
feeling of joy, 90% of them immediately go into a fear
response and say, he's riding the bicycle but what if he
gets by hit by a car, I got the job but what if they fire me
next week because I realize I'm a fraud? I'm not really as good
as my resume suggests. And we start to undermine and we start
to break down that joy into fear to prepare ourselves so
that we're not so devastated when it does fall apart. That's
the strategy. It's a survival strategy. Don't be too happy
because it'll be taken away from you. So that's the problem
we have. So 85% of the time we start with some damaged goods,
damaged background. So we're not working at full
efficiency here for our creative, happy, joyous selves and
90% of the time when we are creative, happy, joyous selves,
we undermine that. So what are we going to do to fix that?
Well, we can convince our brain of all sorts of things, what
that means is for the good and the bad is when we have
something horrible that happens to us and we think about it, our
body thinks, our brain thinks it's happening again. If we imagine
that boss yelling at us, that car that almost hit us because
it ran the red light, we go through those same stress
responses again and again and again. You sweat, your
heart beats, palpitations, all that kind of stuff, dry mouth,
all those same things can and will kick in and so when we get
in that pattern of stress that wears us down, it makes us
unhappy, can make us sick. Meditation is one of the things
that helps that, art is one of the things that helps that. So
how do we flip it? How do we trick it in such a way that we
can get our natural, our imagination where our brain
believes it's real. It doesn't know the difference, it sends
the same signals of the body, the body puts out the same
adrenaline, hormone, dopamine, whatever it is, the good and bad
stuff that kicks in what we want to do then is have a
strategy. We're making that system work for us rather than
work against us. And here's how we're going to do it. We want
to trick our brain into being kinder. We want to trick
ourselves, our ego, into being a good friend to our art self.
And here's how I do it. You can come up with your own can come up with your own
creative solution, but I'll give you my solution here
because remember we tend to be too hard on ourselves. Whatever
it is, that diet, I ate a cookie I'm going to get off
the diet because I'm a loser. We tend to be really hard on
ourselves. We're almost never that hard on the people
around us or we're never that hard on our children. We
wouldn't say you're a lousy human being, you're a rotten kid
because you drew the eyes in the wrong place on that little
head you say, oh honey that's a wonderful drawing and you'd
give this love and support and then if they wanted it and it
somehow seemed appropriate you might give them a little
help with it, but probably not, probably it would
just be all love and support for them, knowing that if you
support them now at five or six when they get to be 25 or 26,
they're going to be terrific and there may have a love of
their life they can continue. So we nurture our friends, our
family, our mates, our co-workers. We tend to be
pretty good with people and we tend to be way better with
people than we are to ourselves. I'm going to come up
with a way to be kind to myself. So I'm going to use my
vast imagination that we all have, especially we artists, and
I'm going to come up with an image that is going to help me
do it. So what I want you to do, because this is what I do,
but you may come up with something even better. I want
you to think of this new young artist that's about to become
this part of yourself, this little piece of you that's
barely alive. It's just starting to grow inside of you
maybe. I want you - or maybe it's been awhile around for a while,
but it hasn't been nurtured so it hasn't grown as much as it
should. I want you to imagine that that little child of you,
that little artist you, the creative spirit that you are, I
want you to imagine that it's a soul fragment that if you
want it to stay and you want it to grow and nurture and be
powerful, maybe the most powerful part of you, a partner
in your life in some way, I want you to imagine that you're
going to always give it kindness and love and support.
What that means is when you start drawing,
okay, the exercise in this beginning course was to draw
a cylinder. That is a lousy cylinder. That's a lousy
cylinder. That's what we tend to say. It's not near as good as
a teacher. If I'm in a classrooms, not near as good as
the classroom and we tend to kind of want to cover it up so
other people don't see it. We're ashamed of ourselves that
we didn't do it better. What I want you to do when that
happens is try to remember that little soul fragment and stop
yourself
and say it could be better but it could always be better. The
teachers could have been better. I've seen better than
what the teacher did. I've seen Michelangelo drawings, I was
looking at some last night that aren't so good, that are
mistakes. That gives me great pleasure actually, the fact that
Michelangelo can do drawings that aren't all that
artful all the time. So that's a good thing. We all - we're not
always doing our best all the time and our best will always be a
changing goal post. It will get - the best is here. The best
eventually will be up here. Every day, every year, every
month we can get better and better and better. So what I
want to do is I want to say I want to try and find one thing
that I'm proud of, one thing that I can tell that
fragile little child, that scared little child inside me
that it's okay and you did great, just like you would for
your own little child. You don't have to lie, although you
could. Since there's a bigger party, a cynical
adult you'll probably catch it but I find one thing say,
you know, everybody else was drawing in black. I picked this
orange. That's really beautiful. I love that color.
That was a better choice than what the teacher did or this
one line was a nice clean line. I did a good job on that. Last
time both sides were screwed up. So I want you to do that
and find, no matter what, find one thing or you say it's a
sketch. Now sketch is a wonderful word because sketch
means it's practice, you're living in an artist. You can get into
that flow, you can drop into those alpha waves, the
brainwaves, the alpha. And the thing about the alpha waves,
when you get into that dream state, that meditative
state, that state where you're relaxed and time flows, what
happens is that critical self that would attack this drawing
isn't around, they're not going to attack it or attack it as
quickly and then you have a chance to slip in the nurturing,
the love and compassion, slip that in before the Fashion slip that in before the
criticism can even get started. So once we start learning to
get in the flow and we're not quite so tense and tight
because we're having to worry about every step that we're not
quite sure of, then we'll start kicking into those states and
you'll notice that state in yourself when
that breath gets more relaxed and you get - usually one for me,
it's one big breath and my chest kind of collapses and I
can just almost feel the angst, the stress, kind of wash
out like a wave. If I step in the bathtub the waves go away
from my legs. The stress goes away from my body like that. So
try and fool yourself into finding something that's
wonderful because there's something wonderful. It could
just be the drawing didn't turn out as well as it could but
isn't it wonderful that I'm doing this or than stuck
on the freeway. Isn't it wonderful I'm doing something
for myself, something I've always wanted to try rather
than watching another binge TV show on the network, the reruns
I've already seen before so that's what we're going to try
and do that's what I would suggest you try and do if you
want to get the most out of this and if you want it to be
fun. And the thing about fun, joy, love, compassion, the thing about
being grateful for whatever you did right or grateful that
you're getting to do this and we are certainly grateful that
you are doing it, the thing about that gratitude, any of the
good emotions, the good ones, the love, compassion, gratitude,
forgiveness kind of stuff, studies show that when you are
putting yourself in the place of the good emotions, the
positive emotions, good things happen. The rest of your day
tends to go better. Incidents - bad incidents - don't show up as
much. You're not as stressed. You're more efficient at work.
The 1%, the super smart, the super successful, the driven to
succeed, they they use meditation. And so we're going
to do our own artful meditation. We're gonna get into
this passionate silence where we just relax out and receive
and we do it and we don't critique it. We don't pick on
it. We love it and hold it and cherish it and then there can
be time later to give it a few suggestions. So anyway, welcome
aboard. I hope you enjoy this journey we have. Let's get into
the course. You're now going into the New Masters
beginning course on drawing and you've got two wonderful
teachers to begin you on that journey, Heather Lenefsky and
Chris Legaspi. So enjoy, draw lots, have fun, let us know how
you like the course. We'll see you soon.

Transcription not available.

Let me start with the most common pencil you're probably
going to use is known as graphite. If you go to an
office store and you just buy the pencil or if you go to a
school supply store or when you were in school the pencils
that your teacher gave you, those were graphite pencils. So
probably the first pencils you drew with we're graphite.
So these are the three most common ways. You can find I
guess more artists type graphites. O one is just a good
old-fashioned graphite pencil in the stick and these come in
many grades, grade I mean hardness. This is a 6B so
it's fairly soft, get nice and dark. And we'll talk about the
marks you can make later in this lesson as well. This is only
the graphite inside. So this is no wood, it's another creative
way you can get graphite. It's really fun. I believe it's
coated some kind of plastic so you can just stick it in your
sharpener or sharpen it down and you can get the same exact
point and mark. And this one is one of my favorite tools. It's
just the automatic pencil. This is something I picked up at the
office store and you basically load it with these little
graphite refillable things. These are other very common
things. You also find these in ordinary office stores and what
I like about these is you don't have to sharpen them. They
stay nice and sharp do they're great for drawing in
your sketchbook. So that's a quick overview of various types of
graphites.

Next let's talk about charcoal. So obviously charcoal is a
little bit more advanced and these we'll be using to do your
finer drawings, your longer studies, your more advanced
drawings. Charcoals come in many forms, but the two most common
forms are pencil and stick. So here's sticks. These are three
types of sticks that I have in my box. One is this really dark
compressed charcoal and this flat kind of stick. So these
are - these are pretty common to find at an art store. They get
nice and dark and nice and soft and they make really big
broad strokes, broad marks. These are willows and they're a
little bit harder and they come in a couple different sizes,
but they're typically these long skinny sticks and these
big old fat sticks. Usually you buy them and they're about
this long. So I just break them because they're easier to use. And they the easier to use and they
basically work the same way as the square stick just a way to
make a big broad mark. And obviously the pencil, and this
is sharpened down with a razor blade, you can get the more
detailed and finer marks. So again charcoal is more for
creating more full value, full longer finished drawings,
and they're very common to find in the art store.

Talk about some other pencils that you may find useful,
especially if you're going to be transitioning into life
drawing and figure drawing and things or going to workshops.
This is a little bit different. This is a Wolff's carbon and
this one is what's called the Conte a Paris. So this one - this
one is actually a pastel.
These are very common if you'te gonna be practicing a lot of Life can be practicing a lot of Life
drawing, a lot of head drawing. What I like about them is that
they have a nice strong sturdy wood so that you can sharpen it
with a long needle like this, a long point. These are very
common pencils you'll find at the art store. Whenever you're
ready to begin drawing from life, drawing from - or drawing from
reference. These are great for that. And these both are black.
This one is earth tone, sort of a reddish amber earth tone. And
speaking of color obviously, the colored pencil is another
common thing. You'll find I love drawing with colored
pencil. This is actually a black colored pencil. It's
called the verithin which. It's basically a hard colored pencil
and it comes in all kinds of different colors, but obviously
for drawing I would recommend black and maybe a gray. This is
a colored pencil and an earth tone and orange. This is a
Prismacolor. This is probably the most common colored pencil
and arguably one of the highest quality brands, the Prismacolor.
So these are great and I like to sharpen on both ends so
that I have two sharp points. So again, if you like drawing and
you head to the art store these would be readily available. So
I would recommend picking some of these up, especially a dark, a
black or gray.

And finally, the last thing to talk about is the pastel. So the
pastel is very very soft mark and obviously pastels are known
for coloring. This is kind of an oily base. So it's very
similar to paintings which is more advanced but you can have
a lot of fun drawing with black pastel and they typically come
in sticks and this is really really soft. Again later we
will see the kind of mark you can make but this is great for
going really dark and making big bold strokes, big bold marks.
Not so much good for detail at least a big stick like this but
pastel is great if you want a lot of coverage, so if you want
to do big bold drawings, make big bold marks, and want to go
dark quickly pastel is a great choice. And again,
these are very fairly common, easy to find, especially in
stick form like this.

The paper stump is a wonderful tool. This is something they've
been using since probably around the Renaissance. This
one is made from all recycled paper, which is great. And this
is really good for when you're going to blend but when you use
your finger, there's two things. One is that it's not incredibly
accurate. The other one is that you're getting oil from your
hands onto your drawing surface. The blending stump
helps with that. It allows you to - it allows you to create blends
and smudges in your tone
that's a lot more controlled and precise because you're able
to work with the tip here. This is a great tool. You'll have a
lot of fun using this, it gives you a lot of versatility in
controlling all this material that you're putting down.

All right. So Chris got us all fired up to start making marks.
You guys probably have already been drawing while you watch that. I
could hardly stand it. We're looking for what type of tools
will give us which type of marks. If we're looking at a
thinner sharper kind of line, this would be just a graphite
clicky pencil and you can get a really really fine, really tight
line. If we want to do like a more kind of tonal line or a
thicker line, something where we want to fill in a greater space
at a time. While something like a Conte can also give us one of
these tight lines like this, when you sharpen it if you want
to take it down, you can make the tip also function on the
edge. And so by preparing it this way, you can draw both on
the tip and just take it
and get some tone in really fast. And this helps too when you
get into sort of a more painterly methods. So there's
two tools in one. Another one if you want to take it down
just the side like that - Chris uses pastel -
that's just one stroke. A lot of volume in one swipe. You may
get to a point where you want to sort of in-between like a
edge. That's a little bit softer and you can do that with
a variety of ways. This is a graphite but it's not encased
in wood. It's sort of similar to that sharpened Conte where
this is all active, this edge here. So if we wanted to get
something kind of fuzzy we might be able to just kind of
take it from that tip and feather it out a little bit.
This is a Generals and we can do the same thing. When we
get into some more of the the charcoals.
The other cool thing is you got your fingers and you can start
finger painting with a lot of these materials. Kind of drag it
out a little bit and the degree of the mark that goes down is
going to be relative to the tool you're using and also the
type of finish on the paper. If you zoomed in it on a
microscope, it would look kind of like a spider web. So what
we're doing is laying in pigments
into that web. One other note about graphite
that's a little different, the particles of graphite are
actually kind of like flakes or plates. So if you lay in enough
graphite depending on the paper, it actually starts to have
more of a shine to it.
And with graphite you can also start
much more slowly and get kind of a slow build up too.
So if you're kind of wanting to be really really ghosting in
you can also notice the range of hardness or the range of I
graphite to clay. And the harder pencils are going to
have more clay and the softer pencils are going to have more
graphite. And so that way if you're just starting off you
may want to keep it really light and you may not want to
start laying in these thick tones until you're getting
really really confident.
But if you know the job you want to do there's all kinds of
tools available.

So I'm sure you guys never make a mistake. But even if you
don't, the eraser is a tool in and of itself and I'm going to
just lay a little bit of tone down.
Just taking a conte, just something to work with.
So we can just look at a few different type of eraser marks
and they can be drawing tools as well. So we've got this
little guy, that's a kneaded eraser. You can make sweet
little dog sculptures in between classes out of these
guys. And you can fold it so that you've got kind of a clean
spot. If you really want to try to get a little tighter on
something you can kind of pull that end, find a new clean spot,
pinch it, and that's going to affect the kind of mark you can
lift out.
That'll help lift it out a little bit this way. This guy
more just of a average white kind of plastic eraser. This
guy's already kind of got these hard edges. See how it works on
graphite over here.
And this one's probably more reminiscent of the kind you
used in school growing up. It doesn't quite have the
versatility of this one that you can sculpt does, this kneaded
eraser. So that's this guy versus this guy. And then this is
sweet I just swiped it out of Chris's box, this is an eraser
pencil literally encased in wood, looks like a Faber Castell
and let's just play with this here. So let's take this
guy over this tone.
So it's lifting it out as well. We look over here just on the
graphite.
So look at that. I mean this is really fine. You can sharpen
this to a point. So if you're doing an exercise where you
want to do some really tight rendering or careful work, this
thing would be awesome. Take that razor just like you would
sharpen another pencil. So we've done a really quick here
intro to some different types of marks made with pencils
and with the erasers. So Chris is going to come in here and
tell you a little about pens and markers.

Really pens and markers come in two basic forms. Either going to
be some kind of ballpoint, like this on the right, or a felt tip,
like this over here on the left.
Little tiny felt tip. So let's start with a ballpoint.
Now my favorite pen in the universe is the ordinary BIC
office ballpoint. BIC is a very very common pen.
Just a nice ordinary ballpoint pen makes a beautiful pretty
lines, very similar effect to like a drawing pencil and they
come in different sizes and forms. This is an old-school
one here. You can also get a ballpoint with what's called
gel ink. This is a little bit of a gel pen, little bit of a darker
ink and these are all at the office store. You can find them
at the art store too but you can just find them at any old school supply
or office store. Very common, very easy to find you can even get them
for free. That's what I love about them. So ordinary
ballpoint pen is great for drawing, great for practice.
Another common pen, you'll find are the felt tips. So these are
two different brands, really really nice tight precise line.
I'll show you that looks like, really tight line and this is a
Sakura Micron brand, very common brand, also felt tip. More the
artsy kind, most art stores should be able to get. And the
advantage of felt versus ball point is that felt almost
always dry right away. A gel or a ballpoint may not dry too
quickly, but felt tips will dry almost instantly as soon as
they touch your papers, so they're great for making nice
permanent lines. And speaking of permanent let's get into
the markers. So
probably my favorite marker in the universe is the sharpie aka
the black permanent marker, AKA you can find it anywhere in the
universe. Look at that bad boy.
And now sharpies come in different sizes and shapes.
This is the most common marker and this is like the
pen it's a felt tip pen. So it dries instantly. Nice and dark
and rich mark. This is a sharpie that has two sides.
These are fairly common now, you can also get them in this
big boy size with a big fat wedge.
So great for making bigger strokes, getting more
coverage. So I really love the sharpie because it's nice and
dark. It's inexpensive and very very easy to find.
And finally the last type of marker that you may be using,
you may enjoy the art markers. This is prismacolor
brand. They also make really nice colored pencils and things
but the markers are excellent and there are several
different brands you may find but they typically will be in
the same style. Kind of this big fat looking body with two tips.
This one has a fine tip.
And this one has a big fat head, a wedge tip is what it's called. alleged tips what it's called
So you can get a variety of different marks. These come in
different colors, but for drawing, I love grey. This
one's a 40%, it's right in the middle. It's about a mid-tone
grey. And of course black, black all day long because black
gives you a nice
crispy dark mark, get a lot of coverage. These are great. So
these actually have beautiful tones, that's the advantage of
these guys versus the sharpie is that you can get a whole
range of tones and it's a really nice clean pigment. So
think of it as sharpie is more of like a crude sketching tool and
if you really want to do renderings there are many ways to
beautiful renderings with prismacolor markers or other
types of art markers you may find at your local art store.
Okay. So that was a quick look at various pens that you can
use and enjoy when you're drawing. Now let's take a look
at some papers and various papers and things you can use
as well when you're doing your drawings.

When you're first getting started, the variety of options
out there can be a little intimidating. We're going to
talk briefly about how paper's made and then show you some
real ones you can go out and pick up today. And if you look
at paper under a microscope, you'll actually see like a web
of these long fibers. Those fibers act as a file and that's
what's going to hold the pigment that you use in your
writing utensil on the page. So the degree to which you press
into that or the degree of hardness of the utensil you'll
leave a variety of marks. Paper can be made from a variety of plant
fibers, but the most common are wood and cotton. Now wood is a
little less archival unless it's treated and you'll find
wood in examples like newsprint. Although if it is
treated with something like an addition of cellulose you can
actually have them archival paper and things like tracing
papers have a degree of cellulose in them. There's a
blend of the two, a mix of the cotton and the wood and that's
probably most common. You're going to see that in your
sketchbooks and in a lot of charcoal drawing paper. The
alternative to a blend would maybe be a hundred percent
cotton rag and those are some of the most archival papers and
highest quality papers. The cotton is not going to degrade
at the rate that the wood will. So newsprint, if it's made of
wood, it might only last two or three years and it gets kind of
attacked by environmental factors right away that cotton
is where you want to go when you're ready to work on
finishing some pieces, things you want to keep or sell.

All right. Let's look at some common papers and ones that we
would recommend using at New Masters Academy. So starting on
the end here, this is a really smooth newsprint. And the
newsprint is going to be great for sketching and studying.
It's not going to be great for anything you want to keep.
Newsprint can actually start to deteriorate within like two or
three years. Next to that is a bond paper and the bond paper
is a blend. It's going to be a mix of the wood and the cotton
and bond papers are common. Those are also seen in writing
and printing, the stuff you stick in your copier, and they
have varying degrees of quality, but they are going to
last longer than the newsprint. So if you're a student wanting
to do sketches and you're worried about using newsprint
because you think I might actually like this I might want
to keep it then you might consider stepping up to a bond
or a blended paper. The tracing papers are great. Those
actually are non aging, they have a really nice smooth
surface for doing studies on. This is 66 percent cotton rag,
this is the Canson paper. This also comes in a nice tone. So
that's another option. If you want to have maybe a dark value
and maybe you have like a white conte crayon, you can find a
paper in a middle value and then use your utensils for the darkest
darks and the lightest lights and let that be the lights and let that be the
mid-range.
You can also find paper with different tints and color. This
is also an example of a laid pattern and the laid refers to
the wire screen which gives it a texture. Here we have the
Bristol from Strathmore and this starts to get a little bit
thicker and the thicker the paper the more forgiving it's
going to be, the more you'll be able to get your eraser in
there. And you know, the more redos you're going to get. This
is a vellum finish but there's a couple different finishes
with Bristol.
And then finally at the end here this is a hundred percent
cotton and it's handmade and if you look at the edge here, it's
a little bit rough because it's a deckled edge. And these are some
of the highest quality, most archival papers that are around.
So you can really experiment. You'll find if you're using
something like graphite, you're probably going to want a
smoother surface. If you're using a charcoal or conte you
do want a little bit of texture. And if you're using a pastel
you probably really want a lot of texture in your paper. So
we've given you a lot of options for paper, but let's
keep it simple. We have two that we recommend that will get you
a lot of mileage. This is one favorite. This is Biggie is one favorite. This is Big E
by Canson. This is a bond paper. It's a little more
archival than a basic newsprint. It's easy to find.
You can get this in the store or online. Great for sketches
and studies. And this is a classic newsprint. This one is
bound, but you can get it even less expensive if you buy it in
loose sheets, and it does come in rough and smooth and we
really recommend that you get smooth. So now you have an idea
of what paper you might want to pick up whether you're starting
out or you're working on your next masterful piece.

All right. Now we're going to talk about one of my favorite
subjects is the sketchbook. Sketchbooks come in many sketchbooks come in many
different forms, many different sizes. So let's start with
probably one of the most common ones. This is just a hardbound
little mini black book here. And this is great, keep some -
keep some notes in it, do some little thumbnails. Yeah
definitely. I see those everywhere and they come in all
different sizes as well. But the hardbound is very common. I
personally like the spiral bound, just like the hardbound,
same type of material on the outside, but what I like is
that you can lay it flat. This is great for photographing and
scanning so if you want to archive your work. If you don't
want to get a premade sketchbook, you can get
creative. You can have your own made to get some paper together
and have it bound. The hard bound books can feel really down books can feel really
precious. They're permanent, right? You don't want to x‑acto knife
out a page in here. There's some other great ways
to be more creative. One step up from the cocktail napkin at the
bar, the Post-it note. These are great. These are already like a
frame and you can sit there and you can whip through them, you
can brainstorm, you can do thumbnails. If you like them
you can stick them up on the wall. When you're done these
are a great way to start idea generation or maybe composing
in the field if you're plein air or you know, you don't want to
have to carry around a bunch of stuff. Another way to kind of
free things up, be a little more creative with it is just to get
a clipboard and any kind of lose cheap paper that you want.
If you want to take it a step up you can also get specialty
papers. One of the favorite ways I like to go is with the
tone paper sketch book. This is a spiral-bound tone paper. This
one is in a grey tone and they come in all different shades.
And what I like about tone paper, obviously you can have
the option to go black and also add white.
So that's great about tone paper. And you can also, if you
want to get into water media, you can get a watercolor sketch
book and obviously this has little bit thicker paper. So if
you want to experiment with watercolor like this or if
you're just beginning drawing, you can go with inks and black
and white watercolor washes as well. This is more than just
drawing for me. This is a way of life. These are my personal
sketchbooks and notice they're full son. What's up? Yeah. This
has got to be a part of your life. And that's one of the
ways that you can get the most out of your practice time is to
bring your sketchbook. So if you're a serious student, you
know, Chris, I've heard that when you're trying to work in
something like entertainment, they'll ask you, they'll look
through your sketchbook. Is that true? Oh, 100%. In fact many many
entertainment studios, animation, video games, even film,
advertising, entertainment work, when you come to the interview,
you better make sure your sketchbook is packed, you better
make sure it's full because that's how they judge whether
you're serious whether, you're committed. So definitely if
you're leaning towards that career path, you definitely
want to carry a sketchbook with you. Alright, so we've covered
the basic materials to get started and now let's talk
about the furniture you need to set up a studio space.

Another great option is to work digitally. So I'm going to a digitally. So I'm going to
show you a few options now. And digital technology has come a
long way in the last two or three years. These two we have
from Wacom and this is one from Apple. So starting with this
tablet, this is something that you are going to plug into
your monitor and you will work here and see the image on the
screen. So this is working with indirect vision. The tablet to
be able to recognize tilt and pressure. So this is a great
option. Next to that we have another tablet, but this is a
tablet plus a monitor. So it still needs to be plugged into
the computer but with this you will actually be drawing
directly on your image.
I'll show you one more.
The iPad Pro with the Apple pencil. And this one is great.
This is a standalone computer. So this is a tablet computer
that can be used without plugging anything else and you
can just take this with you anywhere you go so it's super
convenient and it's very great to use. If it's in your
means, this is probably the one we would recommend. Now, there's
several options for software that can go with these.
Photoshop is great. Sketchbook is great. If you have this
there is an app, Procreate is highly recommended. And you are
welcome to continue to work with me as I will be which is
traditionally as we move through the beginner series. If
you want to work digitally, that's great as well. Anything
we do can be adapted for digital because in the end
drawing is a drawing.

So the first thing I'm going to talk about is what's called the
drawing horse or drawing bench. And the reason why they call it
a drawing horse because it's pretty much a wooden bench with
a nice high back and flat bench to sit on. These are the
pre-made kind. You can order them online or have them made
in your local area. Or you can also choose to make them
yourself, do it yourself kind of thing. I personally made one
for my home studio. It cost me including materials maybe
around 30 dollars U.S. I know mine's stable because I'm not as
handy so I paid probably around like 90 bucks us for mine.
Yeah, true. Typically you can get them for that price. Go
ahead and just mount up. So you've got the back that you
mentioned before and the point is that you've got something to
rest it on and then you're going to have a decent angle to
your viewpoint. You'll notice - I think I just
instinctively got on and slid like almost to the back because
you know, I learned to draw kind of standing up at an easel
and one thing you want to make sure you do is you know not
get tunnel vision because this is so close. You don't want to
be working really tight. So when you sit back and you set
up you actually can see better context, the relationships of
you know, the parts a little more easily. I like to draw
standing up myself. Whenever I sit at my drawing bench I
scoot way, way back. It's a danger zone. Yeah. In fact, I'll often
get up and stand quite a bit just to get a better
perspective and for comfort too. If you don't mind stealing
off your other furniture you probably you could have some
custom something made, just grab a cushion. Oh, she gets a red one.
Because drawing is a commitment, right? I mean, you're not
drawing for 10 minutes at a time, I'm guessing. What's your
standard drawing time? Oh my God, 3 hours. 3 hours. That's just part
one. It's kind of nice to have. The other cheat that I was
gonna say is if you're in a workshop and maybe you can't
get up and step back if, there's another row of folks behind you,
take your camera on your phone, even if you've got it
flipped off to airplane mode and go ahead and take a square
photo of your image and that can act as a reducer. So
if you can't step back, you can take a photo and kind of zoom
out that way.

So here we have a pretty common wooden studio easel. These come
in all different shapes and sizes. This is mid grade level
and I would say it's about roughly anywhere from 150 to
200 dollars U.S. I personally use an aluminum one at home.
It's a little bit less expensive. But this one is
definitely a nice big sturdy one. People that work in really
large formats often have significantly larger easels.
Yeah for drawing purposes and for typical drawing board,
I think this is a great size. A lot of them are very similar
variation on a theme. So these two in the front here are going
to raise and lower this bottom plane.
This will take care of this little top guy. And if I go
around the back, there's another one that can
accommodate changes to this height here. So if I loosen
this
and this one in the back, I can take this lower if I want to.
I actually have it high on my one at home just because I have
a light clipped to it.
And then if you want to take this down a notch,
you want to kind of do it square.
I'm usually careful doing this too because I've clipped my
Gamsol right to the yeah edge. And then you can go ahead and
bring this guy down. And also this top piece make sure your
board is nice and secure. And if you want to adjust front to
back you can just turn the knob down here and again every easel
that I've seen they've all had similar placement of the knobs,
they'll be somewhere down here. Just loosen them.
And to kick your board forward or back. I personally like to
work a little bit forward. I know it sounds strange. But this way I
get less overhead light. A lot of times in the studio or if you're
drawing at a figure drawing workshop, then the glare can
affect your drawing. I like to work a little bit facing down,
but that's... Do you have to weight the back of it if you're
leaning it towards you or...? That's true, you do. That's why
I don't go too far. That's why I put
my foot here. I'll have to just put my foot here to make sure
it doesn't move. So pretty much every easel I've seen, like I
said before all the adjustment knobs will be in about the same
place. The main thing is you want to make it as comfortable
as possible. So whenever you get your easel and start using
it and start drawing regularly, just make sure that it's
perfect height for you and the perfect angle so that your
drawing experience is comfortable and your drawing stays nice and
even about eye level so that you get a nice even
drawing, a nice even view of your drawing.

Okay, the last piece of furniture we're gonna talk about is
the most common, probably the most readily available, and
that's the good old-fashioned chair. Now I know we recommend
the drawing horse and I personally use it myself and
I'm sure Heather enjoys it when she's drawing as well, but we
know they're not available everywhere and that's what
we're going to show you today is how you can make the most
out of the ordinary common household chair. So Heather you
have two chairs. I got one. Can you show us how you could start
drawing if you have two chairs at home? Yeah, so if you've got
two, go ahead and just line them up front to back and one is for
you to have a seat. And the other is for your board.
So you support the board with your back. That's right. Okay,
The one chair exactly the same principle. You want to use the
back of the chair to support the board, not your back. So you
basically want to sit like this. I know it's a little bit
awkward.
And then just put your board here and now you have a nice
stable surface for your board.
Now I know this may not be the most comfortable position but I
personally have had to use the chair myself when I go to
workshops that didn't have horses. So as long as you have
a nice strong sturdy board, you can pretty much make the most
out of the furniture you have, especially if you only have a
chair.

Okay. Now we're going to talk about lights. In the past
artists used to have to rely on the sunlight or candles if they
want to draw and paint at night, but now with modern
technology we can have pretty much sunlight all day long.
There's a bunch of different kinds of lights. So to focus on
a few, there's the incandescent. When you think of a light think
of this ordinary thing. Perfect. Okay. Yes that's
incandescent. The common light. Incandescent. Like
A little yellow. And now we can afford to be picky because
there's so many types of light. So incandescent. The LEDs, those
have come a long way. I've heard of those. They're a little smaller, a
little sharper shadows. I think we want to focus on
fluorescent. Fluorescents are great in terms of that
spectrum. That is very white. That's a lot like daylight. When
she mentions daylight, you probably heard a lot about
temperature and things like that. So let's take a
look at some fluorescents. These are the same type of
light, fluorescent, but two different shapes. This one's
obviously going to be a little bit brighter and they both produce
really nice even light. And when Heather mentioned temperature,
you might have seen this
this number range. Like for me what it really
simplifies down to is the color because lights come in
different colors. Really either going to
be warm or cool. So either going to be yellowy and orange,
like incandescents like Heather mentioned, they're going to be
cooler, maybe little bit towards the blue, or they're going to be
right in the middle. And these are known as neutral lights or
white lights. And that's what fluorescents offer is nice
neutral white even light. And speaking of even, now Heather if
you are using fluorescents to light your workspace can you
show us some ways that you would recommend how to make
nice even light for your studio or your workspace? Yeah. Let's
take a look at a setup.

All right, if you can scrape together a little money, we're
going to talk about a simple but ideal light setup. These
units here, there's a stand with the bulbs. Each of these is maybe
around $120 U.S. So you can get the twenty u.s. So you can get the
pair for you know under $250. The way we've set it up is that we
have the two lights coming in symmetrically at 45 degrees. So
if this is our surface here, which it is, and we're looking
at the easel, if we think of this as the center line here we've
got a light coming off this way and we've got another light
coming off this way so that this is actually allegedly a
right angle and that this
symmetry means that this is equidistant to this. Does that
make sense? You would put the light bulb here and this
other light bulb here. Here we are.
This is our surface and we've got light bulb one and lightbulb two.
And the reason we're doing them there is we want to have the light
hit equally to reduce the glare. And you also kind of want to
observe, look at the quality of this light here. You can sort
of see my shadow on this page. How would you describe the
quality of the light from these? Well the light feels very soft, for the legs feels very soft
nice and even, very soft. And it's also known as a diffused
light and one way Heather got that is not only because the
lights are at a 45 degree angle, but she also has these
nice soft boxes placed on the light stands to help soften
the light.

We tackled an ideal scenario and that's great if you're
ready and that's in your budget. If it's not and our goal is
to find a way to get going, one of the ways you can get started
is with an ordinary clamplight. It's called clamplight because it's
got one of these. Now these are much less expensive than the
setup we have here with the light stand and the soft boxes.
You can get these for as little as ten US dollars in many
stores and one way I like to do it is you can either set
it up right above your easel. I know Heather has a similar
setup when she's drawing and painting at home. I've often
also had it put on a chair, another piece of furniture
behind you. You can even get two at this price. So this is a great
budget way to light your setup and still get fairly even light,
fairly soft or diffused light as well.

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