This lesson is all about foreground, middle ground, and background.
We’re talking about planes in space, working and bringing in shadows.
Taking and being inventive with the subject in front of you.
In his 50 years in the fine arts industry, Glenn Vilppu has gained fame for his Renaissance
approach for drawing and painting.
He is represented in collections throughout the US, Canada, and Europe, and has put on
over 20 one-man shows.
His traditional observational techniques for teaching and drawing have become the standard
for professional artists everywhere.
In this series, Glenn takes the NMA.art team out of the studio and into various environments
for on location landscape and figure drawing.
How do you use artistic elements to take and make your sketching even better.
Let’s go draw.

Okay, in this lesson we are talking about planes in space.
In the first lesson we were dealing with direct point-to-point, and last week we were dealing
with thumbnails.
Now we’re going to take and in this lesson carry that process a little bit farther.
It’s how do use the artistic elements to take and make that sketch of yours even better.
Okay, let’s go draw.
Okay, on this lesson we’re focusing on planes.
First, let me show you some drawings, these were some, last week we talked about thumbnail
sketches.
Here you can see this is a thumbnail for this watercolor.
These are—often when I’m traveling I would take and do variations of these.
I did a couple of these with the idea, and I was thinking and planning in here.
And then I did this.
I actually recorded that as I was doing it.
Now these were done in Denmark and it was raining.
I did these actually in a bus and we were traveling.
You can see it was very free.
This is in the moors in Denmark.
Notice, now, when we start talking about planes, notice what I’m dealing with here.
You notice that we have this small green area across here, and we’ve got the water, and
we’ve got these large clouds.
You can look at these.
You can see it in here.
The stripes.
Each of these stripes are slightly different.
We can see the green in the foreground.
We’re stepping back.
Then this large expanse of clouds.
We have a foreground, a middle ground, and a background.
I’ll go through and explain this even more.
What you’re seeing now, literally it was pretty cool.
They just did this very, very quick.
But you can see you have a foreground.
Again, you have a foreground, middle ground, and a background.
Each one of these elements now, here I’m leading the eye back.
You can see the planes even here picking up just a little bit of red into that red that’s
way in the background.
We’re taking even the color, but these are, notice the size of these.
Not large.
Most of the stuff I’m doing is with this little watercolor thing that I’ve got up
here that I’ve shown you before.
Okay, let’s jump around here some more.
Again, these are a sequence of thumbnails.
I was a visitor at Vasquez Rocks.
We’re taking and thinking, you can see diagramming, playing with the possibilities.
They’re color but I think of these as roughs.
These are thumbnails.
Sketching.
Taking and just drawing the feeling, the flow of the rocks.
Again, here what you see is a foreground and we’re moving in and you can feel the sweep
of the rocks and things that we’re going through.
Each one of these are using that very basic, simple means of taking and organizing the
picture.
I’m taking something in the foreground.
Notice that they also tend to be reading from left to right.
Let’s take and quickly go through this and then I’ll take and—now these are done
with gouache.
Again, a lot of the same concepts.
Notice the thumbnails again.
These are thumbnails for very small roughs, which then would be the basis for taking and
doing a painting.
Again, all of this stuff is carrying along, and here again, the whole sequence of roughs
that I did.
Okay, so now let’s take and explain this whole concept of planes a little bit.
What you’re working with.
Now, the simplest way to understand this is to see your canvas as like a stage.
This is like a stage, looking down.
We have front of the stage.
We have the middle ground in the stage, and then we would have the background flats and
what have you.
So, foreground, middle ground, and background as you’re looking down on the top of a stage.
We look at the picture then, what we have then.
You’re going to find that just working with these foreground, middle ground, and background
that having clear, distinct differences make the biggest difference in your picture making.
Again, the foreground becomes something simple in foreground here.
It also brings in the question of when you talk about the textures.
This foreground can be one kind of a texture.
You can find something.
Another texture here, maybe they are verticals.
Then we can have a completely different kind of texture back up here.
We get a clear separation, different parts of the picture.
These also become aesthetic point.
The contrast of one kind of texture against another kind of texture, the differences we’re
talking about it.
If you look at the works of Pierre Manard, the French artist, you’ll find that his
paintings were almost totally dependent on that simple idea of the differences in texture,
but he was using them also in a planal sense.
Even though the paintings are generally quite flat.
Okay, so let’s take and look at our landscape here.
Now, as we look at this landscape what we’re dealing with, and it’s quite simple.
By the way, what I’m drawing with is a carpenter’s pencil.
This is a 6B carpenter’s pencil.
I use this a lot.
Working professionally I used it quite often and working in the studio, taking and doing
thumbnails, roughs, but also it’s great for doing values.
Now, if we look at the painting here, or I should say the landscape here, what you’re
seeing is exactly what I was talking about, sort of recognizing what is in front of you.
Here I could take and—this is one of the things you have to be careful of now.
In breaking down, in terms of thinking of the planes, first we have the foreground with
the textures in here.
Now you can see the line, the line of the sand here creates a clear distinct difference
as we’re going through.
We have this difference that’s going through in here.
That’s the clear, simple thing that allows you to take and work with the textures.
In other words, the planes are separating so we get a very clear point where we have
all of this stuff.
What you’re seeing now is that it’s the compositional element that is making the biggest
difference in what you’re doing.
Not just the rendering of something, but it’s the composition.
Now as I look at that plane coming down here, we can take and, at that point I would be
coming in and picking out, for instance, like the trees here.
The trees are in the back here.
This is a Joshua Tree for those of you who aren’t in California.
This is a very, very popular area out in the desert.
I go there fairly regularly for camping and hiking.
Now, from here to here, notice there is a value change.
I’ll talk about that in a little bit.
We’ll use that as really a tool.
As we’re doing this what I’m really conscious of is the size that the space takes on the
canvas.
Now, when I come in and start to draw the next layer, I have to be careful that I don’t
make these distances equal.
I need to take and, I would purposely take and drop this, making it smaller than actually
what you see there because I don’t, I have to, I want to avoid the equalness.
There is another reason.
As this side back here is dropping down, I will take and lift up as we start to rise here.
I will take and build this up.
Now you have to take and keep in mind that when you’re doing something like a landscape
or any kind of painting, what you’re doing is you’re creating an experience.
You’re not copying what you’re seeing.
As I start to build this thing up, look at the way the rocks are starting to go up in here.
We can feel the pattern.
Now, there is another layer of pattern in this picture.
If you look at the whole row of rocks up in here up on top, they create a new kind of
texture that’s taking and coming through.
We also, you can see now we’ve moved back through the picture.
The textures up here would be different than what we have here, of what we have here, of
what we have here.
Everything I’m doing now is a sequence of playing with differences.
In talking about planes, it’s not just planes, it’s taking and we’re talking about a
bit of the art that takes place in what you’re doing.
We have a foreground, a middle ground, and a background.
Now, we can take and work with this in another way also.
I’m going to keep sort of building up on this little sketch here.
I can come back through here and say, but okay we’ve got the bushes here.
We’ve got this texture.
Now, one of the lessons we’re going to be working with later on is a pencil technique,
what I would call a broad pencil technique.
Right now I’m just using a broad pencil to take and basically get some kind of an
effect of the density of the objects here.
Little bit of value.
I’m dropping this into tone a little bit.
I’m approaching those, I’m approaching this as a sketch type of thing that I would
take and do.
I could take and I could be doing this.
When I’m traveling, as you just saw, I do the paintings, the little watercolors, those
were done in Denmark up near Skane where the oceans come together up there.
Come through.
Notice I’m making lines that are making the eye move across through here.
At the same time we also have elements that are dropping.
Now I usually come back.
I pick up, this is a very, very light area.
I come through.
Here I’m going to take and look at this.
We’ve got the tree in the background.
I’m taking a lot of what I see there.
We can see this go through.
I would take build this dark.
It helps to emphasize this line.
We’ve got the elements building back.
Notice that I drop this down, which in a sense we’re creating a sense of space.
Again, this is another element that we come in to.
As I’m going across the picture we’re dropping down and we’re lifting up.
In fact, I would take and I would go over here.
I will lift the rocks up even more so that we get a sense of movement building within.
As I’m doing this, again, I look of the differences.
I don’t want to make this the same as that or the same as that.
I would take and go out of my way to make this even different.
We’re talking about how the picture planes break.
As I’m building up, coming through.
Feel the rock lifting up.
At the same time that we’re going this way and going down, by lowering this I start to
create a sense that the space in the picture is going back in that direction.
Now, I could very easily at the same time as I’m doing this be taking and, notice
right now I’m taking and changing the value so we’re getting another sense of texture.
It’s also a darker area.
I’m coming through.
I’m building the movement going up, coming through.
What I’m getting is sort of sweeping flow going up.
Now, at the same time, I’m bringing this all out from what I actually see.
I’m just orchestrating what I see.
Now we can see all of the shrub taking and heading off.
They tend to be creating a line that goes this way, and we start to maybe overlap that
hill a little bit.
Everything is going one way.
Now, there is another element that we can play here.
This is something we will take, and I will expand on this as we go through the lesson.
Since you’re outside, and you’re taking and working within the possibilities outside;
we’ve got wind, rain, we’ve got clouds.
We’re having clouds.
Now for instance, I’m tracking primarily about now the composition of how these things
go.
I can take and now have clouds, for instance, taking and going in this direction.
Now when you have clouds, of course, then you have shadow.
You can take and have shadows coming in from anywhere.
You can make the shadows work how you want them to work.
I’m just going to use a simple wash going over this to take and throw some shadows.
This is my little watercolor thing.
I’m going to take it down and put it down here.
It’s a little too vertical up here.
I’m not holding this sketchbook in my lap.
I'm just mixing some gray in here, sepia is actually what it is.
Now, I can take and go over this.
I can say, well, gee, I want to take and separate.
I want to take and drop this into tone.
I’m dropping it into shadow.
I’m taking and creating a shadow in the foreground.
Now you can see it’s immediately taking and separating one thing from the next to
the next so you’re getting a stepping back in the picture.
As I do that I can apply again.
We can here it just as a value now, I can take and say, well okay, we’ve got these
trees here.
So now we can see how quickly with just a little simple wash I can take and emphasize
the planes.
We have a foreground.
Now we’re getting very clearly a middle ground and then we’re getting a background.
Each of these things now.
If I wanted to I could take and come in and even play clouds or shadows taking and coming
across.
We can build areas into shadow.
We can take and make these shadows then, take and do anything you want them to do.
As I look at this, these two things, they are a little too equal to me.
I would probably take and maybe take and drop this shadow now, coming through.
We will let the light come across so that’s not quite so equal.
At the same time now, now we’re taking and we’re still lifting up, and we’re getting
a dropping feeling on this side.
Then I could take and pull some darks going back through here.
Now we’ve got everything moving along though the things.
This is basically the idea and the point of this lesson now; planes, foregrounds, middle
grounds, backgrounds.
We can see as you look I’ve made a major difference from what I’m looking at even
though the hint was there, that clean simple line of the ground with the differences in
texture in the foreground to the middle ground to the background.
Now, as I’m doing this, I would have a tendency to come in and then emphasize.
I could come through in here and even just with a simple wash I’m taking and adding
another sense of dimension.
I would take and possibly, as I’m looking at this I can say, well, I can give a little
more depth within even the plane itself by taking and picking up, coming through.
I’m adding strokes.
These are things now that you can see as you look at the scene.
I’m using what I see there.
I’m building up the texture of these planes as we take and work through here.
It’s expanding and the eye starts to fill in.
Even though that I come back and I can emphasize this and start to give some of the character
of the elements that I’m looking at.
We’ve got palm trees we can build.
Let’s say I’m doing this.
The trick is a very, very simple sketch that is taking and elaborating on.
Now, I could take this idea with say a photo reference or something like that, and I could
take and turn this into a painting with no effort at all.
Let’s take a different scene here.

Okay, now we have a completely different kind of environment.
We went from the desert to a very, very lush scene.
We’re slightly looking down.
We have a very high horizon line.
Let’s just take and look at the possibilities here now.
Now first we’ve been using these shadows and stuff to take and create this.
Before I even start doing that I’m going to take a couple thumbnails.
I started to say, okay, I’m consciously thinking now foreground, middle ground, background.
But I can also, as I’m doing this, I’m thinking of the possibility of taking and
using shadows.
Here’s where I would take and come in and use the carpenter’s pencil to take and very,
very simply blocking in whole patterns now of dark and light.
Coming through.
As I’m going through now, as I’m going back into the picture, the river takes and
becomes obvious.
We’ve got this movement going back.
I take the hint here from the shadow on the side of this mountain here.
We have these horizontal lines that we can see coming through.
They’re green.
Again, we’re getting differences then.
Notice I took, right away in the foreground I created this hill.
It’s absolutely different than the texture and the values of the green behind it.
Then we have the next layer in here that’s, again, a sequence of lines, a series of lines
and horizontals.
A small scale difference.
We can take and, as I look at this I’m going to take and visualizing this stuff, this hill
is lifting up.
And we go back to these basically straight horizontal now.
I visualize these horizontals now.
This is like repeating the frame, and these become tools and they have this really bluish
background of the mountains in the distance, and we have all this stuff.
I would take and as we’re going through.
I can say, well, we’ve got this plane going across here.
I’m visualizing this.
I’m giving you all of my thinking now as I’m going across here looking at this.
I start planes, light and dark, I would maybe make this shadow area here go back over all
of this so that I’m making a clear separation.
And since there are clouds and stuff in the background, all the excuses without having
to totally reinvent everything.
It’s a beautiful scene, but it needs to be organized.
There is almost too much.
This becomes sort of without taking and going through a whole bunch more thumbnails, I’m
just going to jump into this, and you can see my thinking in the process now.
I’m starting thinking the frame.
Now we’ve got, I was already, as I was looking and seeing and drying a thumbnail.
I was already conscious of the fact that we had the sequence of horizontals.
I could start with the ground down here.
This is a horizontal.
Come across.
This is another horizontal but we’re stepping down.
This is going down, going through, and I would take here and make an effort to think of things
in the foreground even more to get the feeling of dropping down.
As we’re going through this thing now you can feel this dark area.
Again, really conscious of where things are, but I’m also at this point looking across
the line that’s going through here.
I’m constantly building these things.
I’m going to, without getting very detailed yet, I’m going to come through and start
to build these planes coming back.
We can feel this will be a dark coming through, coming back.
I’m already thinking in the foreground here.
Generally, we read pictures from left to right.
I can think of this as a sequence of, even here we’re getting and going through, but
we have this hill in the foreground.
In a sense we’re taking and going in.
We’re going into the picture this way and at the same time we’re going down and in.
We’re visualizing just as if we’re taking and hiking.
Coming across here we can take and—as you look at the scene now you can see the sequence
of overlapping lights and darks.
Where I’m seeing this now is look at this part here.
You’re seeing the tree.
We’re going to spend a separate session just on foliage.
We’ll talk about this a lot more.
Through here, notice that now we create another layer.
We’re overlapping planes within the trees themselves.
These become stepping down elements that we take and are working with darks and lights
overlapping, coming through.
All of this then becomes a plane.
We can see that this behind the hills that’s in the foreground.
In fact, what I would do here now is emphasize this foreground.
I would take and this is sort of a hint of what I see there.
I’ll come in and I will take and put something close, shrubs like I did in the last drawing.
Again, we get something by scale.
I’m giving the sense of something really close, leaves and things.
We have the hill.
We have the trees that are farther away.
As I build this up into here, I have to be careful now.
I’ve got this distance here.
I don’t want the next thing to be.
I almost did that.
You have to take and be very consciously thinking about differences.
This distance has to be really different.
What I’m doing is I’m lifting up as we move across.
This is emphasizing the fact that we have everything down here.
I’m going to take this line.
Notice what I’m doing is building a series of alignments that help to take and give the
picture some kind of solidity.
Now I come through.
I’m thinking I’ve got the river going back in, come through, coming across.
We’re stepping down.
We’re going back in.
We’re going back in.
Within this we have this whole area now that’s very different from each of these other areas.
We’re alternating simple against complex as we go through.
We also can take and see the horizontal lines of here, just the landscape itself, and we
can pick up.
Now, here is the mountain here.
It’s rising up on this side.
Again, in doing that rising up, I have to be careful that I don’t take and break that
down to be the same size as this.
I’m going to build up here so that the sky up here is a different proportion.
You’re consciously looking for the differences within the picture as you’re doing it.
It’s coming across and then this will carry through in here.
The horizontals are the way of repeating the frame.
Now we can see that as we’re going in this way you can see the strong diagonal that’s
going across and going up into here.
You know if I change where things are particularly, I’m taking and moving things around.
I’m not stuck to this thing to what I see in front of me.
I’ll take this and we’ve talked about the shadows.
I will take this and come through.
Maybe I’ll carry this into here.
I want to take and, again, I would leave a bit of light in between, and we can see that
we have the same green over here that we have up here, the big flat areas, the farming.
As this lifts up you can see we’ve got the trees up here.
This becomes a good excuse now.
I’m just going to pull this up.
I’m bringing it up above the horizon line, and we can see that these are coming through.
Really big areas now.
Again, as I’m breaking this down I’m breaking this into different sizes as I’m going through.
I really have to work.
You have to work at this because it’s so natural to make things equal.
Equal gives a sense of stability, but at the same time it creates a sense of boredom.
We’re always taking and trying to take and, see now, we can build.
Progressively as this goes back into the picture.
With the mountains in the background back here coming across I would also take the shadow
thing now.
I would start to build shadows going more, coming through, and maybe even creating the
bit of cloud coming through so we can separate these elements as we’re going back into
the ditch.
Let’s just take and use the simple device of dropping in shadows.
In this case, the first one over here we did, I used the shadow in the foreground.
We already have sort of an indication of this.
I’m going to take and leave the foreground in the light, but at the same time, I’m
thinking of having something overlapping in the foreground.
If you look at—I worked in the animation industry, film industry for many years, you
will find what I’m doing is very, very much almost standard procedure as you’re looking
at film.
You’ll find that the strong sense of light and dark patterns that are created, that are
used to create depth within a picture.
Here, even within the very limited range right here, I will take and I’ve got trees in
here.
The next step I’ll leave a bit of light there, and then I’ll pick up behind.
Pretty much what you see there.
I’m not so inventive as I am at taking and using what’s in front of me as a tool.
I’m recognizing what I have as a way of doing what I want.
It’s really just recognizing—for instance I’ll take this tree that we’ll see there.
That’s a nice tree.
I’m going to blend it a little bit more, and that helps the eye move.
The minute I drew that angle, what I did is I saw the line.
I would take and think of that point, this tree in here, and this plane.
You can see that the tree is part of this thing that is up in here.
I would emphasize this vertical that we’ve got rising up.
All of that rising up will help to feel that all of this is down.
I’m taking and building the picture around a sequence of overlapping planes and overlapping
darks and lights.
In doing this it is fairly simple to take and do this in a landscape.
You can change things.
There is no fear of dealing with perspective and such.
It’s all right there.
You look at that.
Stepping back into the picture.
Coming through.
I’m looking for differences in kind of texture patterns.
Always big against small.
Maybe different kinds of trees coming through.
We can take and use.
You’re always looking within the context of what you’re working with.
You’re always looking for differences.
We can play these planes and it becomes a sequence of overlapping planes that are going
back in space.
This is very, very simple idea, and if you use it you will find it makes a major difference
in your pictures.
This is always one of those things in critiquing student’s work, one of the elements that
tends to have the most difficulty—notice what I did.
See how hard I took and I made that to that the same.
I would have to undo that.
I would have to do something in here to break that line so it’s not the same.
We do it instinctively, and you have to work like crazy to not do that.
That gives you how I would take and basically approach looking at the scene that we’re
dealing with.
Okay, now, in this scene, this is a completely different kind of environment and things you
are looking at.
Often when we’re traveling we come across very, very picturesque things.
It becomes a thing.
Now, again, I will take and start this out by doing a thumbnail.
What I’m drawing now instead of the carpenter’s pencil, this is a, again, this is a 4B but
it’s a regular sketching pencil.
It has a very broad piece of lead so that I can put down tones.
Notice that also when I’m doing this that how I hold the pencil and keeping it down here.
I’m not sitting in and going that way.
I’m sitting back.
First thing I want to do is this.
This water becomes the great thing.
The water is the element we can take and, again, we can add reflections.
Now maybe I would take and I would probably do several thumbnails of this looking a the
big elements here.
It’s going back at a slight diagonal.
In other words, we’re moving into the picture this way.
Going across the architecture.
It’s in here.
You see a big wall, the building.
Its very tempting and the chances are I probably would—in doing something like this—really
focus on the architecture itself.
I want, our lesson today is dealing with planes.
I would take and see, obviously, right away we get a foreground which is simple.
We’re going through in here.
We get the architecture.
All of this stuff is the textural thing that is quite different.
Then we come back and we can see that the hill behind the strong sense of this hill
back here is, again, a simple element.
Maybe I would be taking and making this a little bit larger so I can come back and I
can frame that a little different.
That line doesn’t become part of the picture.
It’s just moving the frame up.
Coming through.
Now, as we rise up, as we’re going in, I would be thinking of a space as really going
in the back in here.
Even though we’re going in this way I would take and think, wow, we’ve got this tree
that’s pushing up.
I would be picking up the hill here.
We’ve got more trees that are going up here.
As I’m doing that, now I’m taking and we have the foreground, the water itself,
but to make that foreground have some sense to it I would be taking and thinking of a
tone across the water that allows us to step back in.
We have all the reflections which would then become a series of vertical planes taking
and going, or lines taking and going up in the textures.
This could become a very interesting picture in terms of talking about the structural elements
here, of how these things go, and I would also be taking in here, I could take and be
dropping these dark trees and things behind, becomes another element.
What I’m trying to do is separate.
You have a road that’s taking and turning, going back in.
I can see now I can get these darks, get the dark patterns of overlapping things.
We’ve got the hill lifting up, and we get this going behind.
We’re taking and we’re organizing middle, you’re seeing my thinking process now.
If I were to take and carry this a bit farther then I would take and, let’s take and try
just a bit larger here now.
Hopefully now you’re getting a little bit of the senses.
You don’t just sit down and copy what’s in front of you.
You try to use the elements that are there and start to create a picture within it.
Now as I’m doing this I can say, okay, well, I’m going in at a diagonal, a little bit
stronger.
I’m thinking this line going back in.
As I work with the building and maybe I’m reducing the building down to a smaller bit
of element within the picture.
So come through.
Actually, as I’m doing it, like I say, I’m reducing this building down, and I start to
see it a little bit more clearly.
You don’t really see something until you draw it.
The more I look I started seeing, wow, he’s go these series of walls in here that are
actually short of stepping forward, and then the building is taking and coming forward
even more the dock out in front of that.
It’s coming forward.
These are coming across this way.
This is adding another dimension to the process that I’m taking.
Again, I’m looking a the planes, looking at where these lines are, where the building is.
Also, notice that since I’ve been doing these thumbnails that these is different.
I’m working differently than the point-to-point.
The point-to-point was I would have started with just stay the corner of the building
and starting adding on with the idea that—and I don’t know long I was going to have to
sit there to do this, that I would then take and get as much of the done that I could in
building it and then later on taking and coming in with the framing of the thing.
I’m taking and going through and blocking in.
That’s a different thing.
Now I’m just taking and, but still, I’m still approaching this as a planning drawing.
I’m still watching the composition and I’m thinking about how would this go.
Already they’ve got a secondary point to come through, and now I’m going to take
advantage and say, this is lifting up.
I’m making this even more.
Since we keep coming out for work this way, now I could take and use shadows coming across
the foreground.
I’m taking and saying this is the foreground now.
The shadows, I’m also making the sort of reflection that would be, I’m making this
other diagonal.
We’ve go the building going in as a diagonal so in a space is going in that direction.
By the way, I’m working with the lines going through.
As I come back into here come back moving back in.
Come through.
I would be thinking about where I can pull it.
Now all of this taking and going up.
If we feel the tree, the roundness of this tree.
That becomes interesting.
We can play a contrast of that round, be thinking of that against the squareness now of the
building.
This would be taking and coming down.
You can see this in the doc coming through.
As that lifts up, I would be taking the dark patterns that are coming through.
As I’m doing this and I look at this and go this could sort of be an interesting painting.
I’m pulling this dark area of dark even stronger over here.
We start to build these patterns that are dark and are taking and now lifting up.
Again, I’m working with alternating textures, light and dark.
The hill here you’re seeing is really quite simple.
I would leave, let the hill be in light behind as we come through.
As this builds, we’ve got the tree coming up here.
This becomes a whole other bit of pattern that we’re working with.
As that’s lifting up, we get all of these reflections now.
All of this stuff taking and becoming lines that are taking and going through here.
I’m dropping down.
We would take and be having light hitting the side of the building.
We can play the possibilities of what we work with.
It can really be quite variable.
Now we’ve got this thing going up this way.
Again, we feel the space as we’re going one way, get this going back here, and we
can very easily take and maybe put something else back down here.
So what happens here now, as I look at this, and see you don’t really know all the time
exactly what the main things are going to be.
As I’m drawing I’m discovering what the possibilities are.
From a design point of view then I am looking at this side here is down.
This side is up.
We’re dealing with squares.
We started dealing with circle forms, and so again, it’s a simple play of opposites.
I think we’ve got a clear idea now as you’re doing your sketches now you should be thinking,
now this is where all the work is.
Once you’ve got this then you can take and intelligently take and start doing a painting.
A lot of times when you’re out sketching what you’re doing is you’re discovering
the possibilities for picture making.
And also, as I showed you in my little watercolors, you’re getting a feeling from the thing.
You’re making little pictures, but here I’m trying to authorize, the elements that
you automatically should be thinking about, playing in foreground, middle ground, background.
We’re talking about the planes.
If we take and go back and look at Renaissance work you’re going to find this is a constant
element.
Look at Rembrandt.
Rembrandt used a simple idea again and again and again as opposed like a formula.
Okay, we had a great session there.
Now in starting out, the first lesson we did point-to-point.
Now in the last lesson we really focused on doing thumbnails.
This lesson was all about foreground, middle ground, background, working with bringing
in shadows, taking and being inventive with the subject that’s in front of you to enhance
the making of better pictures.
The next step we will start to actually go into, a little bit more of the actual techniques
that we use for sketching.