Valentines Day Sketch Tour notes.

These are thumbnail studies made at the Valentines Day Sketch Tour. Kelly Medford from Rome was offering advice on making simple value studies. I used a blunt black colored pencil to quickly fog in some grey valves and line work. Although the exercise wasn’t about color, I couldn’t resist adding a few watercolor washes. The color swatches were added to show the colors available with the palette we gave each student. First a thick swatch us added with plenty of pigment. Then the color was thinned with to of water to show how light values cool be achieved. Our lakeside classroom felt a be in like a Colosseum with the gentle arch of the shoreline.

After all the mornings sketches, we all took a lunch break an found food from vendors in the Mennello Museum’s Folk Festival. After lunch it was my turn to inspire artists to try and populate their sketches. I posed and the had several students pose to give everyone an idea of how to quickly block in a figure. Then I explained one and 2 point perspective and had student create a for grid plane. They then took the figure studies the Did and added them to the grid plane. Large figures were is the foreground and small figures were is the background. Then we all explored the crowded Folk Festival, with the objective to incorporate as mane figures in one sketch as was possible. We agreed to return to our quiet lakeside classroom to share the results.