Hello Steemers!

Welcome to Week 2 of the Steem it Artschool! ( You can still join in!! )

Last week we took few careful steps into ‘Negative Space’ and did a few exercises to get everyone familiar with the subject.. if they didn’t yet know what it was!

I was super happy to see how many positive reactions came on this initiative and even happier when I saw there were actually quite some peeps who participated!

To everyone! – Thank you so much!

But enough with the intro! Let’s get to work!!

Week 2 – Negative Space in your face!

This week we remain on the subject of Negative Space! As I mentioned in all the posts of last week it is an extremely important skill that we must train and develop!

So for this week I have a few extra exercises that will help you get better at drawing faces / portraits and finding likeness!
When we train our eyes to see shapes in relation to its surroundings (a different way of looking.)

we can use this skill to determine if we are drawing things in the right proportion.. We can measure with our eyes and more easily spot mistakes just by taking a closer look at a piece of the picture.

The stereotypical artist stance with arm stretched and the pencil pointed vertical or horizontal.. One eye squeezed and looking like a know it all.. Yes.. It helps.. but really it is just show! Honestly.. if that guy trained himself properly (like we are going to do) you can do this with 2 eyes open and just your pencil on the paper! No need to show off! :)

One thing you must learn is to find the large shapes and refine! Here is an example of this.

On this exercise we first go from left to right.
We pick a photo and start blocking out all the shapes that we see. We try to look further than the subject.. not trying to care that it is the face of a person.. we just try to find the shapes of the values.

What we do here is to find and group the value shapes. We look at the image as a collection of shapes and values.. not as a face.
Then we simplify.

First we take the photo and draw all the value shapes that we can find. Then we slowly bring them together and break up the shapes to create bigger shapes.. we create groups.

Then we simplify even further and we are left a simplified version of the face.
This is what you would normally start with if you would paint a portrait.

But for the exercise we reverse engineer a photo into a simplified state. This is to help you train your brain to see and convert complex things into simple shapes. Because really.. every amazing ‘OMG’ painting starts off that way.. A bunch of shapes and values thrown on a canvas with an idea of how it ‘SHOULD’ look.

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WEEK 2 – HOME WORK!
Just like last week (where everyone did great!) I’m giving you some homework to tackle!
I’ll do my best to check out all your posts and provide some helpful feedback!
For everyone who wants to join in.. Feel free! 😊

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Homework exercise 1: Blind Contours

Just like last week! Please do some blind contours from poses on posemaniacs.com or other pose-photos.
I would be happy if you did 4 I would be super happy if you did 8 .. And I will send you 1 SBD if you 12!

Homework exercise 2: Simplification!

Please take at least 3 portrait photo’s and simplify them like I did here ^

Check out my Dtube – Week 2 – recap video to see how I do these!
link:

This should be enough cool exercises to work on for this week!

I hope you participate!

Week 1 was a success and I’ll write up a closing post for it later today/tomorrow!

In the mean-time! Do your homework!
Work hard! <3

Cheers!
Rogier / @beekart