Children's Lessons for the
Drawing and Composition of Pictures

Draw and Compose is private one-on-one lessons, for children ages six through seventeen, to learn to draw and compose pictures. They are taught such elements of picture making as: the parts of the picture (background, middle ground, and foreground), color usage, use of texture, and achievement of depth, importance of edges, variety, shape, value, balance, contrast, pattern and focal point or center of interest. They are also taught how to shade and develop their own style. 

The teacher draws the same picture along with the student from the same reference material that is in picture form, not from something real, so that both are drawing from the same point of view. 

Students also learn how to observe and measure to get the best likeness. In addition they learn how to use such drawing tools as: pencils, erasers, stumps, and colored pencils. Occasionally older students who have been coming for a few years are taught watercolor and other drawing media. 

After the first two drawings that are done to establish a basic foundation by putting a person into a landscape, the goal is to help students draw and compose pictures of any subject matter they are interested in. 

As you view the artwork, notice that some pictures show 1st and 2nd lesson pictures. That means the 1st lesson picture was how they were drawing before any instruction and the 2nd lesson picture was done along with the teacher who was giving instructions.

Some pictures aren't finished because we look very carefully at how things really are. It takes quite a long time to look at something to draw and shade it realistically. A person is carefully constructed to get proportions correct with careful attention to how we can easily draw the face, hair, ears, neck, shoulders, hands, feet, clothes, and shoes. We also observe how a house can be smaller than a person, how to attach a garage to a house and how to correctly draw steps, a sidewalk and a driveway and path showing perspective. 

We look at how to draw shrubs as foundation plantings around a house to soften the sharp angles. We then look at how to draw trees far away and up close, how to draw their roots, their branches and how to crop trees to use them to frame the picture. Knowing how to draw and group trees, plants, rocks and grass with their form and texture gives a nice finish to a picture and its so easy to do if you know how. 

And then we look at color. If we consider how color affects color we can create a very powerful picture by choosing what color is placed beside a color. It is important to know the color wheel so that we know the primary colors, the warm and cool colors, the complementary colors, and contrasting colors because colors can show depth, be dramatic or harmonious. All this takes time to learn while doing correctly. We ran out of time this session. Some started late in the session so they will finish in the fall.

2007-2008 Lesson Sessions

September 2007 through November 16, 2007

January 22, 2007 through August 22, 2008