Getting Back to Basics: Structure and Form, The Gym and Vegetables of the Artists Pallet

When we are children, we engage in the most primitive art—a version based on the overall composition's basic shape and concerned with its feeling of balance and form. When we draw, we never draw with perspective in mind; that is a learned skill over time and practice. Instead, we outline how our mind thinks the object feels or what we know about the placement of an item of other things.

Lascaux is located in south-west France. 

The site has earned international fame as a tourist hot-spot for its prehistoric cave paintings. 
                      Situated near the village of Montignac, the Paleolithic art is estimated to be a good 15,000 years old.

A great example and exercise to demonstrate this is to tell a novis to draw the front of their house from memory. They will typically give the viewer extra information that you would not typically see if you were looking at the building's structure. Many will draw the sidewalk from the drive to the house larger if they use this path regularly to enter the front of the house.

Even if that information should be no more indicated then a faint 6H pencil line, the student will take a creamy dark 10B pencil and enlarge its size, shape and value to a 3/4 inch rectangle leading the viewer's eye right up to the door. It's like a neon sign that says, "ENTER HERE".

Try woodless pencils. They are heavier, and feel good in the hand. You can paint with the left over graphite shavings. Plus you never need to use an Exactor knife to get a proper artists tip.  Just click on the pencil graphic above and the link will send you to a shop where you can purchase them.  

Drawing postulants often make other mistakes like this, for example, making the door nobs larger then they appear because this is "How you get into the house". Or will in some way put a sense of over-focus on a part they feel is the most important to them.

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