DRAWING WORKSHOP - Lessons outline

Marcelo Guimarães Lima

Marcelo Guimarães Lima,
Shell, charcoal and acrylic on paper,
21x23cm, 2021

The conceptual divisions we present here for the Drawing Workshop classes introduce concepts and practices at different levels, for both beginners and students with diverse experiences as well as advanced students. It is clear that the themes and problems in our list overlap in practice, only the levels of complexity vary, as does the focus or accentuation of the primary and secondary issues and elements in each case.

Drawing is both a practical activity and a way of thinking: a holistic way of thinking and doing. Pedagogical presentation uses sequencing, that is, linear approaches as provisional divisions of the whole for the purpose of introducing notions and procedures by stages.

The Basic Concepts, because they are in fact basic, that is, they belong to the fundamentals of practice, are structurally present throughout the development of drawing. In the Basic Concepts module, we approach the components of drawing as “pure” form, we investigate the elementary components of form and their interactions in the pictorial plane in the process of constructing images.

Observation Drawing is an essential practice in order to develop what is called "eye and hand coordination", that is, to be able to see in terms of graphic elements and their relationships, observing the articulations of a scene and performing the consequent graphic actions for recreating in the pictorial plane what was seen in ways that are structurally and dynamically coordinated.  

Ultimately, it is a question of making more conscious the processes of sense perception that even at their most basic levels coordinate intelligence and imagination, that is, reason and emotion. Artistic perception is in a sense an intensification of common perception. In perception, at every level, mind and heart are united. Emotion, the expressive factor, is an essential component of all graphic production as it involves, in different ways, the totality of the person and their vital contexts and experiences.

Richness of empirical vision develops together with the ability to imagine, that is, to coordinate and expand connections in the real world and to develop personal responses to the contexts of experience, that is, to coordinate and expand one's imagination. In fact, imagination is not, as the word is used in ordinary representation, the domain of the “unreal” as such, but it is the ability to expand the times and spaces of personal experience. And that is only possible by developing a sentient and conscious relationship to reality as exemplified in artistic activity.

I Basic Concepts and Elements

II Drawing from Observation

III Analysis of Works of Art

IV Figure Drawing

V Interferences: Drawing Spaces

VI Drawing as a Tool: ways of seeing, thinking and acting

The Drawing Workshop is intended for everyone, beginners and advanced.

contact: marceloguimaraeslima.studio@gmail.com

We provide individual and group instruction via video and teaching platforms.

Languages of instruction: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese

© Marcelo Guimarães Lima