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Online Art Lesson 3
Advanced FORM

Shown just below is a 3 dimensional computer generated series of basic forms. ALL things you will be drawing or painting have form. That form is revealed in an artist's early training by studying how light and shade, how the color of the areas around objects are reflected into the shadow side of these basic forms and how these forms can be applied objects, people, landscapes, etc. in drawings or paintings is the subject of  Art Lesson. That idea is taken to a more advanced application to a more complex object, a human figure in this Online Lesson.

Study and draw these objects to get started.

Next - let's look at my copy of a famous painting (attributed at the time I made the copy to Théodore Géricault (French Romantic Painter, 1791-1824).)
(A side note, the painting is a copy I did in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA) in New York City. The education department of the Museum allows artists to get exclusive use for a month of rooms in the museum to do copies. The public still has access, but only one artist to a room. I from time to time make copies in the MMA and highly recommend your doing the same - learn from the masters. If you can't get to a museum, copy the great paintings from reproductions. Museums vary in their giving permission to copy - the Frick Museum in New York will not allow copying, whereas the Louvre in Paris does allow copying. Check with your museum. This oil sketch is of a male nude originally attributed to Géricault, but the Met has since withdrawn that attribution and now attributes the painting to "unknown artist" - it apparently was painted by another student from the same model that Géricault painted in art school.)

Now, let's look at how the basic forms shown above, underlie the structure of this painting:

The head is basically a sphere as are the top muscles of the shoulders. The arms and legs are basically cylinders. Note how the light and shade define the form. Study the cast shadows affecting the form from one basic form onto another basic form. Below, study the two images alongside each other.

Another point should be made that is not directly related to form, but one of the things this "Gericault" taught me was the color variation in the human form. The same is true in painting heads or portraits. Look at the color variations in Edgar Degas (French Impressionist Painter and Sculptor, 1834-1917) head studies - like my favorite, his "Portrait of a Young Girl".

For full details about the full course, the Lesson Art Textbooks and art equipment and supplies provided, our pay-as-you-go options, use the links provided in the column at the left side of this page.

To sign up for the course, click here.

© 2009 Barry Waldman
 

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