February 3, 4 & 5, 2012, $350

Draw Happy & Comfort Drawing

Jane Davenport

day 1 & 2: Draw Happy

As Chief Artomologist of the 'Institute of Cute', I create just about everything in my gallery and store. I have to use my imagination each and every day to paint, draw, photograph and design all those things. Sometimes being creative on demand doesn’t come easy, I have to just start working, trusting that my ‘muse’ will show up…

I have developed my own process to get that creative ball rolling.....DRAW HAPPY is what I call this magic!

Creative confidence comes from mastering something you thought was impossible for you to achieve (like drawing!). You will have to build your own creative muscles, but I can show you the exercises that will warm you up, help open the floodgates to your imagination and your natural drawing style! {*gasp*...imagine THAT! you; DRAWING…. with CONFIDENCE! yay! }.

Part of my Draw Happy process involves drawing things you love, and for me that is faces, especially eyes. So we will be drawing faces…the very thing that many people imagine is the most difficult. But it’s fun. ( well, it is the way I teach it!). We will then move on to figures and placing them in our own whimsical scenes. Imagine being able to create whatever you want? Incorporate your own images with collage, stamps, abstract paint and all the materials that Mixed Media entails.

Put simply, I will be sharing my own creative process and teaching you how to draw with ease. This isn’t a portrait class and there are no serious drawing excercises. We will be playing in our journals, building up those drawing confidence muscles. Put your creativity on the swing and give it a big push!

Art, just like life, doesn’t have to be ‘serious’ to be meaningful.

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day 3: Comfort Drawing

Comfort Drawing is an active meditation and a way to access your creative bliss.

I discovered that I self-soothed with "Comfort Drawing' when I last felt the physical manifestations of full-blown stress! I noticed that my drawings had a particular look to them when I was rattled...direct yet calm faces, smoothly rendered skin, in a soft and subtle palette. Almost as if the faces I was creating were showing me the way to calm down. I paid attention as I approached my most soothing art supplies, and quite literally started to get drawn in to the details. The finer rendering I naturally embraced quite transformed my bothered state-of-mind back into a calmness. I feel like as if the artwork I create when I'm Comfort Drawing is torn straight from the soul!

Building on from the principles of 'Draw Happy', we will be drawing faces, direct soothing stares, subtle colours to start with...building up skin tones and floating in a world of peaches and cream, chocolate and porcelain complexions with strawberry sauce cheeks. Lots of dreamy eyes, and flowing hair. We will make our own journals in class, especially for this process.

Supply List:

• Your Journal or Sketchbook
• Paper pad: Strathmore Bristol Smooth 300 Series Pad in 260gsm 9 x 12" - or a similar smooth paper.
• Prismacolor Pencils in some 'skin' colours (light peach, Peach, white, Nectar, Nenna, Dark Brown)
• Col-Erase pencil in black
• Sharpener
• Waterproof fine black pens
• White Sharpie or Posca parkers in fine tips
• White Gesso
  
  
  

  Optional for Comfort Drawing:

• Copic Sketch or Ciao Markers in soft colours if you have them eg: Egg Shell, Dull Lavender, Tea Rose, Flesh, Milky White.
• Ranger Acrylic Dabbers in Sandal, Peach bellini, Malted Milk, Peri Peri

A Little About ME

I am a professional artist, author and gallery owner. My work has been published and exhibited all around this fantastic world since 2001. I am also an avid visual journaller, teach creative workshops online and a degenerate art supply junkie. I use photography, paint, pencils, pastels and paper to express myself (plus copic markers, but they don't start with P). Choose happiness! x Jane