Last night's class was all about eyes: drawing eyes from different angles, anatomy of the eye, giving dimension to the drawings to make the eyes "pop out".

Your child’s world has grown increasingly busy, bombarded by group activities: sports, school, scouts, camps and birthday parties. From morning until evening, they remain surrounded by other kids.

But, like us big kids, children need their alone time. Time to decompress, come up with their own ideas and thoughts; time to create.

What a better way to spend their down time than by drawing. Drawing is largely a solo sport and a great way for your child to spend an hour in self-focus and thought. Let your child take time out of their day to draw. Alone. Uninterrupted.

Many of us adults get an hour alone each day, driving back and forth from work. These precious moments of down time often give us some of our greatest ideas; ideas that we wouldn’t otherwise conceive in a group setting or in the busy routine of our day.

Give that same opportunity to your child. Sometimes the greatest gift you can give them is a pencil, sheet of paper, and an hour of down time.

 My students get into their drawings. After all, hands are some of the most versatile instruments we have for drawing.

“The principle of true art is not to portray, but to evoke.” – Jerzy Kosinski

Pablo Picasso died the year I was born. By the end of his life, he had forged a life’s work of paintings, collages, sculptures and drawings. Most know Picasso for his primitive, modern paintings. And, like you, I had a difficult time fully appreciating his over-simplistic, abstract style. “Anyone can paint like this” went through my head a lot. In fact, many people seem to believe that Picasso’s abstraction of the human figure is the result of his inability to draw.

It wasn’t until I discovered that Picasso was an amazing realist draftsman that I felt a greater appreciation for the artist. In fact, his father, a drawing teacher, enrolled Pablo into Barcelona Academy of Art “La Concha” at age 13. It was that same year that Picasso’s father felt his son surpassed him as an artist.

Picasso experimented with styles all throughout his life. In fact, he pioneered some of them.  He invented collage and, along with Georges Braque, invented Cubism, for which we see as one of his most notable styl...

I recently had the honor of teaching a local Girl Scout troop some drawing basics and techniques. By attending and participating in my workshop, these girls earned their Art patch.

Girl Scout patches go on a sash or vest and represent fun events or things they have done along with their troop. Patches are a great way for a Girl Scout to remember every adventure and show the world what she's accomplished. And earning a range of different badges and patches signifies a well-rounded, well-grounded Girl Scout.

In an age where children are introduced early on and educated throughout their formative years to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), somehow, Arts is continually falling from educational priority, even though practicing Art can stimulate the brain in areas of problem solving, collaborating, and generating ideas. Think Michelangelo.

Being grounded in the practicing Arts is a visual patch to proudly show off. After all, intelligence is demonstrated not only through...

Prior to the first Drawing Summer Bootcamp (beginning May 30), preparation is well under way. I am making several drawing horse easels from scratch.  My upcoming students will use these sitting easels during class to draw.

These benches go by a number of names: Horse Easel, Mule, Caballo Art Bench, Art Horse, Drawing Bench. Although they are commonplace in college drawing studios, they are fairly hard to come by outside the university setting.

I prefer the sitting easel over the standing easel when drawing, and for several reasons. First, if I am going to draw for any length of time, I would rather not stand. It’s significantly more comfortable, particularly over the course of an extended drawing session, or in classes day after day, to sit.

Secondly, the big advantage of a drawing bench over an easel is that the drawing is below your line of sight to the model, rather than to one side. If you’ve always done life drawing by turning your head side to side from a standing easel, you may fin...

Originally published on LinkedIn

I think drawing has always come naturally to me. As long as I can recall, I have been able to put down a likeness on paper relatively effortlessly. I solidified my techniques over the years by working tirelessly to improve, by training in the tools of the trade, and by observing those more experienced than me.

During the larger part of 25 years that I spent honing my drawing techniques, my artwork has received attention in galleries on both East and West coasts, and my illustration work has appeared in newspapers and magazines across the U.S., all while I was building and earning a living in a career outside the art world. In many ways, though, the things I learned in pursuit of mastering a hobby, as some would playing golf or chess, has helped me navigate my professional career. I owe much of my professional success to my art teachers for instilling a life’s worth of lessons that transcend the art world.

Below are four lessons I was taught by several of m...