Drawing lessons from my own humble beginnings.

I have just completely reworked the very first workshop I ever created. ‘Draw Happy’. It was 2011 and my very first step into filming myself.

When I was refilming I cringed a little as I looked at the old videos – but thankfully, my message was so heart-felt  and useful that those wobbly baby steps could be forgiven by the people who have taken the workshop!

Draw Happy is my ‘starter-kit’ – a mini workshop that has helped thousands to start Art Journaling and to relax into their drawing . I created it especially for people who say  that they ” can’t draw” . I love that I can get peeps creating faces in no time. I have concentrated drawing a face down to the absolute minimum and I call the result a ‘Draw Happy’ face because it has a style of of it’s own!

There are several reasons to draw faces.

1. It is regarded as one of the most challenging subjects to draw, and yet we start there ( building courage!).

2. As an Art Journaling tool, being able to represent yourself,a friend or family member is SO creatively freeing.

3. Probably the best reason: Drawing people is fun!

What I noticed in my classrooms, is that after the initial rush of the first drawing steps, after a month or so, many people then start to get frustrated with their drawings. We all want to get amazing straight away! And this phase of learning is critical because people can give up on themselves. What it comes down to is practice and the gradual building up of skills. But I can’t always be standing in the room encouraging you to keep drawing, so I thought how can I short-circuit this potential blip?

I created my Jane Girl  Stencils to help new drawers work through some facial proportion lessons as a teaching aid that could help decipher the landmarks of the face and really bring learning along much quicker. In particular, three-quarter turned faces and profiles cause a bit of angst for people not confident with drawing them ( I have a stencil dedicated to each of those scenarios in each of my ‘Jane Girls’ series).

So I decided to add a few videos of the stencils in action to the workshop. And I thought it was so powerful to see how you can create beautiful, complex, nuanced face from such a humble beginning that I wanted to share one of the videos with everyone.

I hope you enjoy this little peep into ‘Draw Happy’. If you are already a member, you can just sign in to the School and see all the new videos ( we just extended all our class memberships – past present and future to Lifetime Access – so go have a look!). If you would like to join, or have a creative being in your life that needs a little encouragement, you can register here.

If you are already drawing then, this class will probably be too basic for you. Try ‘Supplies Me!’ instead – the all new version of that starts in January 2015, and then you will be ready for ‘Beautiful Faces‘ in March.

I design all my workshops so they fit with each other. My guiding principle is to keep you drawing and painting. I don’t want you to give up. What I want for you, is  all the joy that fully living in your creativity brings a person. That is my contribution to making the world a better place.

And to think, this all started with some wonky videos taken at the beach.

It’s important to celebrate your beginnings, isn’t it?

xoxox

Jane / Danger

p.s I even left that original vid in the workshop!