Artist John Gordon-Gordon School of Art-New Masters Art Program

Foundation Course (Levels 1-4)
This course covers the most important skills you will ever learn as an artist: the basic hand postures, drawing movements, drawing strategies, and perceptual/motor skills that form the basis of the drawing process. The emphasis in this course is on line drawing in a grid: how to choose the order of line selection, how to locate them in the grid, sketch them, and refine their shape. You will learn these skills separately on worksheets and apply them to a series of drawings that increase in their subtlety and complexity to a difficulty rating of 200 (on a scale of 1000). See the full New Masters Foundation Course Curriculum Summary for more information.

Drawings

Sketches

Level 5

On Level 5, you will continue your training in grid drawing, working your way from a difficulty level of 201 to 390. In the process, you will learn a new drawing strategy designed to increase your drawing speed, ease, and accuracy. You will also begin preparatory work on the free-hand drawing process to be introduced on Level 7. Level 5 is your introduction to various pen-and-ink techniques including: silhouette drawing -- where inking is done with a pen and a brush (to difficulty level 390); variable thickness line inking (to level 394); formal hatching (to level 355); and drawing lines and shadows (to level 475). In addition, you will paint a picture with tempera paints and learn the principles of color harmonies and contrasts in the process. You will learn to draw objects in 1-point perspective, master the first foundation skill of watercolor painting.

Pencil Line Drawings

Ink Drawings

Level 6

On Level 6, you will continue working up the scale of difficulty in grid drawing (to a difficulty Level of 550) and in pen and ink drawing. You will move to higher challenges in: silhouette drawing (to level 665), formal hatching (to level 565), and drawing shadows and textures (to level 625). You will also begin your training in the pen and ink techniques of cross-hatching (applied to line drawings to achieve the effects of roundness and light and shadow) and stippling -- an ink-shading method using small dots (to level 580). You will continue your preparatory worksheet practice for the free-hand drawing process; you will begin projects that involve pencil shading used to model or "round off" forms (blending dark to light from the edges to emphasize roundness); you will design and execute a linoleum block print; master the second foundation skill of watercolor painting: achieving graded color tones, and will apply that skill to water color paintings of your own design. Your Design projects on this level will employ the elements of transparency, overlapping, perspective, color, and value.

Pencil Line Drawings

Ink Drawings

Miscellaneous

Level 7

Drawings from Life

Ink Drawing

Pencil Line Drawing

Shading from Artist’s Originals

Level 8

Drawings from Life

Ink Drawings from Photographs

Pencil and Charcoal Drawings from Photographs

Level 9

Oil Paintings from Black and White Photographs

Oil Paintings from Photographs

Oil Paintings from Artist’s Originals

Level 10

Oil Paintings from Life

Sign up for Mailing List Order Form