Drawing Challenge

It has been a whole semester  since I started my blog which is the project for Multimedia Journalism Class. When i had to choose the topic I did not think a lot. Drawing came first to my mind and I went on with it. So I named my blog Learn To Draw in 14 Weeks.

Since I was a little kid I loved drawing. My parents never took me to the art school. All I did was practice and pay attention to the details. I had tons of different drawing supplies at home. New set of paints was the gift I was expecting as a kid for Christmas and my parents were always surprising me. But it all finished in the eighth grade when drawing classes were given for the last time before the high school. I chose the real sciences class and all my time I spent on math, chemistry and physics. Time went so fast that only after seven years I realized: “Wow! I used to draw and I was good at it!”.

My dream profession was an Interior Designer. My majors in university right now are Economics and Journalism and Mass Communication. Not even close to my dream profession, right? Now I am drawing for the blog, reading articles about design and feel that if someone really has a passion for something it cannot just go away.

In my final  blog I want all my followers to see what I have achieved for 14 weeks. So far I wrote 12 blog posts, interviewed eight people, shot seven videos and drew a lot of cute faces and animals. Obviously writing a blog is very enjoyable. You share your personal experience with the rest of the world and meet people who do the same.Starting drawing was not hard at all, even exciting. I found an amazing website with drawing tutorials which is called Drawspace.

Drawing wasn’t the only thing I had to learn. At that class I was taught how to share my accomplishments with  the others through different tools like 5 shots videos and broadcast packages.

My Drawing Challenge is not finishing on the 14th week. I started drawing so I can continue doing it and finally make my dream come true. I am sure that I never lost my love to drawing and I still have the skill. Most exciting for me was when I needed to draw a cartoon face considering the proportions and in the beginning I shouldn’t have used the ruler. When I used it later to see if I drew it proportionally, I was happy to find out that the distance was the same, even though I drew it without a ruler.

Now I will have to say that this is my final blog post and I really enjoyed the journey I went through. I will continue drawing and following my dream and I think everyone should do that. You are the best only in what you love to do.

Watch the video that I made for my good bye and let me know what you think:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LWCzy_4ras

A little art studio …

Hello, dear readers!

Even though Blagoevgrad is a very small town every day you can more interesting places to visit. one day I was walking to the old town of Varosha and found a kids art studio. You could see that it is a kids art studio because there everywhere small statues and drawings obviously made by kids. I went there couple of times and finally met the owner, Elena Vasilieva Shumarska.

Elena is from Blagoevgrad and is a painter. She studied art since the 8th grade and then continued it in the South West University.

I opened the art studio because I like working with kids.

She opened the art studio one month ago, in October. I got a chance to witness a casual art class. The student was Stoyche. He is 10 and he comes to the art studio every Friday. This time he was working with clay and decided to “build” a miniature Christmas house.

Kids that are coming here work with pleasure.

Elena showed me the drawings of the kids that are coming to her. The youngest child is two years old. The atmosphere in the studio is so magic and inspiring because of the Christmas English music. When I asked Elena how kids feel about the music, she said that they are surprised when they hear the music because this is not what kids are listening today.

Also, Elena has her artwork in the studio. She sells her paintings in Bulgaria and is open to exhibitions.

I am glad I met one more person that works with what she really loves to do and follows her dream.

Now you can watch a video about Elena Shumarska’s art studio:

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What do you think?

Hello, creative folks!

This semester is quickly running to an end and it’s time to share the results and feelings about my blog. Honestly, I expected much more results from my drawing challenge. But obviously the time I have is not enough for a full How to Learn to Draw experience.

These are the couple of last drawings I successfully completed. They are all from the series Contour Drawing or Drawing with Lines from Drawspace. Now I would like to hear what my subscribers think about my challenge so far.

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Drawing is Everywhere

Storify by
Learn To Draw

Mon, Nov 11 2013 04:50:17

The first time using Storify for Multimedia Journalism class in AUBG.
I am wondering how come i did not hear about this before. It’s an amazing app for journalists.
Also, for my blog “Learn To Draw In 14 Weeks” Storify is an excellent tool. I can find people who are also interested in drawing.

1. 

   My Bestie’s Drawing!! Such a great artist. t.co/rj1JtgYIbX

   Naomi Nanna Beukes@NanaBeukes

   ·

   Mon, Nov 11 2013 04:27:05

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2. 

   My new drawing 😉 #drawing #drawart #art #pencildrawing #creative #artist #painting #blackandwhite… t.co/Buac2kaohE

   noelia sanchez@noeliainfinityM

   ·

   Mon, Nov 11 2013 04:24:09

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3. 

   maaaaaaaaaaan!@myotishi

   i should go to bed so i can wake up at like 8 or 9 but i want to keep drawing…

   Mon, Nov 11 2013 00:49:40

   ReplyRetweetFavorite
4. 

   “@randycooper_: My drawing of @MileyCyrus RT , I hope she can see this t.co/msemGa8Fih” @MileyCyrus

   kourtss.@kourtneywright_

   ·

   Mon, Nov 11 2013 00:49:22

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5. 

   Nicole Dirrigl@NicoleAnneD_

   I’m no artist, but drawing really relaxes me.

   Mon, Nov 11 2013 00:00:50

   ReplyRetweetFavorite
6. 

   #Cool #amazing #awesome #PencilDrawing t.co/71QYzn6V8z

   Brandon Darr@Brandondarr02

   ·

   Sun, Nov 10 2013 14:02:44

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Blog post Nr.10

Hello everyone who loves to draw, wants to learn or just enjoys my blog.

It’s been a while since I posted last time. But I was not losing time. Drawspace is the website where I get all my tutorials. During this week I will be posting my sketches on which I spent good amount of time but each of them gave me useful tips and hints for drawing.

This week I met a girl from my university, American University in Bulgaria, who is drawing since she was a kid. Her name is Ayna Perkuliyeva and she is majoring in Journalism and Mass Communication. When you see Ayna on campus you can easily notice that she is not a regular girl: stripes of pink in her hair, nose piercing, “arts” tattoo on the right hand. She said that when she was 5 her Mom took her to the drawing classes with famous paint and oil master. After that she was getting private lessons with the same artist.

I never regretted that drawing took most of my time in childhood.

Recently Ayna started something new for her, tattooing. In the summer she worked as a temporary air-brush and henna artist in Provincetown and decided to continue doing it in Blagoevgrad. She bought a tattoo machine and now practices on natural  leather and real people if someone wants to get a tattoo.

Human skin is exciting material for drawing.

Ayna is a life example for me that drawing can be not only your hobby but also passion and future work.

Check out the video about Ayna Perkuliyeva, her works and me drawing for the blog:

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Two Months of Learning.

When you lost something the best way to find it is to remember the last moment you saw that thing. From there you can revive all your moves and easily find it. Couple of years I was just searching deep inside me why I am not drawing anymore. Instead I just needed to go to my past and see everything with my own eyes. Yes, I stopped drawing when drawing classes finished and yes, I could have continued to draw if I really liked it. But now I realize that all my time and effort was spent on tough classes that helped me to shape who I am now and be accepted to AUBG. I was not drawing for so long that “Learning To Draw” was the first and only idea I had for the blog, which is a part of Multimedia Journalism class with Professor Melody Gilbert.

Maybe it goes slow and I will not be drawing perfect portraits to the end of the 14th week but the process itself is captivating. I am not only learning to draw but also learning from other people and their stories. I interviewed different people, even those that are not interested in drawing. Sorin Petrov, Sophomore in AUBG, taught me how to edit sound bites for my blog and get a clear and quality recording. He also gave me an interesting idea to try different techniques of drawing, maybe I would open something new for myself. When I drew a duck he said that when:

 …teaching people how to draw a duck, you can also connect a small funny story to how you learn to draw a duck, or why is drawing ducks important.

When I was asking people if a person should have a talent for drawing or he can learn it like any other skill, like reading for example, I was getting very close and positive answers. Pavel Topalov, South-West University graduate and currently working for AUBG, wanted to become a famous painter when he was 7 but gave it up for something that he liked more. This was his answer to my question about if the talent is required for drawing:

It’s something you should feel coming from inside.

During these two months of drawing and blogging I found out that there are so many people around learning to do something creative and new that I felt that this is not a personal journey anymore. It is more of a Creativity Class 101 where students are all the people who love learning and growing. When my Mom visited me a week ago in my university she told me so many stories that I felt like a kid again. I used to have more pencils and paints than toys. I was staying up late with my mom not because of math homework but because of drawing assignments, perfecting them and making them look magical. My mom was my first drawing teacher. This is how she taught me to draw, she said:

 I never took you to the art school, you learned drawing by yourself because I taught you to look at the things, notice details and copy them to the paper.

Now that I am halfway in this personal discovery I am happy that I started it. It is the first step to self realization and understanding who I want to be. This is not a conclusion yet but an introduction to a second half of my journey.

Below you can watch a video that tells a story of the past two months:

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The Artist of Park Portraiture Goes Public in New York City

“A Private Artist Goes Public” is an interesting article I found today in New York Times.

Until now no one knew Janet K. Ruttenberg, 82 years old New York City painter. She never exhibited her paintings. A show called “Picturing Central Park” is a solo exhibition of 17 of her paintings at the Museum of the City of New York. The show runs through Jan. 5.

The past 15 years Mrs. Ruttenberg comes to Central Park and freezes its life with watercolors and oil paints on huge canvas. She is not one of those painters that come to the park and draw nature. Her canvases are 15-foot-long and her brushes are almost half of the human’s size.

Mrs. Ruttenberg rejected to exhibit her work the whole life till now. She explained that she just wasn’t interested in exhibiting but interested in working. She was drawing since childhood under surveillance of her uncle Abel G. (Buck) Warshawsky. She studied art at the University of Iowa and then created art in Chicago and then in New York. Janet K. Ruttenberg has an art studio on Columbus Avenue and almost every day she carries a shopping cart with huge drawing supplies from the studio to the Central park to do her work.

Mrs. Ruttenberg’s daughter-in-law Perri Peltz helped to set this exhibition giving the rest of the world a chance to see the art of a private artist. Preparations were exciting for Mrs. Ruttenberg. Her canvases were so huge that they needed to be taken out of the window of her studio with a crane. Janet K. Ruttenberg is an accomplished and confident artist and today she is sharing her artwork with the rest of the world at the Museum of the City of New York.

Aita Romanova, a russian student of American University in Bulgaria thinks it must be very interesting for Janet Ruttenberg to exhibit her work for the first time in 82 years old.

If I could sell my art I would totally make an exhibition as a not advertisement for my work so people could see how maybe good I am, may be someone would like to buy it.

Aita is also surprised that such a accomplished artist rejected to share its artwork with the rest of the world.

There is some feeling of specialty in her artwork since she is doing it in a private style. Maybe she just wants to preserve this feeling.

In American University in Bulgaria we have exhibitions of different artists from Balkans. Right now there is an exhibition of different artists portraying Blagoevgrad. In the video under the post you can see couple of painting and how my friend Nikita enjoys their beauty.

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Childhood Memories

You can’t find a child that doesn’t like to draw, can you? In the childhood we have so much creativity and energy, it splashes out of us like a fountain. We draw on tables, walls, streets, clothes and sometimes paper.

Since I remember myself I was drawing most of the time. My parents never rejected to buy me new drawing supplies. That’s why I had a huge drawer full of aqua colors, gouache paint, color pencils, wax crayons and even ink.

I had a chance to reveal my earliest memories of drawing by asking a person who witnessed me since my birth. That person is my Mom. She was visiting me here in Blagoevgrad for a week. Her name is Zinaida and she graduated from State University of Moldova, Philology Major. My mom always encouraged my hobbies, whatever they could be. I was dancing, swimming, going to hand craft classes, snowboarding, skateboarding, making bracelets but I never gave up drawing.

Yesterday I asked her if she remembers something that I don’t and I heard a lot of interesting moments from my childhood.

You’ve spent all your summers at granny’s and when you were coming back to school you were inspired by nature. All your drawings had grass, river, fish in it, tress, birds and sun.

I remember one summer I entered a guest house at my granny’s and went to the room where she was keeping her children’s books, notebooks and pictures. There I found an old sketchbook and pencils and couldn’t wait to draw something. My granny had a beautiful garden and under a cherry tree she put me a little bed where i can read and relax. This was my favorite place to watch everything around and copy it in my sketchbook.

At school you had drawing classes couple of times per week. You loved them because you were one of the best in class. I never took you to the art school, you learnt drawing by yourself because I taught you to look at the things, notice details and copy them to the paper.

My mom always stayed late with me doing my homework. Not that I had a lot to study back then but she wanted my work to be perfect. She helped me to finish my drawing and highlight the most beautiful things. My best childhood friend Tanya, who lives in Canada now, brought me a huge set of colorful pencils for contour highlighting. They were shiny and glittery and all my school drawings had a touch of those magic markers.

For New Years and birthdays you were waiting for new drawing supplies. I remember your friends were getting toys, dolls, beauty sets for girls but you were excited for new paints. We got you from Bulgaria a big set of colorful markers “Carioca”, bigger than you. Then for New Year Santa Clause brought you “Cinderella” gouache paint with silver glitter in the set.

My love for drawing continued till high school years. The 8th grade was the last year of drawing and I remember one class that I will never forget. At that class teacher taught us how to draw in perspective and our homework was to draw an interior design. On the weekends there was a program called “Квартирный Вопрос”(Housing Question) where a group of designers were reconstructing and decorating the rooms of people that were writing to their program. I was getting all the ideas from that program. After that class I drew three interior design projects: children’s room, bedroom and hall, all in colors. At high school I had to study mostly Math, Physics and Chemistry and those classes took a lot of time. I don’t remember drawing these three years. Not that I regret about that but I am really sorry that I forgot how to draw. There is a big trade off between drawing and going to Math class; it helped me to get prepared to AUBG and pass SAT with a big score.

Now as I am here in American University in Bulgaria, surrounded with creative and talented people, I am inspired to start drawing again.

Here is the video of my Mom enjoying the  beauty of Blagoevgrad:

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Drawing in pencils? Get ready! One pencil is not enough!

I want to thank DrawSpace for descriptive tutorials that they have. The one that I used this week is called Seeing Values. This is one of the most important lessons in order to learn how to draw realistic images. When you draw you can combine “the density of the shading lines , and the pressure used in holding your pencils” for so called 3D pictures. This tutorial suggested using the pencils of different type: 2B, HB, 4B and 6B. I did not have them but i could get the result with the only pencil i had.

After I completed my drawing and compared it with the result in tutorial, I understood why they say you should have many different qualitative pencils. There are certain pencils for light and shadow. “H pencils work beautifully for light and middle values, and B pencils are best for middle and dark values.” The author of DrawSpace tutorials advises to get 2H, HB, 2B, 4B and 6B for beginners. Next week I will get those pencils and complete the same tutorial Seeing Values in order to see how the quality of the pencils can change the drawing.

My interviewee  this week was Ciprian Mocanu, junior from Moldova. He is studying Computer Science and Information Systems in AUBG. Ciprian likes pencil drawing and he calls it his hobby. I saw couple of his drawings which are completed in pencil and look realistic because of the use of values. Ciprian did not go to any art school, he learned drawing by himself.

I think anyone can learn. If you really want to you can learn to draw very easy. There are so many tutorials to do that.

He also shared some ideas about my blog :

If you try to describe the process of learning why don’t you include some steps or tutorials how actually you do that besides the pics that you already drew.

You can see Ciprian’s drawing in 5 Shots video of him below

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Monday. Shooting 5 shot video. Good Monday!

Prof. Melody Gilbert teaching us how to shoot and edit 5 shot video on a Multimedia Journalism Class. During shooting actually got couple of more ideas for videos. Feeling inspired in the beginning of the week.

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