Drawing Lessons from Creating a Masterpiece ~ a Crew review

Never have I felt like an artist yet a niggling thought has stuck in my head for several years – maybe I just need the right kind of guidance. Enter Creating a Masterpiece and the series of instructional pieces in their newly released Drawing Program, with lessons from Beginning Drawing to Level 3.

Creating a Masterpiece has been around for a while and has had video instruction for several levels of various media, including watercolor, inks, acrylics, and more. Recently, the company has expanded their offerings to include drawing lessons. This is what I have been using for the past few weeks and have come to enjoy a lot.

I have been working on at least one drawing a week, hoping to improve my abilities and enjoyment of the process of creating through drawing and sketching. Well, so far so good. I look forward to finding time to work through another of the drawing lessons. I have progressed from the beginning level through most of level 1. That is a total of 15 drawings, from a giraffe to a fish to an egg, each one stretches my abilities and learning.

The drawing lessons use various media for drawing. These include pencil, charcoal, colored pencil, and eraser (yes, you read that right!). Papers used have included regular sketching paper, vellum, black paper, and charcoal paper. Additionally, I have learned about using a kneading eraser, a pencil eraser, vellum paper, a tortillon, and techniques for using the pencils.

The lessons are simple enough to get into and get started on. Log into the Creating a Masterpiece site and then click on projects, at the top.

From there, you scroll down to the Drawing Lessons. You then select the lesson you want. You will be taken to a page where you can look at the materials needed. This page also has a link to a site where you can order the materials if you do not have a local art or hobby store to visit. One the page that has the materials link, there is also a sample of the completed project and the link needed to enter the video portions of the lesson. Click on that and head into the instruction.

Each project is broken down into several short video sections. This allows the instruction to be given in small, manageable segments. They have ranged from 2 video sections to 6 sections, I believe. Each video segment ranges from about 2 minutes to almost 10. The segments show Sharon walking the student through each step of creating the artwork, explaining the process and choices made.

While she is demonstrating each step, we are able to view her hands working from above. This makes is really easy to feel confident in the way to proceed with each step.

The language of drawing is explained along the way with different projects touching on different art vocabulary. In the lake drawing, Sharon talked about words like gradient, contrast and values. With the owl, she discussed the basic shapes and the value of light and dark, particularly how different colors have those different values. While working on the turtle drawing, the instruction included gradation, repetition, and variation within the context of drawing. I liked how that instruction was woven seamlessly into the demonstration of each drawing.

Confidence is built along the way by the small steps that Sharon asks the student to make in each drawing. There is seldom a large section that is covered or a jump in instruction made. The step-by-step examples and instruction allow every student to have success with every drawing. While every drawing may not be the student’s favorite, it is still a masterpiece of creation and growth demonstrated. What a wonderful thing!

I am still hoping the girls will find interest in the program and join me some. While they have not yet, I have absolutely adored having access to this program and plan to continue using it. I have finished about half of the drawings and feel much more confident in my drawing abilities through the process. I have learned much about the different types of materials that are available and how to use them.

My favorite project? Well, it depends on the day. I really enjoyed doing the colored pencil harvest drawing on vellum paper. I also have really enjoyed the while on black drawings where you work with negative values to create the images. But then again, I have had fun creating the various animals – penguins, turtles, and giraffe.

In case you can’t tell, I do recommend this program. I do think it would work well for older elementary students on up. I believe there could be a quick frustration level for lower elementary. I don’t think I would plan on my 10 year old attempting these unless she wanted to on her own. But I can easily see high school students getting a solid drawing education from these lessons.

Blessings,
Lori, At Home.

Many other families have been using Creating a Masterpiece, most with their students. Visit the Homeschool Review Crew blog to read other reviews. You can get there by clicking the image below.