Class: Environment Quick Sketch for Entertainment Arts
Instructor: Jeff Clendenning | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
Dates: 8 Tuesdays: June 26-August 14
Time: 3:00pm-6:00pm
Location: Art Mentors Studio: 16182 Gothard St Suite G, Huntington Beach, CA 92647
Price: $399
Difficulty: All Levels

Jeff Clendenning has been an art director and concept designer within the game and entertainment fields for almost two decades. He also has over a decade of overlapping experience teaching art and design at the college level. Jeff is not a natural, “I just popped out of the womb creating masterpieces”, kind of an artist. He began drawing and painting much later in life. Budding as an artist at a more mature age gave him the ability to focus on the most important parts of his education with the intentions of teaching these valuable skills and processes to his future students in a tangible and easy to digest manner.

One of the most difficult and valuable skills that an aspiring artist can earn is the ability to visually communicate an idea, clearly and simply, in the form of a quick sketch. This is not a new concept; masters of old have been doing this since the middle ages. For them, it was a way to plan ahead due to the complexities of traditional working practices. Given the financial and temporal cost of materials, and the permanence of mistakes later in the process, it was no wonder they chose an inexpensive and simple process to plan out their images. We also use the sketch for a similar reason in modern times. Not only do modern fine artists use the same approach for similar reasons, large productions are faced with budgets and time constraints as well. The quick sketch is a tool we use in production to prevent large sweeping and costly changes later in the process. This can save millions over the life of a production cycle due to the speed of early iteration and the prevention of permanent, costly mistakes later in development.

The crux: Most aspiring professional artists do not fully understand, nor can they properly employ the quick sketch in a useful manner, until much later in their educational career. This is due to the combination of skill and experiences that are lacking in order to form a visual idea in one's mind and on paper using the least amount of visual information possible. Fear not though, there is hope.

The environment sketching class is here to alleviate this sketching conundrum. Jeff will guide you through the four pillars of what makes up a clear and simple sketch for environments, one at a time, week by week, using demos, lectures, and critiques to drill the concepts home. Over the span of 10 weeks you will explore sketching using a variety of mediums; simplifying the complexities of the real world into manageable shapes, forms and patterns; dealing with techniques that help achieve depth and focus; and dealing with the organization of all these shapes/patterns within the picture frame/border (aka. Composition).

Pillar I: Mediums: We will use graphite, marker and pen, and ink wash all on 110lb recycled sketchbook paper. Jeff will demo and properly explain the nuances of each tool. Each medium has its own visual footprint and can create a completely different feeling when sketching. Each of these mediums are manageable to wield and quick to use.

Pillar II: Simplifying and editing: We will study real world locations and geological phenomenon then develop shorthand for these forms using line, shape, and texture. We will focus on representing the more prevalent shapes found in the real world in order to maximize the students ability to sketch more freely from imagination. Each student will also be encouraged to achieve a “style” of visual shorthand that represents their own tastes while still creating a clear, comprehensible end result.

Pillar III: Techniques: To maximize visual depth in a sketch we will be exaggerating natural visual cues found in reality. These cues are atmospheric perspective, overlapping of forms/shapes, massing, and shape editing.

Pillar IIII: Composition: Objects in sketch form are not yet designed and nuanced. They are simplified and placed. The way in which all objects reside relative to one another and within the frame is known as composition. Much like a song can sound sour by the series of notes not being rhythmically spaced along the musical timeline, such is an image without the proper placement of shapes and lines relative to one another within the frame. We are going to explore a series of simple tools that can help us compose, or organize, the shapes within our images in a respectable manner that produces clarity and focus.

The final goal of the class is to enable each of you to sketch a variety of environments from imagination in such a way that clearly states its intentions, is easily comprehensible, and inspires the viewer to want more.