Online Class: Tonal Drawing of Antlers & Animal Bones

Georgia O’Keeffe famously drew and painted the skulls, bones, antlers, and horns collected from the areas surrounding her New Mexico homes. In these works, O’Keeffe captured an unusual interplay between the bones’ subtle tones and rugged shapes, which added to her striking compositions.

Inspired by O’Keeffe’s works that feature bones, this class will help you add a touch of drama to your own observational studies of shells, antlers, and animal bones by focusing on creating contrasting tonal values. Throughout the class, teaching artist Sudeshna Sengputa will provide hands-on demonstrations of drawing techniques for creating these tonal drawings.

The O’Keeffe Museum houses many of the bones that O’Keeffe collected during her lifetime. See examples of animal bones from the Museum’s collection here

Supplies needed for this class: 

• 140 lbs Watercolor pad/block or Mixed-media drawing pad or any other brand of drawing pad in any size between 9” x 12” and 12” x 16”. Thicker paper (140 lb or higher) is better.
• A set of 2B, 4B, & 6B graphite pencils and an eraser
• Charcoal Pencils: Medium (2B) and Soft/Dark (4B or 6B)
• Blending stumps (AKA Tortillons, often comes with drawing pencil sets) or Q-tips and tissues or cotton rags (clean pieces of old t-shirts work well).
• Binder clips or masking tape to keep the paper flat, especially if a larger pad is used.
• Optional: Toned Pastel paper and white charcoal or conte pencil and or white conte. Waterproof ink pens as well as water-based ink pens, watercolor round brushes, a container of water, and water-soluble graphite pencils, color pencils, or color conte if anyone wants to add a hint of color.

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This class is suitable for youth ages 12 and up. Children are welcome to participate alongside their adults.

This program will take place via the video conferencing app – ZOOM. Details for accessing the Zoom meeting will be with your receipt upon registering and again sent via email the day prior. Please register in advance in order to access the program.

Note that all program times are in Mountain Time.

About the Instructor:

Sudeshna Sengupta’s career as a teaching artist spans multiple decades, continents, and cultures that inform her pedagogy for decolonizing studio art. She earned her Master of Fine Arts degree in 1985 from Visva-Bharati University, founded by the first non-European Nobel Laureate (1913) and humanist poet Rabindranath Tagore.

After teaching art and design at the college level in New Delhi, Seattle, and California, she taught at New Mexico State University-Alamogordo, where she established its first intaglio printmaking studio in 1995. Besides the O’Keeffe Museum, Sengupta teaches credit courses with the School of Art & Design of the Santa Fe Community College.

Her etchings and lithographs from the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi have been featured in a landmark exhibition on Women Printmakers of India at the NGMA-New Delhi in India. Her work is in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi; Association Musée d’Art Contemporain, France; Kala Institute, Berkeley, and more.

Sengupta also conducts workshops, short courses, lectures, and community-based art events focusing on multicultural and intercultural experiences that emphasize human, cultural, and environmental connectedness through creativity.

To learn more, please visit notes-and-doodles.com and visit her Instagram @santafe_online_art_studio

Registration

This class is being offered on a sliding scale. Your class fee helps to sustain the variable costs associated with hosting this program. We appreciate your support.

$15 minimal fee.

$25 covers the cost of the class.

$40 covers the cost of the class, plus a contribution to support educational programs.