Take A Class: From Ideas to Artwork: Keeping and Using a Sketchbook-Journal

I’m super excited to be teaching a new 11-week class this Fall at the Lawrence Arts Center called From Ideas to Artwork: Keeping and Using a Sketchbook-Journal. Registration is now open; the first class is the evening of Sept. 10, 2024!

 

We’ll use a sketchbook-journal to draw, write, collect, and reflect, using inspiration from nature, culture, and our inner worlds for making art in any media. (All levels welcome; some walking). — LAC catalog

 

In this class we’ll engage in all manner of sketchbook-journaling processes towards looking at the world through fresh eyes, the eyes of an artist. We’ll engage a variety of exercises towards finding inspiration from the natural world, the built environment, cultural artifacts and events, and our own inner landscape of memory and imagination. While we’ll mostly meet in the arts center building, we’ll take a few walking excursions from the arts center and may meet once at the public library.

 

This is a class I loved teaching 15 years ago and have reworked and expanded it to be an 11-week class! Classes meet Tuesday evenings, 6:30-8:30 pm, beginning Sept. 10.

 

Sign up online or in person at the Lawrence Arts Center (940 New Hampshire, Lawrence, KS). Message me with any questions, and do inquire at the arts center about senior discounts and financial aid, if needed.

 

I hope you’ll sign up soon and join me for this inspiration-gathering adventure!

 

Online registration: https://bit.ly/3T4hiNZ

 

Facebook: Lora Jost, Artist

 

Exhibit Opening in Newton, Kansas, on July 20, 2024, 6-8pm

I’m excited about our exhibit opening at the Carriage Factory Gallery in Newton, Kansas on Saturday, July 20, 6-8pm, with artist talks at 7pm. All are welcome! The exhibit is with my brother Scott, Lawrence-based artist Kim Brook, and Salina-based artist Carolyn Wedel. Carol, Scott, and I have roots in Newton!

Take a class: “Imaginative Drawing” at the Lawrence Arts Center

class resource booksImaginative Drawing is a beginning-level drawing class. It is one of my favorite classes to teach, and I’ll teach it again this spring at the Lawrence Arts Center. This class begins on Tuesday, March 19, 2024, and meets each Tuesday evening for eight weeks, from 6:30 to 8:30 pm.

 

The class is based on drawing prompts and exercises that we do together each week in our own sketchbook-journals. By the end of the eight-week session, we’ll use what we’ve learned to begin creating a drawing-related work of art in any medium we choose, as a finished piece.

 

Doodle-creatures from random marksFor the first few weeks of class, we’ll explore drawing as making expressive marks on a page using all kinds of pens, pencils, and other mark-makers. We’ll make comic-style “timed” drawings as a way to doodle, and we’ll also doodle by building up a series of spontaneous lines that eventually turn into pictures and patterns. We’ll “noodle” our doodles, using a controlled hand to create a finished look by adding color, texture, and shading. We’ll make drawings that are based on observation, drawing the objects and people that we see, as we see them. We’ll consider how observational-drawing informs imaginative-drawing, and vice-versa.

 

Sometimes we’ll draw at drawing “stations” where we choose from a menu of exercise options, staying for as little or as long as we want to at a station. These sorts of exercises will focus on stretching, distorting, or abstracting images that we’ll draw using exaggeration in an imaginative drawingfrom observation. On a different station-day we’ll explore the use of “randomness” as the basis for making something new: random squiggles on a page, random cracks in the sidewalk, or random shapes of clouds can provide the building blocks for making faces, creatures, or monsters. Each week we learn something new about the creative process. Along the way we’ll ask the question, Where do creative ideas come from? We’ll engage exercises that seem to get to the heart of creativity, bringing disparate ideas together in ways that are new. We’ll also learn about how to keep a sketchbook-journal, using artist Corita Kent’s focus on the journal as a “sense diary,” and cartoonist Lynda Barry’s “daily diary” formats to bring words and images together. Towards the end of the eight-week session, we’ll discuss composition, that is, how to arrange the elements in our drawings with attention to the drawing as a whole. We’ll then imagine a drawing that we would like to make, plan it, and make it.

 

eclipsedoodle002 copyA writer-friend who took Imaginative Drawing several  years ago recently said about this class  on Facebook: “Take this class! About two hours ago, I pulled out my sketchbook from the class. It is part brain health, part creativity, part stress relief.” And I would contend that the class is also a way for students to build confidence in their drawing abilities and to learn imaginative drawing skills to be used in art forms as different as comics and quilting.


I strive to create a warm atmosphere where students will feel encouraged and comfortable drawing in ways that are new. While I encourage students to share their work with others in class, because there is so much to learn from each other’s experiments, I also make it clear that no one is ever required to share; “passing” is always an option. And homework is optional, too.

 

Song in my HeartRegister now for the Spring session, beginning the third week of March. Senior discounts and financial aid are available. Register either on-line or at the Lawrence Arts Center, 940 New Hampshire St., Lawrence, KS,  phone 785.843.2787. To register for “Imaginative Drawing” on-line, go here

 

 

Drawing Practice class, Lawrence Arts Center

“Blind” contour drawing

I am excited to offer a class called “Drawing Practice” at the Lawrence Arts Center this Winter. It will meet once a week for 8 weeks on Tuesday evenings, January 9 to February 27, 2024, 6:30-8:30pm. Enroll online, or at the Lawrence Arts Center.

This introductory drawing class will focus both on exercises to strengthen our ability to draw from observation, as well as additional exercises to strengthen our abilities to draw from memory and imagination. Each student will be provided a sketchbook of their own to use and to keep, and basic drawing tools will be provided to use during class.

Mapping darks and lights

We’ll draw from still life setups as we engage classic skill-building drawing exercises such as contour drawing, gesture drawing, continuous line drawing, sighting methods to help us to draw in proportion, and exercises that help us draw light and shadow, too. In addition, we’ll doodle a lot (and “noodle”), we’ll make loose and controlled drawings, we’ll enlarge, abstract, stretch, and distort our drawings, and we’ll draw at different rates of speed. We’ll practice drawing from memory in different ways, we’ll imagine monsters made from random marks, we’ll go on drawing scavenger hunts, and we’ll chronicle our day — just for fun — as a simple 4-panel cartoon.

Turning “doodles” into “monsters”

Our class will serve as a support group for drawing outside of class, too, and we’ll think about strategies to help us make time to draw at least a little bit each day — but we’ll never beat ourselves up if daily drawing isn’t something we can do — homework is always optional. Our goal in this class is to simply draw enough to forget whether or not our drawing is “good.” Our goal is to practice as much as we can, and by doing so, to make drawing a pleasurable part of our everyday lives.

You can register for the class on-line or in person at 940 New Hampshire St., Lawrence, KS, phone 785.843.2787. Financial aid and senior discounts are available.

Artist Prints and Cards at the Phoenix Gallery and Art Love Collective


I have affordable artist prints and cards for sale at the Phoenix Gallery and Art Love Collective, both in downtown Lawrence, Kansas. I have different cards and prints at each location. At the Phoenix, the prints are in the print section at the back of the store, and the cards are currently in a basket on the south wall before the print section. Print and card locations at Art Love will  move around over time. Check them both out, and check again from time to time for new offerings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New Drawing at the Lawrence Art Guild’s All-Member’s Show

I have a new drawing (and a new collage) in the Lawrence Art Guild’s All-Members show July 15 through September 30, 2022, at Landmark National Bank (4621 W. 6th St., Lawrence, KS). All are invited to the opening reception on Friday, July 15, 5:30-7:30 pm.

 

“These Days”

2022

Pencil and gouache on paper