Tom Birmingham – Why Draw?: Observation as the Foundation of the Creative Process (Recording)

I have a secret to share. You have everything you need for a satisfying drawing practice. Once you experience that satisfaction, the skills and techniques will come to you of their own accord. But they won’t be as important as the joy you’ll get from sitting, observing, and rendering the world around you.

When my son was sixteen he told me, “It is easier to draw the face if you see it as simply a group of shapes.” Of course he was right, but how do you do that?

I began my creative practice through sketch. I looked at the world and experimented with ways to render it with pen and paper. Soon I added color and form. This practice has taught me so much about the visual building blocks that make up our observed reality.

Join me for an hour. I will share a simple supplies list for a portable sketch practice. I will give you a couple of techniques for a “way-in” to your practice. I will also tell you how life changing a drawing practice can be for your artwork and for yourself.

Instead of learning rules of perspective, proportion, or color theory, I will invite you to look at the world, and translate what you see into two dimensions, simply and intuitively.

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Tom Birmingham is an artist, photographer, and teacher who has lived and worked in Big Sur, California for over 30 years. He has recently located to a home near the Long Island Sound in Connecticut. As a founding director of the Big Sur Arts Initiative, Tom has provided instruction and enrichment in the creative arts in a variety of mediums. For ten years he taught art in the summer children’s theater program, StageKids. He has taught photography and drawing at Rancho la Puerta in Tecate, Mexico, and for years he and his wife, Erin Lee Gafill taught painting and sketch on their annual retreats to Italy.
Tom was the director of the Big Sur JazzFest, founding member of Big Sur’s Hidden Garden’s Tour, and currently manages Studio One – Big Sur.
More recently, Tom is the founder of 26Letter Press, a small publishing company dedicated to printed materials celebrating and inspiring creative expression.
In the summer of 2020, Tom designed the museum exhibition and accompanying book, Color Duets – Kaffe Fassett | Erin Lee Gafill, which was the headlining show for five months at the Monterey Museum of Art.

Tom Birmingham - Why Draw?: Observation as the Foundation of the Creative Process (Recording)

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