March 23, 2005
Library program draws a crowd
Illustrator shares drawing techniques and tricks for class
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
Line by line, shade by shade and color by color, Wendy Halperin led 62 people on a journey of drawing.
The noted children's book illustrator gave her students-for-an-hour a tour of her artistic process, delving into her ideas, techniques, style and learning process. Along the way, she gave them tips for drawing animals, stylized letters, shading to bring life to images and using perspective lines.
"There's lots of drawing tricks to draw a whole bunch of stuff," said Halperin, whose work during class was projected on a screen. "I've come up with drawing lessons that teach the basics."
"What I'm teaching right now is the actual process I use when I'm drawing a book, you can use the same techniques to create pictures for yourself," she added.
Halperin held forth Saturday morning at the Traverse Area District Library, part of the Youth Services Department's ongoing Saturday Sampler series. Halperin's work includes illustrating the series "Cobble Street Cousins" as well as "Hunting the White Cow," plus numerous other titles for children of all ages.
The main project of the morning was drawing a stylized bowl, tapping into the shading, coloring and style that are the hallmarks of Halperin's distinctive style. Using a pencil, crayons and drawing paper, Halperin guided attendees from the first oval to the finished coloring.
Lauren Pflughoeft, 9, is an avid drawer and aspiring artist who relished the chance to learn from Halperin.
"I liked drawing the bowls," said Pflughoeft, a fourth-grade student at Oak Park Elementary School. "I like to draw, it is one of my hobbies."
In Halperin's hands, coloring became a subtle tool that went far beyond merely filling in a space. Her technique is to use a light touch, going over an area in the same direction twice, then filling in the edges before coloring one final coat.
Her overriding motto: with color, you can only add.
"Coloring is like chocolate milk, you can always add them but you can't take them out," Halperin said. "There are no erasers on any paintbrushes or colored pencils I use."
Halperin also gleefully mixed colors, putting melon with red violet, layering shades of greens and blues. She encouraged attendees to experiment and make up their own colors, starting with a darker shade on the bottom layer and ending with a lighter shade on top.
"People will look at you pictures and say, 'Where did you get that color?'" Halperin said. "And you can say, 'I invented it.'"
Using brown, which she terms a "fantastic" color that is often forgotten, is another favorite technique she uses when layering.
"I put brown on top and look at what it does," she enthused. "There's so many different browns I love to put brown on top of colors, it softens them."
Shading is a crucial part of drawing and Halperin related that she studied shading techniques for two years earlier in her career, not using any color during that time. She talked about where to shade - darkest next to the object and gradually lighter - and how to smear the gradations together with a finger to make a smoother look. She called the finishing of this process "doing the dishes" because it completes the effect.
"Shadows make things look like they are on planet Earth," she said.
Toward the end of her lesson, Halperin, as artistic in her speech as her drawings, showed attendees her 'pelvis on the horizon' method. She drew a horizon line and added multiple figures of diminishing size along it, centering each figure's pelvis on that line.
"This trick I just showed you is how to draw people going farther and farther away," she said. "That's one of my favorite tricks."