Dynamic Positioning
What is Dynamic Positioning? Skilled creatives understand how to structure and compose their images and layouts to optimize engagement with the viewer. One method they
Alvalyn Lundgren
Creating On Purpose
Marks and shapes can be created accidentally or spontaneously as the result of a process. An event or action results in shapes being formed. For
Alvalyn Lundgren
Mastering Your Craft
With many now questioning the value of earning a degree versus working in the trades, the broad discussion of formal training for artists and designers
Alvalyn Lundgren
The Expressive Qualities of Drawn Lines
Line is the most expressive of the formal (form-based) elements of design. Drawing, of course, revolves around using lines and tonal areas to communicate form
Alvalyn Lundgren
Using Conflict In Your Drawings
In storytelling, a narrative remains mundane and uninteresting unless conflict — opposition — is introduced. In design and art terms opposition is known as contrast. Contrast
Alvalyn Lundgren
Eye Level – Writing + Tutorials About Drawing, Design, and Perception
Using Keyed Color Palettes
Designers and artists are always communicating through color, and our choices set the tone for how a work will be received, understood, and even valued. Keyed
Alvalyn Lundgren
Drawing On Both Sides Of The Brain
Drawing is not only a right brain pursuit. It’s a complex process involving observation, paying attention to detail, and critical thinking — things not generally
Alvalyn Lundgren
Value Mapping: The Notan Principle
notan is a way to balance, or harmonize, light and dark elements in a composition. It’s the underlying value structure, or value map, of your design in which light shapes are massed together, and dark shapes are massed together, reducing the composition to two, or possibly three, colors.
Alvalyn Lundgren
art instruction
Grading, Critical Thinking, and the Creative Process
Design education should focus on developing critical thinking skills rather than solely relying on grades. Alvalyn Lundgren’s Socratic teaching approach encourages students to arrive at
Alvalyn Lundgren
Why We Create
Marks and shapes can be created accidentally or spontaneously as the result of process. An event or action results in shapes being formed. For example,
Alvalyn Lundgren
10 Tips For Design Students
Proven tips not only so you can get the most from your student experience (whether you’re in a design program or learning on your own) but also to enter the creative professions prepared to compete.
Alvalyn Lundgren
Eye Level – Writing + Tutorials About Drawing, Design, and Perception
Add Life To Your Drawings
Make your drawings life-like by focusing on what adds life. Learning to draw… it isn’t easy, is it? I’ve been drawing all my life. I was
Alvalyn Lundgren
design school
In Design and Art, Perception Trumps Skill
It’s easy to approach art and design studies with an emphasis on technique, tools, and methods, and the elements and principles. But the true value
Alvalyn Lundgren
Eye Level – Writing + Tutorials About Drawing, Design, and Perception
Primary Forms: Prisms and Cylinders
Form is the visual appearance of something. Everything we see has form. We understand what a form is by how it’s shaped. So we need
Alvalyn Lundgren
Eye Level – Writing + Tutorials About Drawing, Design, and Perception
How To Draw the Basic Forms
As with any discipline there are fundamentals that are often overlooked but which are absolutely necessary to draw and paint with accuracy. If you’re a beginner,
Alvalyn Lundgren
Eye Level – Writing + Tutorials About Drawing, Design, and Perception
Don’t Let Drawing Mistakes Hold You Back
I respond to a reader’s and viewers’ questions about how to avoid making drawing mistakes, and explain two ways to shift your mindset about mistakes
Alvalyn Lundgren
Eye Level – Writing + Tutorials About Drawing, Design, and Perception
Capture Attention With Visual Hierarchy
As a designer or artist, if you understand some basic psychology and human visual perception, you can create compelling work that attracts attention, communicates clearly,
Alvalyn Lundgren
Eye Level – Writing + Tutorials About Drawing, Design, and Perception
Drawing Basics: To Draw Accurately, Draw Forms, Not Edges
Line is the most basic and expressive element of all the design elements. We can’t develop a drawing without using them. Using line comes naturally
Alvalyn Lundgren
Eye Level – Writing + Tutorials About Drawing, Design, and Perception
Portrait Drawing Tutorial: JT With Hat
A beginning to end video demonstration of a portrait sketch using a photograph as reference. I start by setting up the drawing, identifying the relationships
Alvalyn Lundgren
Eye Level – Writing + Tutorials About Drawing, Design, and Perception
How to Form a Daily Drawing Habit
How to you get into the groove of drawing every day, especially when you have a full schedule? You know that improving anything requires practice.
Alvalyn Lundgren
Eye Level – Writing + Tutorials About Drawing, Design, and Perception
How To Use Graphite Paper To Transfer Drawings
Graphite transfer is a simple, traditional method used by illustrators, designers and artists to transfer same-sized drawings from a preliminary surface to a final working
Alvalyn Lundgren
Eye Level – Writing + Tutorials About Drawing, Design, and Perception
Tips To Improve Portrait Drawing Using Structure
Do you draw mainly from photographs? People often do, and unless you’ve had the experience of drawing from life in a figure or portrait class,
Alvalyn Lundgren
Eye Level – Writing + Tutorials About Drawing, Design, and Perception
Color Mixing for Skin Tones
How to mix skin tones is one of the most common questions I’m asked by students and emerging artists. While there is no one single
Alvalyn Lundgren
Eye Level – Writing + Tutorials About Drawing, Design, and Perception
How To Draw The Head — Front View
Beginning with the basic structure and proportions, here’s one approach to draw the head in a front view. You can apply these principles and steps
Alvalyn Lundgren
Eye Level – Writing + Tutorials About Drawing, Design, and Perception
How To Draw Three-Point Perspective
This is Part Three of my series of instructional articles about linear perspective. Three-Point perspective is used to depict objects and structures that are significantly
Alvalyn Lundgren
Eye Level – Writing + Tutorials About Drawing, Design, and Perception
How To Design A Drawing
An Eye Level reader wrote: What would be the forward steps to draw realistically, in correct proportions, from imagination? Especially imaginary (though “realistic”) human figures
Alvalyn Lundgren
Eye Level – Writing + Tutorials About Drawing, Design, and Perception
Drawing Basics: How To Find Angles and Proportions In Linear Perspective
This article is Part Two in a series of tutorial articles explaining linear perspective from a visual, non-technical approach. By visual, I mean drawing from
Alvalyn Lundgren
Eye Level – Writing + Tutorials About Drawing, Design, and Perception
Drawing Basics: A Visual Approach to Linear Perspective
This is the first of a series of tutorial articles dealing with linear perspective. Read Part Two here. And there there’s Part Three. I’m
Alvalyn Lundgren
Eye Level – Writing + Tutorials About Drawing, Design, and Perception
How Paying Attention Helps You Draw Better
I want to preface this by saying that as you learn and apply design principles, and gain experience with organizing elements within a design space,
Alvalyn Lundgren
Eye Level – Writing + Tutorials About Drawing, Design, and Perception
Portrait Sketch Tutorial: Bonita at 102
Older people provide a varied facial landscape to draw. In many ways, it’s easier to describe the external contours when there are more landmarks. But
Alvalyn Lundgren
Eye Level – Writing + Tutorials About Drawing, Design, and Perception
How To Draw A Hand
In this Sketchbook Session I demonstrate my approach to drawing a hand. I start by sketching the general structure and overall shape, and pay attention
Alvalyn Lundgren
Eye Level – Writing + Tutorials About Drawing, Design, and Perception
Color Basics: 10 Absolute Truths About Color
Color is fundamental to life. We not only see color, we experience it. To apply color appropriately in art and design, you need foundational knowledge
Alvalyn Lundgren
Add Energy To Your Drawings With Structural Syntax
Whether drawing from photographic reference or from life, we can easily adopt what I call a line-by-line approach to drawing. We look at our subject, observe,
Alvalyn Lundgren
Eye Level – Writing + Tutorials About Drawing, Design, and Perception
Using Visual Planes in Design and Art
Planes are probably one of the least known formal elements of design outside of the classroom, but understanding what they are and how they’re used is
Alvalyn Lundgren
Eye Level – Writing + Tutorials About Drawing, Design, and Perception
5 Surprising Things You Didn’t Know About Color
Although we see in color, have favorite colors, and use color for practical reasons every day, we aren’t necessarily aware of what color is, how we
Alvalyn Lundgren
Eye Level – Writing + Tutorials About Drawing, Design, and Perception
This Is A Pencil
https://youtu.be/0MowEmVwHRI Pencils are so common that we use them without thinking much about them. When it comes to drawing, we become much more aware of the pencil
Alvalyn Lundgren
Eye Level – Writing + Tutorials About Drawing, Design, and Perception
Using Color Zones In Portraits
A color zone is an area where one color influences all colors in that area. This is known as color dominance, and it occurs constantly. It
Alvalyn Lundgren
Eye Level – Writing + Tutorials About Drawing, Design, and Perception
Light and Shadow in Skin Tones
In this tutorial I begin with some color theory about skin tones and how we perceive light and shadow. Then I move into how to
Alvalyn Lundgren
30-Day Draw-What-You-See Drawing Challenge
https://youtu.be/0NvDvkfmRvw In order to form a habit of drawing daily, you can participate in or create your own drawing challenge. The thing is, you will
Alvalyn Lundgren
Eye Level – Writing + Tutorials About Drawing, Design, and Perception
Decoding Hexadecimal Color Notation
My color theory students have asked me to explain hexadecimal color notation. Their most often-asked question is “What is it?” I will break it down for
Alvalyn Lundgren
Eye Level – Writing + Tutorials About Drawing, Design, and Perception
How to Draw Hands Using Basic Shapes
[themeone_drop_cap letter=”I” color=”accent-color1″ /]n addition to the face, a person’s hands are the most expressive part of the human anatomy. Movements, positions and gestures help us to
Alvalyn Lundgren
Eye Level – Writing + Tutorials About Drawing, Design, and Perception
How to Create a Color Scheme
With all the options we have available to us for selecting colors, how to create the right color scheme for a situation is still a
Alvalyn Lundgren
Eye Level – Writing + Tutorials About Drawing, Design, and Perception
Sketchbook Demo: Portrait Drawing
This portrait drawing was developed using a photograph for reference. When I draw, I spend a lot of time looking and analyzing what I see,
Alvalyn Lundgren
Eye Level – Writing + Tutorials About Drawing, Design, and Perception
Gesture and Contour in Drawing
What is the difference between gesture and contour? In drawing, there are essentially 2 ways we use line: as gesture, and as contour. Gesture line
Alvalyn Lundgren
Eye Level – Writing + Tutorials About Drawing, Design, and Perception
2 Ways To Mix Color
There are two ways in which we mix color: Additively, using direct light from an original source, and Subtractively, using light reflected from substances and surfaces.
Alvalyn Lundgren
7 Tips for Qualifying a Printer
How do you choose a printer? Your choice will depend on the design project itself, but wouldn’t it be great to have several pre-qualified, dependable printers
Alvalyn Lundgren
From My Sketchbook: Drawing the Congressional Hearings
I had my sketchbook open while viewing televised Congressional hearings. US Attorney General, Eric Holder, was up to bat, answering questions pitched by Congressman Darryll
Alvalyn Lundgren
From My Sketchbook: Lucien Bernhard
Lucien Bernhard was an illustrator, type designer and painter in the early 20th Century and was known for stark, hand-lettered advertising posters with minimal graphic
Alvalyn Lundgren