Highlights from Drawing Camp for Teens

Cloud 9 art instructor Charlene Collins Freeman offered a teen summer camp  focused on drawing realistically. Here are some highlights, in Charlene’s words.

This summer I led a drawing camp for teens based on The Realism Challenge: Drawing and Painting Secrets from a Modern Master of Hyperrealism by Mark Crilley.

We had a blast and the kids did some great drawings.

We started off by drawing a torn piece of paper using graphite pencil and black and white color pencils.

Some of the teens decided to make it more challenging by trying to capture the crumpled look of paper.

Next we drew popcorn. Each teen was given a bowl of popcorn and picked five or six pieces to draw. We used graphite pencil, a light wash of watercolors, and color pencils.

We moved on to capturing the details of a chocolate chip cookie with a bite taken out of it. We continued with graphite pencil, watercolors and color pencils.

The subjects became increasingly difficult: string and marbles, shiny spoons, textured seashells, textured and shiny Twix bars, and lastly torn playing cards. All of these were drawn 1:1 scale with graphite pencil, color pencil and watercolors.

I loved teaching this teen class. They were focused, fun, and look at these drawings!