Maine Coastal Islands National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center

Constructing Space: Drawing Perspective with Joel Babb

Fri, Nov 20, 1:00 PM

@ This class is eligible for access rates. Explore the history and practice of perspective with artist Joel Babb, whose sweeping cityscapes and landscapes combine precise observation with multiple viewpoints and shifting degrees of detail. His intricate works, currently on view in the exhibition Shifting Vision: Joel Babb’s Painted Universe , showcase his keen observational skills and painterly precision. In this hands-on studio class, artist Joel Babb will share his approach to drawing perspective, beginning with an elegantly simple exercise developed by Renaissance artist Leon Battista Alberti. Babb will demonstrate how this foundational exercise is the key to unlocking an understanding of perspective and can be used to draw panoramas, cityscapes, and more. Participants will draw along with Babb, and have opportunities to ask questions and receive feedback as they work. Babb will also share more about his own studio process, showing preliminary drawings and techniques such as underpainting, working from photographic references, and using a grid to transfer images onto canvas. The class will conclude with a visit to the exhibition for a chance to view Babb’s paintings through a new lens. Participants should bring a sketchbook or paper, pencil, eraser, and ruler, and be prepared to work through drawing exercises focused on perspective and gridding. Joel Babb graduated in Art History from Princeton in 1969, studied with George Segal and George Ortman and spent a year in Munich and Rome before going to Boston to get an MFA from the Museum School and Tufts. There his style cha