Get up close and personal. Providing opportunities for people to experience visual art in person is a key part of our mission. We have three different exhibition galleries in our building, as well as outdoor and auxiliary shows around town.
Our main gallery features traditional, contemporary and cutting edge work by established and emerging artists throughout the Bay Area. Located at 1337 Fourth Street, this gallery showcases the best of local art through large storefront windows in the heart of San Rafael. To the serious collector, art lover or visitor, the gallery serves as the public face of Art Works Downtown and a direct connection to our community.
The Underground Gallery features a wide variety of work in an intimate setting. This space is available monthly to artists for solo shows, small group shows, or installations.
This gallery offers an attractive exhibition space as well as a unique setting for parties or events. This space is available monthly to artists for solo shows orsmall group shows.
This gallery offers an intimate exhibition space in a street level display space. This space is available monthly to artists for solo shows or small group shows.
Experience rotating installations of outdoor art and sculpture in several downtown locations, exhibited in partnership with the City of San Rafael.
African Mask Quiz 1 tests your ability to identify individual mask designs while African Mask Quiz 2 tests your knowledge of the people and customs associated with a mask.
Our Ancient Egyptian Art Quiz tests what you know about Ancient Egyptian culture: their Art, Gods, Crowns and Hieroglyphics.
Our Color Quiz tests your knowledge of the physical and psychological properties of color including color theory, color terms, color mixing and color symbolism.
Our Art Movements Quiz tests your knowledge of the great artists associated with each movement and your ability to recognise their individual styles of art.
It is best to begin any portrait with the eyes as they are the focal point and most revealing feature of the face. They are the key to the success of the work. If you get them right at the start, it boosts your confidence for the rest of the portrait. If you get them wrong and have to start again, you have not wasted time drawing the rest of the face.
The first marks that we make in our charcoal and chalk drawing are the distances across and between the eyes.
We take care to observe any subtle variations in the symmetry of the eyes. It is these small differences that will help us capture the unique likeness of our sitter.
Pay particular attention to drawing the circles that form the iris in each eye. Note how they disappear beneath the eyelids, slightly more under the top lid than the bottom.
Don't be tempted to outline the shapes of the eyebrows. It is better to gradually build up their forms in lines that follow the direction of their growth.
At this stage we begin to embed the eyes into the form of the face by establishing the general tones in and around them.
This is done by lightly shading the darker areas of tone with soft strokes from a charcoal stick. We then blend these with a tortillon, a tissue or a finger which both lightens and merges the areas into a unified tone. A tortillon (paper blending stump) can be sharpened to a point and is ideal for smaller details, whereas a tissue or your finger is more efficient for larger areas.
It is best to apply your tones lightly as it is easier to darken them when you come to balance the elements of the drawing at a later stage. It is always more difficult to lighten a dark tone than it is to darken a light tone.
Now we begin to pick out the details of the eyes, eyelids and eyebrows with a sharp charcoal pencil, using the same technique as traditional pencil drawing.
Start to build up the darker details leaving any lighter areas, such as the highlights on the skin and reflections in the eyes, the natural mid-tone of the paper. These highlights and reflections will be heightened with white chalk in the final stage of the drawing.
This requires that we look again at our subject, searching for the darker tones and details that we ignored on our first look.
Drawing is essentially a process of observing and recording what we see, but we never get all the information we need in a single glance. First, we need to look and register what we see. Then we need to look again to discover what we missed. In due course we continue this process until we are happy that we have recorded and balanced all the elements of line, shape and tone that we see in our subject.
Applying the final highlights with white chalk is the most exciting part of drawing with charcoal and chalk. It is the missing element that brings your drawing to life.
For drawing the reflections in the eyes, you should sharpen your chalk to a fine point with a large pencil sharpener or craft knife.
Lightly shade the highlights on the skin and merge them with a blending stump, tissue or finger to suggest the natural form and glow of the complexion.
In our illustration above you can see how our charcoal and chalk drawing is built up in a series of layers that gradually refine the line, tone and texture of the image to create a convincing representation of the eyes.