( music playing )
Hey, how are you?
♪ Celebrity ♪
Hi, I'm Terry Crews,
and I'm today's celebrity substitute.
Look at this avocado.
Why is it so big compared to my head right now?
To explain, we're going to talk about
two important concepts in visual art.
Hi, I'm Rachel Hwang.
I teach art in Compton, California.
And today's lesson is going to be
about scale and proportion.
Joining me today,
we have a special celebrity substitute,
the one, the only,
artist, actor, football extraordinaire,
- Terry Crews! - Hi!
- How you doing, Rachel? - I am so stoked.
Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm so grateful.
You know, Rachel, it's people like you
that really change the world, you know what I mean?
You are a frontline worker at this moment.
I just want to appreciate.
Let me tell you this, too.
I've been drawing since I could hold a pencil.
And to me, it's really not about whether you can do it or not,
because everyone is truly an artist.
- Yeah. - It's about developing your sight,
developing what you see.
Thank you so much for expressing that point,
because I cannot express it enough with my own students.
A lot of them just don't feel that they have it in them.
They're like, "Oh, I'm not a good artist.
Art really isn't just my thing."
You have to be bold enough
to take that chance and keep trying.
And eventually, like you said, you will develop that sight.
You will develop your style.
It might not be like everybody else's,
and that doesn't matter because what makes it different
is what makes it absolutely rad.
You know what, Rachel?
That is the theme of my whole career.
Exactly. No, exactly.
I'm looking forward to teaching, following your lead.
Let's do this thing.
I absolutely love art.
I live it, I breathe it,
I blend it into my protein smoothies.
But sometimes what seems like an image
that should be easy to draw
actually requires a lot of complex thought.
So let's talk about scale and proportion.
They're two of the most important concepts
in the history of visual art.
In art, scale means the size of one object
in relation to another.
To show you what I'm talking about,
take a look at my stuffed animal here.
I call him David Hasselhoof.
( imitating hoofbeats )
Now, when you look at him right here,
he seems pretty reasonably sized for a stuffed animal.
But now check him out next to my other stuffed friend
Amelia Eggheart.
( imitating clucking )
Okay. When we look at them side by side,
we know that either that's one tiny horse
or that's one absolutely enormous chicken.
The relationship between their two sizes,
that is scale.
Proportion is related to scale,
but instead of the relationship between two objects,
proportion is the relative size of parts within a whole.
If you've ever tried to draw a person
and ended up with a dude who has arms
that are way too big for his body,
that's because of proportion.
But see, I'm not-- I'm not out of proportion.
You see that?
So, Terry, I have a huge favor to ask of you.
I have a student, she's a huge "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" fan.
Do you think I could bring her on?
So has absolutely no idea whatsoever.
- She's going to be so stoked. - This is so good.
I've been so alone here in the house for a long time.
I would love to meet somebody else.
Okay, hide.
- Hi, Miss Hwang. - Hey, honey, how are you?
- I'm good, and you? - I'm super excited.
Okay, I know you were told that you were supposed to be
teaching a lesson with me today,
but I have a surprise for you.
There is a celebrity substitute today
who's going to be teaching the class--
- Terry Crews! - Hey, what's up?
What's up?
( grunting )
- Hi, Krystle! - Hi!
- How are you? - I'm good.
It's so nice to meet you.
Hi. It's nice to meet you, too.
( Terry laughs )
- Oh, I'm shaking. - It's okay, it's okay.
Now I hear you are an excellent artist.
- Thank you. - So what are you working on right now?
I have a couple things in here that I like.
There is this that I did awhile back.
- Oh, that is amazing. - Thank you.
I love the colors, the light. That is really unique.
- And then I have this. - Oh, my God.
That is beautiful.
Man, you are on the right path right now.
- Thank you. - Crystal, we're about to
get into a whole lesson
on scale and proportion right now.
I'm actually going to do some sketching.
You're going to see what I do.
I hope you enjoy it, okay?
I will. Thank you. I appreciate it.
It can be really hard to make a realistic drawing.
How do you do it?
Well, the key is to use both
scale and proportion together.
Of course, sometimes as an artist,
you might not want your art to be perfectly realistic.
Jeff Koons famously takes balloon animals
which we expect to be small
and turns them into massive sculptures.
Or in this Minneapolis landmark,
Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen
kept the proportion of a cherry and spoon
the same as normal but made the scale way bigger.
And one of the most famous images of all time
is this drawing by Leonardo da Vinci.
It's called "Vitruvian Man,"
and it was his way of practicing the perfect proportions.
Now the we know the principles, let's use them.
I'm going to draw a still life
making sure to apply the concepts
of scale and proportion.
And for this still life
let's just use some items I have lying around the house
like a protein shake,
and dumbbell, and boxing glove.
There we go.
Put these down right here like so.
I'm going to be using proportion to make sure
that the dumbbell looks even and realistic.
I tend to like to eyeball it, you know what I mean?
Most art is literally just mistakes
and fixing the mistakes.
One thing about art
is that people tend to judge themself
while they are drawing and doing what they do.
And you really can't do that.
Judgment tends to stop the creativity.
Ooh, I like this.
Okay, this is the dumbbell
- that I have here. - It's beautiful.
Terry: What do you think should come in there next?
I think we kind of need to expand on scale a little bit.
I'm kind of getting lost as to the actual size of it.
Is it Clifford the Big Red Dog kind of size?
Or is it one of my dumbbell weights,
like a little ten-pounder?
Let's go with the protein shake
because it will establish the size of these dumbbells.
Good idea.
So what Terry is doing
is he's taking a vertical object,
a protein shake, which as human beings
we all kind of know what kind of size it is.
He's going to place it in part of the composition
to give people an idea of how big the dumbbell is.
Okay, here we go.
We got our shaker in there,
- if you can see it. - Whoo!
Terry: Our shake is happening.
Now I'm going to add a boxing glove.
It's a much more-- a round shape, you know what I mean?
I love it. I love that idea
of balancing two very geometric shapes
with a softer, more organic, rounder shape.
It creates a little bit more interest in your piece
and it gives it a little bit more oomph.
- Terry: Okay. - I love it, Terry.
I love how you put everything together.
And as a first-time teacher? Whoo!
Aah! Thank you.
Okay, so what did we learn?
We know that scale is the relationship between objects
and that proportion is the relationship of sizes within an object.
We know that sometimes artists
play around with scale on purpose.
But if your goal is to make a realistic drawing,
you need to pay close attention
and give the viewer both reference objects
and a clear sense of the spatial relationships
between everything you're drawing.
And even outside of just drawing or painting,
all of these techniques can help you make sense
of what you're seeing in the world.
So when I put my face way too close to the webcam,
it's not that my head is enormous.
It just means that you don't know the scale.
Or maybe my head is actually enormous.
That was fun! Did you enjoy the lesson?
There's a lot more where that came from.
Hit the subscribe button now
to make sure you don't miss a moment
of "Celebrity Substitute" right here on YouTube.