SFMOMA hosts a guided observational Drawing Night on Thursday, Aug. 13, from 6 to 8 p.m. on Floors 3 and 5, with four Bay Area artists leading hands-on exercises. Free with museum admission, materials included.

What, when, where: Drawing Night at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Thursday, Aug. 13, 6 to 8 p.m., on Floors 3 and 5. SFMOMA, 151 Third St., San Francisco, in SoMa. It's free with museum admission — meaning you still need a ticket in the door (general admission runs about $30), but the workshop itself costs nothing extra, and materials are provided. Bring your own sketchpad and pencils if you'd rather.

This isn't a look-but-don't-touch gallery stroll. Four working Bay Area artists each set up a different station, and you rotate through the approaches. Craig Calderwood runs responsive exercises — draw what a piece makes you feel, your first gut reaction on encountering it. Aleo Landeta, an Oakland-based artist, has visitors drawing one another. Wally A. Corona, a CCA painting grad, pushes people to draw on nontraditional surfaces. Sun Park works in color, layering colored pencil across richly hued papers to see what line and tone do on top of each other. You walk out with actual sketches, not just a gift-shop postcard.

The catch worth flagging: "free with admission" is the operative phrase. If you're a member, this is a genuinely free night out. If you're not, budget the roughly $30 ticket. The event runs on a Thursday, when the museum's posted hours stretch late — noon to 8 p.m. — so the drawing session lands inside an evening you can also spend on the collection itself. It's part of SFMOMA's Thursday Night Live programming. Accessible seating is available.

The insider move: Take BART or Muni to Montgomery and walk the two blocks down — parking in this stretch of SoMa is a gouge and the Yerba Buena garages fill on event nights. Get there close to 6 so you can hit more than one artist's station before the two hours are up; the stations that require a partner (Landeta's) are easier early, before the crowd thins into pairs.

If you've only got the evening: Do Corona's nontraditional-surface station first for something you can't do at home, then drift up to Floor 5 with your sketchpad and draw straight from the collection while the galleries are calm. That's the whole pitch — for the cost of a ticket you'd pay anyway, you get four artists coaching you through it.