I’ve promised a drawing tutorial for a while now. On the last Sunday of February 2007, I taught a class on sketching for beginners at my local art guild, Pacifica. The following is based on the outline I used with a lot additional explanations.
There are many excellent resources for the beginning student of drawing. Here I have listed some books that I like and that I own:
“The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” Betty Edwards. This is an excellent book in every way. I used it before, during and after art school and found it very useful. Whether or not you take classes, I recommend this book. This is a new edition, but I feel the old and the new are both valuable.
“The Artist’s Complete Guide to Facial Expressions” Gary Faigin. This is an invaluable reference for artists interested in drawing faces. I took a class called “Drawing the Head, Hands and Feet” by the most accomplished artist Sally Cleveland, and she recommended this book.
“Picassos One-Liners” Introduction by Susan Grace Galassi. I love this book. Its lots of drawings done by Picasso with a single line and demonstrates how much information can be provided with what seem like the simplest of methods. It includes the most thought provoking and inspirational quotes as well.
“Art Through the Ages” Horst de la Croix and Richard G. Tansey. This is the text book I used in Art History taught by Jim Hicks at the Pacific Northwest College of Art. I think it’s the single most educational text of its kind and reading it is like being on an art tour.
“The Seeing Hand, A Treasury of Great Master Drawings” Colin Eisler. I could spend hours just looking at this book. It has the most awe-inspiring drawings of the most famous artists throughout history.
ABOUT THE TUTORIAL
The goal of this class: To get comfortable with sketching. In other words, the exercises here won’t necessarily produce something you want to put on your fridge. Hopefully, the student will learn skills to help them feel more confident sketching on their own. Also, with practice, you should be able to create a fridge-worthy piece and do sketches for paintings or other works of art.
Drawing = Seeing + Putting a mark on paper. Most of us can put a mark on paper. That usually isn’t the hard part. Drawing what you really see is the challenge. The exercises here are mostly for tuning the part of your brain that can really see. In “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain”, Betty Edwards calls this part of the brain the “right side.” It’s the right side of the brain that we want to tap into when we draw.
There are many aspects of drawing, and taken together they can be overwhelming to a new student. This class addresses only “Line.” The next installment will address “Value” or shading. See Part 2.
EXERCISE 1: Spend up to 5 minutes
Draw lines of varying heaviness, from light to dark.
Space about ¼ inch apart.
Draw as many different lines between light and heavy.
Repeat to fill ½ page or more.
No erasing.
The object of this is to experience and see the difference between lines drawn with varying heaviness. Students often discover that certain types of lines are out of their comfort zone.
DO A SKETCH: 15-20 minutes.
Start with a rough sketch.
Consider composition. In other words fill the page.
Draw the “gesture” of your object first.
Use light strokes at first, making your lines darker as you become more confident of the object’s contour.
Exercise 2
Exercise 3
EXERCISE 2: Spend up to 5 minutes
Draw lines with various speeds, from slow to fast.
Same as #1
As with the first exercise, this one gets the student to try drawing in a way that is not necessarily intuitive. Often students say they have a really hard time going fast, as they find they have less control. Interestingly, students say the same thing about drawing very slowly.
EXERCISE 3: 5 minutes.
Fill a page or ½ page with lines of various speeds and varying heaviness.
Try light and slow, dark and fast, light and fast, dark and slow etc.
No crossover.
Use straight and curved lines.
Make one continuous line.
No erasing.
Notice the effect each combination has. Some lines give the impression of movement, some of hesitancy and so on.
EXERCISE 4: 5-10 minutes
Draw a contour of your hand without looking at your paper.
Use masking tape to keep paper in place.
Draw with the speed of eye movement following the contour.
Concentrate on the experience and not on the final product.
Usually, students have a really hard time not “cheating” and looking at the paper. The idea is to train the eye and the hand doing the drawing to connect. This is the beginning of drawing what you see and not what you think you see. The final product usually produces a few giggles and won’t necessarily look like a hand at all.
Exercise 4
EXERCISE 5: 10-15 minutes
Draw the contour of an object.
Choose an object. It should be something with an easily identifiable contour or outside border. The following are good examples: Apple or other similar fruit, bell pepper, light bulb, shoe or leaf.
Draw the “outline” of the object without regards to “inside” of object.
Minimize erasing.
This time you can look at your drawing, but resist the temptation to “shade” or draw the interior of the object. Again, the final result may not look like the object you chose, but you are after the experience, not the final product.
EXERCISE 7: 10-15 minutes.
Gesture drawing.
This is an exercise that may be more challenging outside of the classroom environment, but it is well worth the effort. The idea is to get the “gesture” or general feeling and composition of a drawing onto the page very quickly. Partly, this is to prevent the left brain from imposing and causing the student to get fussy right away.
Exercise 5
EXERCISE 6: 10-15 minutes.
Draw the negative space of an object.
Chose a simple object, preferably with obvious geometric negative spaces like a chair or folding table. Some objects don’t have obvious negative spaces, like an apple or any spherical object, so avoid these for now.
Find interior spaces and draw contours as if the space were solid.
This can be a very challenging exercise if you’ve never concentrated on negative space before. It can be helpful to draw the outside of the object at first or early on.
Exercise 6
Find someone to pose for you. Nude is best, but at least get them to wear clothing that is not too lose.
Have your model stand in a pose for 30 seconds at a time. Suggest that they try to convey an emotion or an idea and exaggerate. For example: Searching for someone in a crowd, surprise, yoga, dancing, relaxed, defiant.
The first thing you draw is a line that represents the figure. For example if your model is standing, then your first line will probably be vertical and follow the persons head to their toes. If they are pointing, you may draw a line from their pointing hand to their toes. At this point, you are just trying to fill the page and get the basic “feel” of the person onto your paper.
Proportion is secondary, but, ironically, when you let go of getting things “correct” they will probably look more correct. (By proportion I mean how each part of the body compares to the rest. For example, are the arms the right length for the height of the person?)
During an exercise like this, you should be looking as much as drawing, if not more. If a student is looking at their paper a lot, it usually means they are not drawing what they see.
Exercise 7.
Exercise 7.
Remember to look at the negative space.
Measure for proportion. At some point you may get stuck regarding what is wrong with your drawing. It may be that the proportions of the object you are drawing are incorrect. To check this, use your pencil as a guide. I will assume you are drawing a chair as an example. Start by holding your pencil at arm’s length and determine the fraction of the length of the pencil the leg seems to be. (Is it ¼, ½ of the pencil length?) Let’s say its about ½ the pencil length. Now, holding the pencil at arms length again, measure some other aspect of the chair, like the height of the chair back. Lets say it is also ½ the pencil length. This means that, in your drawing, the leg you measured should be about the same length as the chair back. Another way to look at it would be to say that the chair height is twice the leg length. Chose whichever measurements make sense to you.
OTHER EXERCISES:
Choose a master drawing and copy it trying to imitate the quality of line.
Choose a master drawing and draw it while it is upside down.
Draw an object from memory.
A couple of pages from my sketchbook
RECOMMENDED LINKS:
Please note that I will be adding to this list over time.
http://drawsketch.about.com/od/drawingportraits/Portrait_Drawing_Drawing_Faces.htm The reason I like this tutorial is because it demonstrates how to draw from a real face rather than how to draw a generic face. Learning to draw a generic face as opposed drawing from real life can be instructive, but I feel it is most important to learn how to "see", then you can draw anything.
