Learning to Draw Workshop – Drawing is Seeing
Famous author James A. Owen once said, "Drawing is just two things, putting lines on paper, and deciding where they go."
Do you dream of learning to draw? Do you want to learn to draw so that you can convey and idea you have on paper or do you want to create works of art? Maybe you already have some art skills such as the ability to paint but need to get serious about the underlying problems with the drawing. Irrespective of your dream of becoming a great artist or are just interested to enhance your creative abilities, drawing is a beautiful way of expressing your individuality and observing the details of the world around you.
Any artistic endeavor brings you more in tune with the world around you. When I go out I bring a sketchbook with me and some drawing tools. I like to use black chalk or compressed charcoal rather than a pencil because the charcoal gives me the ability to fill in large areas with tone quickly. It can be used to draw outlines known as contour sketches or create tonal sketches. Tonal sketches have some lines in them but the objective is to see your subject in terms of black and white and shades of gray.
Many skills are involved in drawing, primarily observing the world around you. The most mundane things like what’s on your table – salt and pepper shakers – to towering cathedrals all require one thing. That one thing is your ability to quietly observe the relationship the object has with the all of the other things around it.
Drawing includes measuring, proportioning and gesture. As you put pencil or chalk to paper you must first ask yourself how big will my finished drawing be? How wide will it be? Is it a landscape proportion (wider than taller) or portrait proportion (taller than wider)? Having answered those questions, put little ticks for the top, bottom and outer edges of the drawing. If you answered portrait proportions, you may need to turn your page or sketch pad accordingly. We want our drawing to stay on the page. Making the little ticks ensures that we are going to complete the drawing within those constraints.
Those little ticks should be faint enough so that you can see them, but not so heavy that they cannot be erased when you are done. They are meant to serve as a guide for the next step, which is to see the gesture of the object.
Gesture: a movement or position of the hand, arm, body, head, or face that is expressive of an idea, opinion, emotion, etc.
To make my point clear about what a gesture is I’ll use a couple of examples.
When you see someone leaning up against a building perhaps talking with a friend you see their gesture of leaning into the wall, maybe one foot is on the ground, the other flat against the wall. Their gesture is leaning against the wall. What you see is that angle of the upright body. You can feel the wall behind their back, the pressure of one foot on the ground – that’s what you want to convey in your drawing – so draw a line that passes through the top of their head right down to the ground following the angle of what you see. Another example is of a reclining figure propped up on pillows. The gesture is that line that runs from the top of the head to the rib cage, to the pelvis. It is the angle of the legs, the drapery of the blanket that flows over the figure to the floor. The gesture is a quick line to indicate where things start and stop. It indicates the angle of the joints in relation to the rest of the body.
Exercise:
Draw the things around you. Start with simple objects (like a bowl of fruit) or common objects on your breakfast table and progress to more complicated subjects--an intricately shaped table, for instance, or people's faces. It’s better to draw real-life objects in order to get better at drawing. If you haven't been practicing with drawing the face, you'll have a hard time recording on paper in a way that matches with the image you see in front of you.
Don’t try to be too precise. If you're drawing a tree, don't draw one leaf at time. Imagine what you want the tree to look like in your finished drawing, and make a light tonal sketch with a broad drawing stick. You can draw an outline or you can draw its "gesture" (as is often done with drawing bodies). Another way of seeing is to imagine the basic shapes the object is made of. When you look at an object, try to see the basic geometric shapes. A tree is an oval or triangle centered on top of a cylinder. Quickly indicate both shapes and fill in the details later, while maintaining the proportions of the object. Be careful not to get caught up in drawing one section of the object and forget about the "big picture". Work over the entire surface of the page adding details from the largest shapes to the finer details. Working this way will bring about a greater sense of satisfaction as you see the drawing unfold before your eyes.
Fill in the details. Create darker lines to bring out the parts of the drawing you want to emphasize, and use a kneadable eraser to take out the tones you don't want. Be sure to frequently step back and look at your drawing to make sure the proportioning is correct. Experiment with several techniques as listed below. Doing so can enhance your ability to express ideas and thoughts through your drawing. Be sure to practice seeing as often as is possible. Look for shapes, rectangles, triangles, spheres, cylinders etc. Everything we see can be refined down to one or more of these shapes.
Consider shading or modeling. See how an object curves through under the influence of light and shadow. Think about the direction of light as it strikes an object and which parts of the object are light or in shadow. Including these elements will add depth and realism to a drawing.
Perspective: In 1413, Filippo Brunelleschi demonstrated the geometrical method of perspective, used today by artists. It is important to understand perspective from simple one point perspective to the more complicated two and three point perspective. Focusing on how an object looks in space with all of its three dimensional qualities when drawing small, simple objects is an excellent exercise in drawing. Try sketching a stack of books from various points of view to see how the lines of perspective change as the objects are elevated or your point of view becomes more steeply inclined.
Proportion: Drawing accurately involves the consideration of how the different parts of the scene relate to each other. When drawing a face for example, there are guidelines for proportioning that the artist must abide by otherwise the face will not look realistic. Altering proportions by exaggerating some aspects and minimizing others can convey ideas, or represent a certain style of drawing as is seen in caricatures and editorial illustrations.
Methods to Better Drawing:
Blind drawing – do not look at the page but focus only on the subject. Put your pencil to the page and begin to draw the contours of the subject feeling your way around. Do not lift your pencil from the page until you have completed the entire drawing. Be sure to indicate the negative spaces as well. A great way to get connected back into drawing if you have not practiced in a long time
Contour drawing – Careful observation exercise where you see and recording only the outlines of the subject in line, no tone. Use a marker or conte for this exercise. You may look at your paper, use a measuring tool to get proportioning correct.
Tonal Sketch – use a broad drawing tool such as chalk pastel to indicate the three tonal areas of the darkest dark, medium tone and white where the paper shows through. For this exercise use black, gray, white and sepia chalk pastel.
Do you dream of learning to draw? Do you want to learn to draw so that you can convey and idea you have on paper or do you want to create works of art? Maybe you already have some art skills such as the ability to paint but need to get serious about the underlying problems with the drawing. Irrespective of your dream of becoming a great artist or are just interested to enhance your creative abilities, drawing is a beautiful way of expressing your individuality and observing the details of the world around you.
Any artistic endeavor brings you more in tune with the world around you. When I go out I bring a sketchbook with me and some drawing tools. I like to use black chalk or compressed charcoal rather than a pencil because the charcoal gives me the ability to fill in large areas with tone quickly. It can be used to draw outlines known as contour sketches or create tonal sketches. Tonal sketches have some lines in them but the objective is to see your subject in terms of black and white and shades of gray.
Many skills are involved in drawing, primarily observing the world around you. The most mundane things like what’s on your table – salt and pepper shakers – to towering cathedrals all require one thing. That one thing is your ability to quietly observe the relationship the object has with the all of the other things around it.
Drawing includes measuring, proportioning and gesture. As you put pencil or chalk to paper you must first ask yourself how big will my finished drawing be? How wide will it be? Is it a landscape proportion (wider than taller) or portrait proportion (taller than wider)? Having answered those questions, put little ticks for the top, bottom and outer edges of the drawing. If you answered portrait proportions, you may need to turn your page or sketch pad accordingly. We want our drawing to stay on the page. Making the little ticks ensures that we are going to complete the drawing within those constraints.
Those little ticks should be faint enough so that you can see them, but not so heavy that they cannot be erased when you are done. They are meant to serve as a guide for the next step, which is to see the gesture of the object.
Gesture: a movement or position of the hand, arm, body, head, or face that is expressive of an idea, opinion, emotion, etc.
To make my point clear about what a gesture is I’ll use a couple of examples.
When you see someone leaning up against a building perhaps talking with a friend you see their gesture of leaning into the wall, maybe one foot is on the ground, the other flat against the wall. Their gesture is leaning against the wall. What you see is that angle of the upright body. You can feel the wall behind their back, the pressure of one foot on the ground – that’s what you want to convey in your drawing – so draw a line that passes through the top of their head right down to the ground following the angle of what you see. Another example is of a reclining figure propped up on pillows. The gesture is that line that runs from the top of the head to the rib cage, to the pelvis. It is the angle of the legs, the drapery of the blanket that flows over the figure to the floor. The gesture is a quick line to indicate where things start and stop. It indicates the angle of the joints in relation to the rest of the body.
Exercise:
Draw the things around you. Start with simple objects (like a bowl of fruit) or common objects on your breakfast table and progress to more complicated subjects--an intricately shaped table, for instance, or people's faces. It’s better to draw real-life objects in order to get better at drawing. If you haven't been practicing with drawing the face, you'll have a hard time recording on paper in a way that matches with the image you see in front of you.
Don’t try to be too precise. If you're drawing a tree, don't draw one leaf at time. Imagine what you want the tree to look like in your finished drawing, and make a light tonal sketch with a broad drawing stick. You can draw an outline or you can draw its "gesture" (as is often done with drawing bodies). Another way of seeing is to imagine the basic shapes the object is made of. When you look at an object, try to see the basic geometric shapes. A tree is an oval or triangle centered on top of a cylinder. Quickly indicate both shapes and fill in the details later, while maintaining the proportions of the object. Be careful not to get caught up in drawing one section of the object and forget about the "big picture". Work over the entire surface of the page adding details from the largest shapes to the finer details. Working this way will bring about a greater sense of satisfaction as you see the drawing unfold before your eyes.
Fill in the details. Create darker lines to bring out the parts of the drawing you want to emphasize, and use a kneadable eraser to take out the tones you don't want. Be sure to frequently step back and look at your drawing to make sure the proportioning is correct. Experiment with several techniques as listed below. Doing so can enhance your ability to express ideas and thoughts through your drawing. Be sure to practice seeing as often as is possible. Look for shapes, rectangles, triangles, spheres, cylinders etc. Everything we see can be refined down to one or more of these shapes.
Consider shading or modeling. See how an object curves through under the influence of light and shadow. Think about the direction of light as it strikes an object and which parts of the object are light or in shadow. Including these elements will add depth and realism to a drawing.
Perspective: In 1413, Filippo Brunelleschi demonstrated the geometrical method of perspective, used today by artists. It is important to understand perspective from simple one point perspective to the more complicated two and three point perspective. Focusing on how an object looks in space with all of its three dimensional qualities when drawing small, simple objects is an excellent exercise in drawing. Try sketching a stack of books from various points of view to see how the lines of perspective change as the objects are elevated or your point of view becomes more steeply inclined.
Proportion: Drawing accurately involves the consideration of how the different parts of the scene relate to each other. When drawing a face for example, there are guidelines for proportioning that the artist must abide by otherwise the face will not look realistic. Altering proportions by exaggerating some aspects and minimizing others can convey ideas, or represent a certain style of drawing as is seen in caricatures and editorial illustrations.
Methods to Better Drawing:
Blind drawing – do not look at the page but focus only on the subject. Put your pencil to the page and begin to draw the contours of the subject feeling your way around. Do not lift your pencil from the page until you have completed the entire drawing. Be sure to indicate the negative spaces as well. A great way to get connected back into drawing if you have not practiced in a long time
Contour drawing – Careful observation exercise where you see and recording only the outlines of the subject in line, no tone. Use a marker or conte for this exercise. You may look at your paper, use a measuring tool to get proportioning correct.
Tonal Sketch – use a broad drawing tool such as chalk pastel to indicate the three tonal areas of the darkest dark, medium tone and white where the paper shows through. For this exercise use black, gray, white and sepia chalk pastel.