These exercises build upon and augment one another. They
cover the fundamental aspects of drawing, and as you complete each
tutorial you will gain artistic skills, knowledge and techniques
that all interlink. Practicing the skills that you learn in the
Line Tutorial for example will also help with figure drawing. They
are designed to be linear, and to follow a natural progression that
you will develop along. If you want to mix it up and change them
around then you are more than welcome. They have been arranged in a
way that allows these skills and important artistic facts and
drawing techniques to build up with both a structured and organic
feel.
~ For the first exercise, you will need a pencil and your
sketchbook. Begin by drawing a rectangle roughly 2cm high by 6cm
long, it doesn’t have to be precise.
~ Now start at the left hand side and shade the first cm row as
dark as you can, press the pencil firmly onto the paper and keep
your lines all moving in the same direction.
~ Draw out another rectangle similar to the previous ones
and start to fill it with quick diagonal lines. Closely group
them together on the left hand side then gradually space them out
as you move towards the right.
~ Again, starting at the left, draw another series of diagonal
lines that cross the first ones at a different angle.
~ Draw 2 different shapes, a large triangle and a circle in
your sketchbook and make them big enough to almost cover the entire
page. You will also need a pot of artist’s ink, a medium sized
paintbrush and a small pot containing some water. An old mug is
ideal, but you can just as easily use an old yoghurt pot or small
container. Black Indian ink is best for this exercise. ~
Begin by applying ink with your brush to one side of the interior
of the shape. Paint this directly from the inkpot and be generous
about how much you use. While the ink is till wet, and with a damp
brush, spread the ink across to the right until the shape is fully
covered. Try to create a steady gradient between the light and the
dark. ~ With your other shape, wet the surface first, before
you apply the ink. You will find that the ink will run and
swirl across the page but work quickly and see if you can achieve a
similar tonal change across the surface of the shape. With these
exercises you don’t have to worry about perfection, concentrate
mainly on trying to create the transition of dark to light.
The form is the shape of an object in three-dimensional
space. When sketching, people often have a tendency to flatten the
subject when they draw it on the paper. Understanding form will
give your drawings volume and body, and will make it much easier to
learn to draw excellent buildings and street scenes, as well as
figures and objects. It will also give you a solid base to
learn the techniques of perspective drawing that will be taught in
the future tutorial.
~ Now join, with the ruler and your pencil, each corner of
the first square to the corresponding corner of the second. Use the
shape below as guidance.
You now have a cube. Take a moment and l ook at what you have
drawn. This image is also an optical illusion. If you concentrate
your eyes on each different square in turn, you will see how it
pops in and out of being at the front or the back of the
cube.
~ On the same page, repeat the same steps and draw another cube in
a clear area of the paper. This time, however, only draw
three lines to connect the squares together.
There is another excellent drawing exercise to try out at
this point that links drawing from life with learning to understand
the form of an object. It involves thinking like an ant and making
a drawing using only one continuous line. The exercise forces you
to really look closely at what you are drawing, and although you
may find the end result interesting, the exercise itself will
benefit your skills greatly in the long run. You can use either a
pencil or a pen for this, but I would recommend a ballpoint ink
pen, as this will give the most consistent line quality for your
drawing. You also need a way of timing 5 minutes, so a clock
or a phone stopwatch is necessary as well. ~ Find an object
that has both an interior and exterior, like a cup, or an open tin
or even something much more complicated if you are feeling
adventurous. This will be your subject. ~ Place your
subject on your desk or somewhere close, where you can see it
easily, in the interests of clarity, I will say that it is a cup.
~ Now rest your pen on the paper. For the next five minutes
you will draw a continuous line that traces the path of an
imaginary ant crawling all over the cup in front of you. You have
to imagine the path that would be left as the insect crawled around
the back, over the rim, inside and all around the entire outside
surface of the cup and its handle. Trace this line with your pen
the entire time and never let it leave the paper. Imagine that the
ant has stood in paint, and as it walks its feet will leave little
painted footprints, your drawn line are these footprints. There is
one more thing… ~ You must never look at the paper and you
cannot take your eyes off the cup!
Clear a space on you working area and choose a round object
such as a golf ball or a ping-pong ball. If you don’t have
either of these to hand, any kind of sphere will do, even a piece
of fruit. Make sure you also have a light that can be moved around
easily and held in a variety of places. If you don’t have an angle
poise lamp then a torch will work, or even download a flashlight
app onto your mobile phone and use that.
~ Place your object on the table in front of you and shine the
light from the right hand side. Observe closely where the
shadows are cast. Now move the light closer and see how the shadows
change. Move the light further away and watch the length, direction
and tone of the shadows change once again. ~ Angle or hold
the light source over the top of the object. Pay attention to the
shade, except this time, imagine how you would draw the object and
the shadow in your sketchbook, as this will be the next part
of the exercise. ~ Once you have found a position for the
light source that creates a scene that you would like to
draw, turn to a new page and start by drawing the outline of your
object with a B or a 2B pencil. Remember to spend a few minutes
studying it first, and that while you draw, keep looking back in
order to keep your proportions in check.
~ Now this is done, take what you learnt from the previous section
about tonal change and start to shade your object. Make the darkest
parts of the scene the darkest parts o your drawing, look at where
and how the light hits the object and make sure that these are the
lightest areas. Take your time. There is no need to rush and your
sketch will benefit from layers that have been slowly worked
up over time.
With the previous drawing exercise we built up an image using dark
tones to represent shadows, we added shade to a white page to
create a sketch. Negative drawing works in the opposite way. With
this technique you begin with a dark background and use an eraser
to create white areas, lines and highlights where the natural color
of the paper shows through. Instead of drawing the shadow,
you draw the light. ~ Use the same set up as before with
your light and object. You will need to redraw its outline, in the
same way as before, except this time, shade the entire object
reasonably darkly with your pencil. ~ Now shade the
background a slightly lighter tone, so that you can sense a faint
difference between it and the object.
To be able to create negative drawings well, you have to think
about the light and how it makes the object look. This sounds
complicated but it isn’t. All it means is that you need to look at
what is happening in front of your eyes, and work from life.
When your drawing is finished, compare both the tonal and
the negative drawing of your object. Look at the differences
and the similarities in the effects that these techniques
create.
Proportion in art . Proportion and scale refer
to the relationships of size between different parts of a drawing
in relation to the whole.
There are proportional rules related to the human body,
probably the most famous example would be from Leonardo Da Vinci’s
concept of the Vitruviun Man. You can see this image below but I’m
sure that you will recognize it. This ubiquitous drawing has
appeared in everything from cartoon t-shirts in markets all over
the world, through to making an appearance in the popular TV series
the Simpsons and the film adaption o Dan Brown’s novel the Da Vinci
Code.
One of the fundamental ideas about human proportion that the
Vitruviun Man reveals is that if you measure your own arm span,
from fingertip to fingertip, then it will be the same measurement
as your height. Try this yourself and see if it is true for you.
Another rule is that the gap between your eyes is generally
the same distance as one of your eyes on its own. These rules,
along with others like them, are useful to understand and be aware
of. As rough guidelines, they will help you when you sketch
proportions. However, you cannot simply rely on them to create
accuracy and faithfulness to the image of what you draw because
everything is always altered by perspective.
As with everything, practice makes perfect, and this
certainly applies to proportional rules and skills. Once you begin
to master these concepts and techniques, and know when to apply
them and when not, you will also be able to break them for
stylistic effect. This can be seen in the work of many artists,
cartoonists, designers and other professionals that
draw, from Pablo Picasso to Ralph Steadman. This type of distortion
can especially be seen in caricatures, which you will learn how to
draw later on in the book. In any of these different areas,
genres and styles of art, your ability to alter
proportions on purpose will be significantly improved by the
ability to draw in proportion first. In other words, you need
to know the rules before you break them.
Learning to draw the texture and surface of an object
realistically can really bring your artworks to life.
Generally there are three types of categories used to classify the
different surfaces that you will draw; these are hard, soft and
rough.
- These smooth and sleek surfaces such as metal or glass are highly
reflective. Light bounces off the surface at odd angles and this
creates sharp highlights with strong, clean edges and clear tonal
contrasts between light and dark.
- This category includes materials like fabrics and plant leaves,
surfaces that absorb the light and have smooth tonal transitions
between the shadows and highlights.
When you are drawing hard, reflective surfaces, high
contrasts and sharp highlights are key to achieving lifelike
representations. Think of a surface as a series of different tones,
rather than an object with borders that needs to be filled up with
pencil marks. Start at the darkest areas and gradually work your
way up to the highlights.
This leads well into compositional balance, where these
different techniques, and styles of drawing can be combined in just
the right way to create a sense of balance and style. Balance can
work in a variety of ways, as the compositional elements of a
drawing that you have learnt about are put together to create an
artwork. Balance works in a variety of ways; for example, if one of
your drawings has an incredibly busy area of texture and
detail in one part of it (hopefully on a grid line – don’t forget
the rule of thirds!) then it would be accentuated and balanced by
other areas of less intense detail. We explored this idea
earlier when we drew the stones, and this kind of contrast is a
great way to add excitement and life to a drawing.
Finally, the way that the lines of a composition are placed
will be exceptionally important in determining how your drawing
will be seen. I don’t mean the texture lines that form surfaces,
but the large flowing lines that underpin the composition.
For example, an image that looks out into the distance along
a deserted American highway will lead your eye down the road and
into the distance. If the road leads into the drawing, then that is
where the viewer’s eye will follow. If the road zooms off to the
right and out of the page, then that is where the observer’s gaze
will be taken. This is called implied movement. As you want people
to look at your drawing and not away
You will firstly need to find a small frame. You can normally pick
these up incredibly cheaply from stores or supermarkets. It does
not matter what the frame is made of as it is going to become a
viewing device for you to create compositions. You can even cut a
rectangular frame out of cardboard if you are feeling inventive.
Find a selection o images and drawings from magazines, books or
artworks that you have created yourself. Pick out some that
are detailed and others that contain a single subject. You will
also need a digital or phone camera but no drawing materials this
time. ~ The aim of this exercise is not to draw something,
but to practice making new compositions for the images that you
collected by using the frame. Choose an image at random and crop it
by placing the frame on top until you have a new composition
and the picture has been changed. Try the frame in three
different positions and see if you can find a compositionally
balanced new picture. Think about the rules that you have
just learned about or recapped if you were already familiar
with them and try to apply them to the exercise. After each time
you place the frame and crop the image, take a photo so that
you can compare them all at the end.
When you are creating figures, I cannot stress enough how
important it is to look at the person that you are
drawing! You must also measuring and think about the effects
of perspective if you want to go improve your skills.
The best way to think about drawing figures is to work from the
skeleton outwards.
~ Begin with rough lines to mark out the spine, shoulders, hips,
head, neck and limbs. Think about the pose that the person is in
and how that angles these parts of the human body.
This exercise is useful for building confidence in your own
drawing ability. It allows you to draw figures quickly without
worrying about creating a finished artwork. You will create
multiple sketches that overlap one another, a process that forces
you to clear your mind and ignore the previous sketch that is
right there in front of you on the paper.
~ Start the timer and draw again, in exactly the same way as
before. Centre the figure right in the middle of the page, and draw
directly on top of the previous image. This may seem odd at first,
but it is important not to be precious, as it is going to get much
messier! If this feels uncomfortable then don’t worry about it,
this is a feeling to work through and it means that you are
pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone, persevere
until the end of the exercise. Again stop drawing when the time is
up. ~ Repeat the same steps, ask your model to change to a
new pose and rotate your paper 90 degrees clockwise again.
Pick a differently colored pencil/pen and draw. Complete this cycle
once more after this until you have drawn the figure four times, in
four poses with four alternately colored pencil/pens.
Stand back and take a look at your work. Rotate your paper back to
the initial portrait position and analyze the figure amongst
the others. When you compare the figures, how does the last drawing
contrast and differ from the first? Is it freer and more
expressive? Drawing with a time constraint creates a bit of
pressure, and this forces your brain to pick out the parts of the
person that you are drawing that it deems to be most important, the
parts that together can make up their image and personality. The
first sketch in the case of this exercise is difficult. It isn’t
easy to try and capture someone in a drawing in five minutes, but
as you got used to the timing aspect, did you feel like you were
drawing in a more fluid and free way? The exercise places the
figures on top of the other to make it harder for you to see what
you are drawing. It is deliberately designed to create the
potential for expressive lines, amongst the numerous other quickly
sketches lines, a slightly out of proportion shoulder or a leg that
is too short cannot be focused on easily. The exercise is
deliberately designed to forgive little mistakes, and as a
consequence, the hand and eye concentrates on the overall
impression of the figure.
This exercise creates a highly stylized drawing and develops
both your actual drawing ability and the way that you look at your
subject. It takes a while to get used to drawing in this style, but
once you are, it is a great technique to have within your artistic
skill set. This is a popular aesthetic in graphics and fashion. It
is widely used within Fine Art in a plethora of creative and
unexpected ways. The idea is to create an artwork using a
single line, in other words, by never taking your
pencil or pen off the paper. It is still possible, one you
have practiced, to make large scale and intricate drawings using a
single unbroken line. Even tonal shading and cross hatching can be
achieved using this method. For this tutorial you will need a
ballpoint ink pen and your sketchbook. You will also need a
subject. Pick something exciting with plenty of detail and lines. I
will use a tree for this exercise as the form of the
branches; trunk, leaves and overall shape of the tree lend
themselves well to being drawn in this way. It is best to
start slowly with this exercise. Your natural inclination will be
to lift your pen away from the paper when you reach the
end of a line, you must control this feeling. When you do reach the
end of a certain point in the drawing where it seems impossible to
draw the next part without lifting the pen and starting a new line
from another point, simply retrace the line until you find another
place to start. This is a little like reversing a car down a street
because it was a dead end.
This can seem tricky at first, because to build up texture,
normally a repeated stroke, line, crosshatch or tone is used, and
this normally involves lifting your pen away fro the surface of the
paper. The trick is to be light with the pen strokes that you make.
Repeated shapes also work well with these kinds of line
drawings.
~ In order to draw the leaves, I simply repeat a small leaf shape
many times until an area of shade is created.
Another handy tip is to roughly mark out an area that will all be
one texture, then draw a few areas of detail and leave the rest
free. This makes the drawing process quicker without
compromising quality, and creates a clever psychological trick in
the mind o the viewer. These clumps of texture will allow the
viewers brain to understand that this is the texture for that
entire area of the drawing. If you provide enough information, then
the viewer’s mind will fill in the gaps.
Drawing is one of the most expressive art forms that you can
use, and its real quality lies in its simplicity. It is a
fundamental part of any artistic pursuit, and if you work on the
basics that are outlined and described in this eBook, then you will
see and feel the progress in other creative areas of your
interests and life. Drawing teaches us to look, in depth, at the
world around us, giving us a creative set of tools to find a way o
understanding the places in which we live, travel through and
experience. Richard Serra, an American artist, said that ‘to
draw is to see, and to see is to draw’, an eloquent way of
articulating this idea. The quote can be exemplified by the famous
work of genius all-rounder Leonardo Da Vinci, who used
drawing as the tool to dissect the world around him. He used
drawing in conjunction with mathematics, engineering,
physics, biology and the natural sciences to create some
revolutionary ideas about the world that are still relevant
today.
I’m not saying that you need to re-invent the helicopter, but you
can use drawing in whatever way that you wish. Often, artistic
instruction comes on strong and tells you that you must paint in
this or that way, or sculpt in a certain exact style, offering
singular, simplistic and boring lectures. The aim of this eBook is
to teach the basics. Don’t be fooled into thinking that they are
easy, because they aren’t. Even Michelangelo said that ‘if people
knew how long it took me to make my work then they wouldn’t call it
mastery’. It takes time and like with any skill and pursuit, from
weightlifting and surfing to making films or drawing a
cartoon, if you work hard on the fundamentals, the rest will follow
naturally.
Don’t ever be discouraged by anyone ever telling you that your
drawing doesn’t look
Any good crash course ought to start at the very
beginning—the beginning not only o good digital photography sense,
but of digital photography itself. Don’t worry, we won’t spend too
long on this chapter, but it might give you a deeper appreciation
for the art form, its capabilities and just how far its come in a
relatively short span of time—in fact, proper digital cameras as we
know them were only introduced in the mid- to late- 1990s, a far
cry from their humble beginnings in the late ‘70s. The first
true prototype began with Kodak, engineered by a man named Steven
Sasson in 1975. Sasson grabbed a Kodak movie-camera lens and
combined it with some CCD sensors and Motorola phone parts to
create something the size of a small toaster oven and weighed about
as much as a large newborn baby. Sasson’s prototype could
capture black-and-white images on a clunky old cassette tape,
but the resolution of 0.1 megapixels was literally unheard
of. The first photograph reportedly took 23 seconds to record, to
give a sense of how far technology as come. Of course,
Kodak—which would soon fall behind in the digital photography
game— didn’t capitalize on this early technological feat.
Kodak stuck with film all the way, and it would come back to
haunt them three decades later. A few more filmless cameras
went through experimentation phases throughout the 1970s, but
nothing took off commercially until 1981, when Sony launched a
magnetic video camera—the Mavica. An analogue counterpart to film,
the Mavica operated on AA batteries, and stored photos on giant
floppy disks that could store up to 50 photographs. The light
sensitivity was roughly equivalent to ISO 200, and the
shutter
of Calgary in Alberta, Canada (it was produced mainly for night sky
and space photography), Canon took the helm by commissioning
a proper digital camera in 1983, though it never went beyond trade
shows—presumably, it was either too expensive, not user-friendly
enough or too clunky to ship. Either way, it would be nearly
another decade before digital cameras actually hit retail stores in
1990. It was called the Dycam Model 1, and used a CCD sensor to
record pictures digitally and upload them directly to a
connected PC. That same year, a pre-Adobe version of
Photoshop was launched, roughly around the same time some
entrepreneurs began attaching digital backs to film single-lens
reflex cameras (SLRs). The digital revolution, though still in its
infancy, had begun to fully take shape. In the early 1990s,
every major tech company joined the fray with more devotion. Kodak
launched a camera called the DCS 200 with a built-in hard drive,
while Nikon’s N8008s offered images in both color and black
and white. Apple even ventured forward with something called
the QuickTake, a collaboration with Kodak (and later Fuji) that was
the first digital camera for under $1,000, but which did not take
off.
viewfinder, not to mention auto-white balance and an LCD screen on
the back. In other words: it was what we understand today to
be what a digital camera. Canon also figured out how to drive costs
down, so they could charge a cool $949 at the start. Since
then, Nikon’s CoolPix and Sony’s CyberShot series became serious
contendors, while Fuji, Olympus, Kodak, Casio and Panasonic would
rise and fall to varying degrees throughout the next two decades.
But commercial digital photography—the basics of it—is not
even 20 years old, as of this time of writing (in 2014).
That means that everything in the last two decades—every digital
SLR, mirrorless camera, phone cam, filter and app—all came flooding
in a very small span of time. We can then understand digital
photography as a recent art—even though photography is a much older
one, the ability to produce magical digital artscapes, put images
into Photoshop and play around, and combine exposures quickly with
methods like multiple digital exposure and HDR, are all relatively
new experiments. Digital photographers are still figuring
this game out. Even the best in the business haven’t been doing it
as long as you’ve been alive. That gives you an advantage, really:
even if you’re just starting out in the world of digital
photographic art, you’re not nearly as far back as you think.
to check out the rest of "Digital SRL Crash Course! - A Beginner's
Guide to Understanding Digital Photography & Take the Best
Shots of Your Life (with
pictures!)" on Amazon!
Amy Taggart is a self defined "endless learner", devoted to helping
others to unlock their full potential all around the world.
From a very young age, Taggart understood the value and potential o
leading a healthy lifestyle, where the balance between work,
hobbies, and crafts is found. And because of her genuine
appreciation and enthusiasm for all things health-related, she has
dedicated a great deal of time and effort to researching the best
of
