New Page 1

Some suggestions for drawing practice:

These notes are for my figure-drawing students, but anybody who finds their way to this page is welcome to read and even benefit from them! The thing is, they’ll be clear (I hope) to my students, but perhaps not so clear to casual visitors.

To fast-track your progress in drawing, you’ll need to start keeping a sketchbook. Get a 9” X 12” Strathmore “400” Series Sketch, about $6.00 with a discount coupon at AC Moore or Michael’s. Get a couple of 6B graphite pencils while you’re there. Then run up to Office Max and get a five-pack of Pentel Rolling Writers, black ink, medium point. Also get a "Sharpie" laundry-marking pen with a fine point. You won’t use all of these all the time, but you should start experimenting to find out which of the drawing tools feels right for you. When you find a sympathetic tool, you’ll be more likely to use it regularly.

I’ll be suggesting exercises from time to time, and you’ll find the first one a little later in these notes. Here are a few guidelines for using a sketchbook:

1. Keep it with you all the time! Instead of watching “Family Feud” in the doctor’s waiting room, you can get in a little practice in your sketchbook. Don’t worry about doing something that might appear unusual. Most people will think you’re working on something from the office.

2. Draw in it regularly. Like any other complex skill, drawing requires a lot of practice.

3. Date your pages. If there’s a gap of three weeks between one dated page and the next, you’ll know you’re going too easy on yourself.

4. Keep your sketchbook private, like a journal. Knowing that nobody will see your first efforts will help you to maintain a fearless attitude toward your work and your growth. Your teacher may ask to see your drawings, and you may have a supportive friend you’ll want to show them to, but that should be all.

Now we come to that first drawing exercise. I used to do this frequently back when I was taking “Drawing 1” as an undergraduate, and then I used a variation of it for years in my classes at Keystone, where we called it the “Puzzle Drawing.”

Figure 1.

The idea is simple: You just invent some irregular shapes, draw them quickly so that one appears behind the other, and if you like, add a little tone...”shading”...to one of them, as I’ve done here.

Then you make another version of the arrangement, trying to exactly reproduce the original. You should not settle for an approximation...you should ask yourself, “Is the angle of this protrusion exactly the same as the original?” “How about the length?” Keep questioning yourself and making corrections until you’ve made as exact a copy as you can. The next day, do another one, and keep doing them until you begin to be able to instantly judge the angle, direction, and size of any shape you see.

Here's a tip for finding the angle of the arm-like shapes: visualize a clock-face, with the numbers on it. Then compare the directions of the "arms" to the numbers. In my drawing, the topmost dark shape is a little to the right of "12 o'clock." The white arm with the square end is between "8" and "9." In your figure work, you'll use this same idea to determine the direction of the various limbs.

Figure 2.

In Figure 2 you can see my attempt at redrawing my little arrangement of shapes. If you compare one to the other, you’ll see that there are lots of differences. In your practice you should not allow this many differences. In fact, I recommend you use soft pencil for your drawings, and feel free to erase and redraw any line or shape until you are satisfied that you can’t come any closer to the original. Then go on to the next one! Try to do one or two of these exercises every day for two weeks or so.

I’ve reproduced a couple of pages from my sketch books below. You’ll notice that I’ve dated the pages, just the way I want you to do. Figure 3 was done with a Pentel pen. The black ink in these pens is water-soluble, and you can get a lovely wash by brushing clear water over the lines, with a brush or just your finger.

Figure 3.

The page of studies of hands, in Figure 4, was done with a laundry-marking pen. Note that the drawings appear to be of a right hand; my model was my own left hand held up to a mirror.

Figure 4.