Basic Drawing Lessons

About Me

I am an artist that does art in a realistic fashion. I learned to draw from comic books when I was growing up in the sixties. My favorite artist is Jim Steranko. Steranko was

a visionary and drew a favorite comic of mine, Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD. I paint watercolor, airbrush, oil and draw in graphite and pen and ink. I also do quite a bit

of digital art, CGI and general digital photography.

On this page, I am going to go over my basic drawing class and the steps involved to learn to draw. Nearly everyone would like to draw well, although many people have absolutely no interest in drawing. For those people that do have an interest, please continue on.

Drawing Class Part One of Three

The first class consists of a five to ten minute drawing of an object that is kind of boring like a chair or maybe a bowl to see how well the aspiring student can draw. Some

people can already draw a little, some can draw very well just because they doodle a lot and have practiced, and some can not draw at all. But the purpose of the class

is to help everyone draw better. It really is up to the person since I've had people come to my class and say they can't draw no matter what. I guess if you are determined

to not learn to draw better, you won't draw better after my class. I really don't want people coming because someone made them come as they just are there to waste my

time and their own time. After everyone has drawn their first picture, taking at least five minutes to draw their very best and as much as 10 minutes if need be, I can look

at each drawing and determine what needs to be addressed with each student to help them improve their drawing skills. Some people will rush through a drawing as fast

as they can and some will dawdle over the simplest line, so it's a good thing to see what each person does and the time they take to do what they do when drawing. It's

frustrating to me to see someone that I know wants to draw better, can already draw fairly well, and just rushes through a drawing as if it's a race.

.......................................................................................................................................................................................................................

The next step is to teach the basic concepts of right side brain drawing. Everyone interested in drawing or art in general will do themselves a favor by reading Drawing

On The Right Side Of The Brain by Dr. Betty Edwards. Here is a link to the wiki for Dr. Betty Edwards. This book will teach you to shift your brain into the artistic side so

you can draw better. It's a concept that is fairly easy to understand as many people have experienced the shift from lefe to right without even knowing it for their whole

lives. It's similar to enjoying a good sci-fi movie like Star Wars. You have to suspend your disbelief anf put aside the thought from your anilitical part of the brain that says

this is all fantasy and it's not real and is a waste of time. Also when experiencing the shift, time will stop more or less for you. The passage of time will fly by.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Edwards

Turning the object or image to be drawn upside drawn will sometimes do the trick as far as forcing the brain to switch to the right side. For at least 10 minutes, I try to

make everyone understand how important this concept of right and left brain function is. Some people rebel at the thought of drawing with a part of their brain they never

use or at least use infrequently or don't even know they use that part regularly. They want to just draw.

Next step is the Alberto Giacometti techniques for arriving at good reference points. here is a link to the wiki on Alberto Giacometti.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Giacometti

These exercises will help an artist immensely with getting the image placed where they want it on the paper, it's size, dimensions and composition. I generally spend up

to fifteen minutes on the reference points exercise. If the students are not freaking out, I will let it go on until they are tired. It's actually pretty cool when it dawns on you

what and why the Giacometti technique can do for your drawing. For those that depend on a grid to draw, it's a revelation. You can completely abandon the grid system

where you have to put a grid on your reference, then on your paper and try to match up certain reference points. The grid system is a good way to draw and I teach that

part too, it's just that a lot of drawing can be done without it if you practice this Giacometti technique until the light bulb goes of in your head and you say you understand

the concept and why it is so important.

The next step is to simply draw the object without looking at the paper. No rendering or shading, just the general outline really helps to focus attention on the subject and

not on the drawing. At least 10 minutes are spent doing this as many people hate drawing without looking at the paper. This is generally known as blind contour

drawing. I review each students work and help them as we go along. Sometimes it is very hard for a person to draw blindly. I've seen some people that absolutely refuse

to do it. They just lock down and kind of stare blindly ahead as if going to their doom. It really helps a person loosen up though and is well worth the initial discomfort. I

hated it with a passion, but if you just let go, it's rally fun and cool. Every drawing and every line does not have to be a masterpiece.

This is generally the end of the first class. I tell the student the difference between someone who can draw and someone who can not is that the artist sees things as they

really are. It's more in seeing than skill of the hand. Since I was a child, I have always drawn and every time I see something that is really interesting, I look at it as if I

had to draw it. It may be weird, but I say to myself, this line would go here and this line would go there. Wow, that thing would be really hard to draw since it has that

foreshortened arm or that angle will really throw me off because it goes off completely the wrong way than my brain would like it to. Not sure about other artists, but I've

always done that.

Then I tell the learning artists to practice contour drawing, drawing objects upside down and the Giacometti techniques until the next class which will cover more

advanced principles such as perspective, shading, and light sources. The serious student will go home and practice. There are always some that already know some of

these concepts.

Drawing Class Part Two of Three

The second class consists of first talking about problems or questions with the first class. Review the importance of Giacometti technique for finding the reference lines.

Review the importance of the left brain to right brain shift and getting good at it. Explain why it's important to do exercises and not worry about using a lot of paper. Don't

be stingy with paper. If you have to, get some cheap newsprint to draw on. The texture of newsprint paper is great for pencil or charcoal. Don't be stingy with your pencil

and eraser. I see so many people drawing with a little pathetic nub of a pencil that is so short, they can't hold it properly. If you can't hold a pencil properly because it's

too short, you are probably not going to ever learn to draw well, just because of a simple little inexpensive pencil.

.....................................................................................................................................................................................

Explain why the camera can lie due to its single point of reference and the human eyes are using two points of reference. I've seen so many people struggle with a

horrible image of someone where the camera was so close when it took the picture, the image is distorted. Then you struggle with the drawing that looks just like the

photo, but you know the thing you are trying to draw does not look like the drawing, because of the single point of reference the camera gives you and it being too close

to the subject. How many times have you seen a picture portrait of someone and they just look fat. Their face is just all wrong and you know it but you think, well the

camera does not lie. That is not true. The camera can distort perspective easily according to where it is in relation to the subject and many lenses have horrible distortion

so never trust a camera to take an image that looks exactly like what you see with your two eyes. It can't do it. Some times this effect is called barrel distortion.

.......................................................................................................................................................................................

The importance of practice. Without practice, you will never master drawing. Some people have a natural ability to draw and don't require as much practice. Then some

people can draw pretty well, but have developed some bad habits and tendencies that can only be fixed by practicing the correct way to draw. Of course, there are some

that will not learn anything new and will not take much from the class.

Now we will draw an object using line only. Discuss the importance of overlaps and demonstrate how overlaps work. Demonstrate how a darker line comes forward and a

lighter line recedes. We then do a picture with one object in front of another and make the second object recede from the first object by drawing the second object with

thinner lines, followed by placing another object behind the first two and drawing it very faintly to show how to get the effect of perspective and depth. Perspective and

depth are very important to a good composition.

Explain the concept of grid lines in reproducing a picture. Explain and demonstrate negative space. Use a chair. Demonstrate the concept of volume. "Everything in nature can be reduced to a cylinder, cone, or cube," said Paul Cezanne. It's true. Drawing cylinders, cones, spheres and boxes can really help improve your drawing skills. Imagine that. I don't spend a lot of time with people drawing boring cylinders and spheres though. I think that is the quickest way to bore someone, then they lose interest and their time is wasted and so is mine.

........................................................................................................................................................................................

Discuss the importance of composition, the rule of thirds. Rules of composition as far as horizon lines, why it is bad for tangent lines to be too close together and why it is

bad for tangent lines to come together at the edge of drawing. I've seen some beautifully rendered drawings that were ruined by the artist worrying too much about the

act of drawing and not enough about making a pleasant and interesting composition. Composition is an art unto itself. Poor drawings that have imaginative composition

are elevated to a better image just because they are interesting and have a pleasing composition. People have a tendency, even I do, to try to make things even and it's a

bad habit that you must fight when drawing something that has nothing that is even in it. When I took floral and landscape painting lessons form Lowell Spears, he told

me several times my painting had an oriental, stylized look. He was just being nice and trying to point out that all my leaves were the same distance apart. There was no

randomness to it. It's something I have to think about when drawing as it's so easy to space things that are repeated in a drawing several times, the same distance apart

or make them very much alike when in real life, they are different sizes and at different angles from each other and overlapping.

.......................................................................................................................................................................................

Discuss and demonstrate the importance of emphasis at junctions. Some artists do it without thinking. I used to do it without thinking. But now when finishing a drawing, I

make an effort to go back and make my junctions clearer and slightly darker, sometimes much darker.

Aerial perspective and general linear perspective are concepts that need to be understood and not taken for granted. The importance of thumbnails and planning ahead

can not be over stressed. Many times I'll do several thumbnails to see how my idea will pan out in a much smaller scale. It saves a lot of work if you find out that your

image is just all wrong before you spend a lot of time on the final drawing. Show how crosshatching is done properly and why it is more pleasing to the eye than

blending as far as graphite (pencil) goes. Blended graphite has a tendency to smear and get very slick and shiny. There will always be those that think that blending of

graphite looks good. In some cases, it does. I don't think it is pleasing to the eye as a well hatched image. I can tell you from experience that a crosshatched drawing that

is well done will get a better grade in a college drawing class than a well done blended graphite drawing. Demonstrate the use of paper as a shield to prevent smearing

and to use it as a mask for hatching and the use of an eraser in hatching.

Discuss final part of drawing class, pen and ink and/ or charcoal and materials needed for class. If you have not drawn with different types and grades of charcoal, then

you have missed out on a very fun and rewarding medium. Some of the best drawings I've seen are done with charcoal. It blends much better than graphite and it does

not have to have that annoying shiny look if done properly. One of the best things about charcoal is you can get that very dramatic lighting effect when doing portraits

that is nearly impossible to get when using graphite.

Drawing Art Class Final............

The first 10 minutes we will discuss the previous two classes, answer questions and briefly review. Most students will relate the parts of the previous class that they liked

or hated with a passion. I have several different techniques I teach, that at one time or another, I hated. Really hated. But after being forced to practice those hated

techniques enough, I understood the ideas behind them and when the light bulb goes off in your brain about why a technique you hate is important to learn, it's a great

thing. The Giacometti technique is something I thought was just plain stupid and a huge waste of time until the light bulb went off and I realized I had been doing a

similar thing in my drawing my whole life. I was amazed.

.....................................................................................................................................................................................................

Pen and ink, is my favorite medium. It has been since I was a child. We will go over the various instruments to be used in pen and ink drawings including ball point pens,

crow quill, split nib, sharpies, magic markers, airbrush, technical (refillable) pens, technical disposable, and brush. Discuss the drawing out first in graphite, inking, then

erasing as my favorite way, or direct inking of the paper.

Discuss good paper, smearing, ink washes, the way a thicker ink line looks closer than a thinner or grayed out ink line. Discuss colored inks and the difference between india ink and watercolor (water soluble) inks.

After sketching an object, we will attempt to ink it, tracing the lines. Then we will apply some hatching to give it body. Then we will apply cross-hatching.

We will then discuss hatching versus blending and briefly explore charcoal and proper blending of charcoal. This class is over now. I generally let the class draw until

every one is ready to go. Practice is half of learning to draw.

Now if you have questions or would like to schedule a drawing class, please contact me. I am also happy to critique your work.

If there are any misspellings or errors in this long winded page, it's because this stupid computer can't spell worth a crap!

* my email address

rickyniell@gmail.com

RazzleDazzleArt

My website showcasing my art and photography.