First blogged from my art blog here!
All images are drawn by me and are copyright © Rob Snow | creative 2018
As part of my old teaching class on drawing and sketching I introduce a set of ten fun exercises that are intended to help the artist loosen up their inhibitions towards sketching. After all, sketching is about the quick drawing. Many people tend to spend time analysing the object too much and then take too ling in the process of drawing. These exercises are intended to help loosen up this and to get you to understand that drawing is about making marks and not about thinking about making marks. All these were achieved with a 3B pencil on photocopy paper. The best approach is to make a sketch as per normal. Spending some time to just try and make it look like a good drawing, in sketch form. This can be seen above in the example. Where I am still trying to give the quick, freshness of the drawing, but at the same time stay true to the details on the plant. The exercise can be done with any set of objects, but it helps if it has a good strong light to help with light and shadow. These exercises should be attempted at least once a week.
OK, the first exercise comes directly after the initial attempt to spend some time drawing the object. When you are given time, you tend to concentrate too much and this can be a failing in drawing, as you become to self-critical about how you draw what you see. So the first exercise is simply drawing the same object, bt limiting yourself to 1 min only!!
One of the important aspects (especially commercial work) is the need to do things with speed, but some effectiveness.
The second exercise is more fun, and involves the process of gesture drawing. Basically the aim is to see the object as a set of scribbled lines, trying very hard not to actually try and define the edges as you would a normal drawing. Its all about making random, scratchy lines that form the whole.
This approach to scribbling can be used in figure sketching as well, and is often referred to as posture drawing. This is because the detail is missed and the pose is the main concern.
OK, another thing that can aid in the development of drawing skills is limiting certain aspects of your freedom in drawing. This controls you, but at the same time frees you from trying to define the shapes that you see. So, for this exercise simply look at the object and draw the shapes, but in one continuous movement with the pencil. Making sure you don't take the pencil off the paper.
OK, this tends to either get a shocked or homorous responce when mentioned, but is a good way to prove a point. You brain is very good at storing information. It can even do better at this from a peripheral vision. However, the fact is that even with your eyes closed you can see an object with some degree of clarity. Mainly, as your brain can store patterns and recalls these patterns to define the object. So, for this exercise, look at the object for about a solid minute and then with some bravery, close your eyes and draw what you see (or what you saw). Don't take it too seriously, and you will find that you will get a pretty good result. The fact that you have your eyes closed doesn't stop you getting a slight resemblance to the original pattern.
Depending on what hand you write with, this exercise is intended to enable the opposite. In my case this drawing was done with my left hand. I f you think about it, the amount of accuracy you can get with the hand that you very rarely use, if at all, for writing or drawing is remarkably good.
What you have to try and attach here, is to see the object the right way up, but then to reflect what you see in the object, but the other way up on the paper. The result on the sheet below has been rotated to see the result, but basically, everything at the top of the object should appear on the bottom of your page.
This is an attempt to find a way to define shapes out of the simple straight line. Hopefully you have chosen an object that has many curves on it. However instead of drawing the curves, try to construct them all using crossing straight lines. Like the example below. This doesn't mean literally drawing a straight line instead of a curved one, it means drawing as many straight lines as it takes to represent the curve.
This is a simple explanation. Draw the object with the notion that everything is made out of cubes.
This is one of the more challenging, but fun exercises. Basically you have to think of how to construct the object with a limited amount of lines. In this case only 8. The lines can cover as many places as you wish, but think of restricting the drawing of lines to the parts of the object that you really need to represent it. The example below is a good example, and does in fact have only eight lines in its construction. What is meant by a line is the process of drawing until you take the pencil off the paper.
This is probably the hardest one to achieve, but is easier with the use of some strong lighting on the object. The whole aim is to see where the dark areas of shade cause lines to define both the shadow and highlight areas of the object. Then what you need to achieve is the process of doing the sketch with only the shaded or shadow areas. It may take some practice, but basically you need to understand how light affects dark and therefore the dark makes the edges of the object.
This is a set of exercises that you can try and test on different objects, and should be a fun motivation to speeding up your sketching skills. Try it!
First blogged from my art blog here!
All images are drawn by me and are copyright © Rob Snow | creative 2018
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