Creativity, just so happens to be a contagious thing

What could be worse than learning to draw on your own?

I find that in order to draw and draw well, you need to have a good support base of people who push you to succeed and explore aspects of yourself that perhaps you have neglected.

All my friends are arty. I remember being at University and having lots of friends with lots of talent just boiling over. Creativity, just so happens to be a contagious thing, and with a collection of friends who love to throw around ideas and offer advice can really put you in a position to grow as you learn to draw.

There is nothing like a session with mates. You learn so much about yourself, how you observe, how you respond to the pressures of drawing quickly with time limits and how to accept that you are on a journey towards gaining skills!

Have fun, invite your friends and grow creative!

Focal point - visual story sequence

It's interesting how when I think about when I was drawing in my art class at college, one of the things that my art teacher wanted me to do was to fill up the page with graphite. Any white space on the page was to be abolished. I am not saying that this is bad, in all in stances, but in charcoal drawing, or any other type of drawing, I now have lots of white space left. There are a few reasons for this but the main one is that I have only usually got time to focus on one area and the rest of the picture needs to use essential lines that offer clues about the stance or position of that focal point.

So what I am trying to say is, chose the area that interests you on the person or thing you are drawing, and work that particular part up with detail, great line work, good contrasts of light and dark and really make it look good.

The rest of the picture can be a bit vague, but using beautiful lines and subtle marks you can finish a picture off quite well.

What will be important is that the eye is drawn to one point in the picture where it can rest and begin it's travels from. From that focal point, the eye can follow lines to the next part of the picture you want the eye to see. It is almost a narrative that suggests where the eye might look (basically what comes next in the story line.). I will show you what I mean using a painting from Rembrandt who was a painter from the Dutch descent. This painting, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Tulp, starts off with the body as the focal point, then the light indicated that the eye should follow up into the observers, and then to the doctor and then to the observer on the left. This focal point is very clear as your eye is immediately drawn to the body in the middle of the painting. (Test it for yourself , close your eyes for a few seconds and then open them and glance at the painting. What did you see first? That will be your focal point. )

So this is how my eye followed the focal point sequence.

And this is the direction of the lines that leads the eye into the focal point. See how it starts at the body, moves up through the onlookers then the man holding the paper leads your eye to the doctor who's surgical tool leads you back into the body and possibly round to the other observers on the left, the high contrast between the capes of the men on the left and body, mean that when you look at the picture, the white body jumps out at you.

Picture courtesy of http://www.electricgallery.co.uk/index.php/art-history/rembrandt-harmensz-van-rijn/. Accessed 22 Jan 2011.



In drawing it is a bit different but the theory remains the same. All pictures need a focal point. It is the visual story sequence. 

Serpintine Line

How you draw your lines is really important if you want to convey expression, emotions, gesture and all sorts of other information.

Pen pressure is one of the key things that you have to learn to vary and enhance your mark making. When I was studying in my first year at university, I unfortunately slammed my left finger in the door of my car. The result was a completely useless, damaged index finger. I had a project to complete and one of the things that my illustration lecturer had told me was to reduce the pencil pressure to create a line that was emotive and conveyed lots of information about the things being drawn. I had to change my grip on my charcoal and I saw the difference in the sensitivity of line I created.

Some of the things line can tell the viewer:
A dark line under an object will tell the viewer that the object makes a shadow and have volume and weight.

A light, narrow line could convey light, flowing material/clothing.

So you want to convey the right information then you need to do the right type of line.

It can be tricky going from an intense grip to a light loose one. Just try to do it with an object in front of you.

 This picture is a soft lined drawing. The main image is drawn in a darker line than the chair. The light lines of the chair imply that he is on a chair and not just floating in the air.  I didn't need to add all the details, but just give an idea of the shape of the chair.

In the top image, I have left some areas completely white and used smudging sparingly, to give greater sense of space. The next one, I have over shaded using shadow and it makes the model look tired and dirty. Bare in mind that this was a ten min drawing and I was pretty tired when I did it.

Patience is a virtue, drawing is a challenge.

Okay, so you have decided to pick up a pencil and draw something.

I think what we need to establish is that one cannot simply pick up a tool and expect to be good at it. I was thinking about my ukulele today. I CAN actually play some of the songs in my Beatles book, but in saying that previously they were on the tricky side. I started off on my own, working out all the different chords and the finger positions and even the strums, even singing along was challenging because reading the music and co-ordinating the words was hard. I was really tricky. I just kept going. I am no expert at playing the ukulele, but I do practice at it and slowly, I am getting it right.

So, I hope that by picking up a pencil, this means that you will commit yourself to regular practice. You will improve.
 

Learning through doing.

So you've decided to give drawing a go.

I can be extremely challenging initially, possibly daunting. I feel this can put people off trying, perservering and thinking.

Some of the things that we need to know before any drawing happens is that you will not necessarily be good immediately, you will probably need time to adjust to the techniques and the ways of seeing and you will probably encounter some obstacles.

Some of the obstacles I have noticed is that some times we get frustrated by failure. Failure is an important motivator. It motivates you to think about what it is that you are doing. Failure is good, it makes you ask questions about how to improve and if you are anything like me you'll spend a long time researching, reading and asking others about how they do things.

Failing is an important part of the process of learning to draw. It is through our trials and our errors that we find new methods, improve our ability and grow as an artist.

Right, so here is a task for today:
I want you to choose a medium, pen, pencil, charcoal, compressed charcoal or felt tips. Choose a A4+ paper and just start to doodle. Explore the medium, find out what it can and cannot do ie. pen cannot smudge as well as chalk. Through doing, we learn about the nature and properties of the materials we use for art making.

Smoke and Mirrors

Hi,

I decided to start this blog for anyone to read about the ideas behind drawing and how to gain the skills to do so. I will also be talking about other art forms, my fears, frustrations, and discoveries about them. But mostly it'll be about drawing.

I have spent my whole life drawing. From early childhood, images were a great mode to communicate and to this day I can still draw. Most people will say that it comes down to natural ability, or giftedness. I think that this "ability" presides over all of us and is very present.

Drawing can be learnt,  and this is the great part. You all have the tools to do this. You will need:

• A pair of eyes 
• A brain
• and a bunch of digits - Hands preferably but toes might do.
• and a few simple drawing tools which can be found at home, pens, pencils, sharpeners, paper and some time.
• A desire to learn to draw
• Patience to keep perservering.

So you think I am nuts? I probably am but I also know that people stop believing in themselves when they grow up. Nothing is perfect, no one is ever happy with how they look, but have you actually really looked? This is something that I think is the key to gaining understanding and drawing. Looking.

You can try to draw something but without actually looking at it, it will not come out as descriptive or convincingly. Funny thing is that looking is an art and a skill that needs to be learnt. I am part of a group of artists (novice to advanced) and I work alongside them to help them to become better at looking. This is called Co-constructing and is a theory developed by a man called Lev Vygotsky. What this means is that learning cannot occur entirely in isolation and that other people can show and teach you things that you never thought about.

So here's a task. This is one of the very first tasks I ever did at university level illustration classes. Take a paper, and using lines (if you can write or scribble you can do this), draw a traffic light. Then take your drawing, and go and find an actual traffic light, and look at the shapes, the dimensions, the height, the angles and the wires. Did you draw them? Does it really look the way you drew the traffic light? Probably not.

What this shows you is that your perception of what an item should look like usually is very different from what it actually looks like. So the first lesson for today is never assume that you know what something looks like until you really look at it closely. It may be more different than you think!