how to draw(basic)

Modes of Thinking

Why is it that your friend is "artistic" and you're not? It's because your friend is using a different part of the brain than you are. Your friend can "see" things differently than you can because they are interpreting what they see in a different way than you are. They're looking at the world in terms of shapes, lines, colors, and the relationships between these things. What we'll be doing here is trying to get you to see things in this way. It's not like you'll be seeing things better or worse than you do now, but you will be seeing things in a different way. This way of seeing is the way artists see, and it allows them to translate the three-dimensional world around them into a two dimensional drawing. Hopefully, after looking through this website, you'll be seeing like an artist and drawing what you see in a way you enjoy.

Have you ever noticed that when you get into doing something that you really enjoy time just seems to slip away? "Time flies when you're having fun?" For example reading a good, compelling book, or listening to your favorite music? This happens because you're in the " visual" or "creative" mode of thinking. This mode of thinking disregards time and converts what you see into pictures and feelings in your mind. When reading a book, your visual or artistic mind takes the words that your logical mind sees and translates them into a picture that you see in your mind's eye.

Would you say that you're better at math than drawing? This is because you're more comfortable with the logical, step by step, time centered, areas of your mind. Every normal human being has two modes of thinking: The logical, symbol mode and the visual, artistic mode. 

The logical mind vs. the artistic mind

We use both modes all the time. We use each mode separately, and we use both modes together. We use each mode to interpret the other mode. Your logical mind cannot put to paper a self portrait because it keeps telling you "This is the ear, draw the ear." and "here is the left eye, draw the left eye" Then "No! That does not look like the left eye!" happens. What your visual mind will do is "Here is a sweeping curve that intersects with this shadow." and "These two shapes combine to create a highlight in the negative space". The fact that it's a left eye doesn't matter to your artistic mind. Your visual mind doesn't see a left eye, it sees lines, shapes, and lights and darks that combine to make a whole picture of a left eye. In order to "draw what you see" you will have to learn to draw lines, shapes, and lights and darks that combine to make a whole drawing. Your logical mind, that labels everything it sees, will not be a part of the drawing process.

Infant scribbles.

When you were a child, you had fun drawing because you were able to put marks on a piece of paper that represented something to you. Or, to a very young infant, drawing doesn't represent anything at all. As an infant, you were fascinated with the fact that this long stick in your hand makes marks on this paper. As a young child it was all in the interpretation of the drawing. It didn't matter that what you drew didn't really look like what you were seeing, all that mattered was the act of representing a favorite object or person that you saw.

Drawing as children

Drawn by a 6 year old.

A 7 year olds' fanciful bug. Note the detail in the eyes.

Later, around six or seven years, as you matured, and your perception of the world expanded and became more complex, you tried to be more realistic in your drawings. Rather than just drawing two dots and a curved line that represented two eyes and a mouth, you began to attempt to depict your subject in a more realistic way. The eye became a compound object with a pupil (a dot), the iris (a circle surrounding the dot), and the eyeball (a circle enclosing the smaller circle). And the mouth may have been drawn smiling as a crescent shape with a grid inside it representing teeth. And now, a nose is added that is a bulb with two dots for nostrils. These became your own personal "symbols" of what an eye, nose, and mouth looked like. In order to create likeness in a drawing of your family, you always drew the same faces but added long hair for Mom and Sister, and drew short hair for Dad. You may have even drawn Mom and Dad physically larger than you and Sister. In the same way you drew people, you drew objects; A chair was two very flat ovals with two lines sticking out the bottom, and a window was a square with a cross drawn inside it to represent window panes. These "symbols" that you drew over and over again got stored in your logical mind as what you would draw if asked to draw. Rather than draw what your visual mind ACTUALLY sees, your logical mind says "I see a chair - here's my symbol for a chair." and you draw the chair you drew as a child.

Around sixth grade is when you decided that symbols just aren't gonna cut it anymore. You'd try and draw what you actually see, but your conditioned, logical mind, kicks in and overrides your creative impulse and spits out yet another symbol, or even better, a modified symbol that does somewhat resemble the object you want to draw. Your creative mind sees your symbol drawing and says "This does NOT look like what I want! I can't draw, so I will never draw again!" And so that was the end of your learning. And from then on, when asked to draw, you squirm and draw another symbol at the sixth grade level of learning regardless of your age. Unfortunately, also around the sixth grade, is when public schools stop requiring art classes. Art now becomes an elective that you don't have to take if you don't want to. The children who do end up taking art classes are the ones who are comfortable with drawing. These children  may have even stopped drawing "symbols" and started to access the creative side of their brains and started drawing what they see by breaking it down into lines and shapes.

What we will try to do with this website is to get you to use your visual mind and suppress your logical mind. We are going to break your habit of drawing symbols and allow your artistic, visual mind to draw what it actually sees. Hopefully, you will be able to let go of your sixth grade artistic mind and re-learn your art skills. But this time, maturing in your skill without giving up. These beginning exercises are meant to show you how to suppress your symbol oriented mind and begin to draw what you see and what you feel.

Drawing materials

To start to draw you're going to need a few materials. The nice thing about drawing is that it's a pretty inexpensive hobby. Drawing is simple enough that you could use any writing implement and any drawing surface, but if you're going to take the time to learn, you might as well get some decent tools.

Lap desk.

Since this site is on the Internet, you'll probably be sitting in front of your computer as you draw, so you're going to have to be comfortable there. If you're at a large desk where you can just clear a spot next to your keyboard, that would be fine. If you're at a smaller desk, or just don't have room to draw on your computer desk, might I suggest a "lap desk". At many art supply stores, and even at some Wal-Marts, you can buy what looks like a large clipboard. It's just a large piece of wood with clips bolted on so you can clip your paper to the board. Of course, you could just get your own board and tape your paper to it as well. What you will do is set the board in your lap as you sit at your computer desk and lean the top of the board on your desk so you have an angled surface to work on. You may want to angle yourself so you can get to your computer's mouse and work the popping images and navigation of this site.

For paper you can just use typing paper of at least 8.5x11 inches or just grab a stack of printer paper.

Get one of those pink school erasers. Hopefully you'll never use it. You may also want to get a bunch of those cone shaped erasers that fit on the end of a pencil.

You can use regular number 2 pencils, but I think the lead is too hard. A hard lead will give you a real thin, gray line, and a softer lead gives you fatter, blacker lines. If you're at the art store looking for lap desks, grab a bunch of 5B or 4B pencils. A 5B is a bit softer than a 4B and so will make a darker line. I prefer 5B over 4B.
Something you probably didn't expect you'd need is an empty picture frame. While you're at Wal-Mart or Target get a cheap $3.00 5x7 inch picture frame. One with plastic and not glass would be best. Also, pick up one black permanent marker and also a few non-permanent (or "washable") black markers. After you get the frame home, take the glass or plastic out of the frame, and with the permanent marker and a ruler, segment the glass into four equal planes like so. Now put the glass back in the frame and bend the staples or tabs back to keep the glass in place. Don't put the backing back on the frame, all we need is the frame and the glass. What this frame is is your "drawing plane". It's going to help you compose the subjects in your drawings, and it's also going to help you see two dimensionally. We'll get deeper into it's use later.

That's it! Now let's continue with the learning!

Getting started

The screen properties box for Windows 98.

Since you'll be spending some time in front of your computer drawing pictures, I'd recommend turning off your screensaver, and if your monitor shuts itself off after a time, disable that feature as well. If you don't print out these exercises (and you don't have to) you don't want to look up and all of a sudden you're looking at your screensaver. It's gonna ruin the "drawing mood" you'll be in.

Let's Draw!

Let's start with a few exercises that you may have done in grade school. These exercises are meant to show you how to move back and forth from your two modes of thinking. And just because you may have done them in grade school doesn't mean they are "elementary", so wipe that aloof look off your face!

There are a few things that your "artistic" mind needs to know about so you can start drawing. Your brain already knows this stuff subconsciously, but I'm just pointing it out to your conscious mind so you can develop these skills. The skills or concepts that we'll be exploring are: line, shape, proportion and perspective, light and shadow, and finally, the whole of the finished drawing. You'll have each of these elements in mind as you draw, but they will become almost immediate and involuntary as you get better and more comfortable with drawing. Just like when you have several things in mind while you drive a car: your foot on the accelerator, one eye on the car behind you, one on the car in front of you, these thoughts are so subconscious that you don't even know you're having them. These art skills also build upon each other, meaning, understanding what lines are and what they do will lead to the understanding of shapes and negative spaces, which will lead to the perception of depth and proportion, which naturally leads to the understanding and use of light and shadow, which will help you to see the drawing as a whole composition in the confines of the drawing surface. Whew! Don't worry, it's really not that complicated, I just thought it sounded good.

The elements of drawing

Let's get a bit more in depth with the elements of drawing...

Line.

Line is the most basic element of the drawing. And in it's most basic definition, it's what separates one area of the drawing plane from the other. A single line will segment your piece of paper into "that area" and "this area". The more lines that are added, the more complex and numerous the separations become: light from dark, foreground from background, positive space from negative space. Line can be uniform and all one width, or to be more interesting, and to convey more information with a single line, a single line can be of varying widths.

Shape.

Shape occurs when the first line is drawn. The most basic definition of shape is the white area on the paper. Shape is the information that is presented between two or more lines, or is the thing that is enclosed by line. Shape helps define the object that is depicted as much as the collection of lines that make up the object in the drawing. Incorrect use of shape will cause the drawing to "not look like what it's supposed to be."

Click to see examples of each element of drawing.

Proportion and Perspective. Proportion is the size of one picture element in relation to the size of another. In other words Proportion is what dictates that, in humans, legs are longer than arms, the middle finger is longer than the pointer finger, and the nose is the same length as the width of the eye. If proportion is incorrect in a drawing it "doesn't look right". Perspective is the illusion that further away things appear smaller. To make something appear to be farther away from the viewer than the picture plane, draw it smaller than the object that is closer to the picture plane. I've put proportion and perspective together as one drawing element because they both use each other to work. If one is incorrect, chances are the other is also incorrect.

Light and shadow.

Light and Shadow create depth and atmosphere in a drawing. In order to make a drawing look "realistic" you need shadow because in the real world everything has a shadow. If you draw something with only one width line and don't render shadow, your drawing is going to look flat, two dimensional, and unrealistic. Adding shadow automatically adds a small bit of perspective to the drawing because the shadow indicates that something is in front of and/or behind the object that would cause it to cast a shadow.

The whole drawing.

The whole drawing. Before you even start the drawing you will begin to automatically mentally place your picture elements on the paper. You take into account the whole drawing surface and relate your picture elements to the shape of your drawing surface. For example, if you're wanting to draw a whole human body from head to foot you would mentally place the head to one side (or top or bottom) of the drawing surface so that would give you enough room to be able to draw the whole body and not run off the paper. The shape of your drawing plane will help determine the composition of your drawing. You would not effectively be able to draw a towering skyscraper on a square piece of paper without cutting the top or bottom off. In the example on the right, seeing the whole drawing means when you start, you know where to place the eyes so the face will be in the center. Also, knowing that the tie will run off the page is being aware of the whole drawing.

Using the pencil

Don't do this...

... do this.

Let's get re-acquainted with the pencil. I know you might use a pencil every day to write, but you may not use it every day to draw. Get your lap desk out and put a sheet or two of paper on it and get comfortable in front of your computer. Sharpen your 5B pencil. Now scribble on your paper. Yeah, I'm serious, scribble. Try not to make real straight lines with really sharp angles. Draw big circles and waves that go from one corner of the paper to the other. Draw arches and sweeping curves, and don't pick your pencil up off the paper, make one continuous line. Now, as you get used to doing that, as you make a downward stroke, press harder on the pencil to make a darker line. On an upstroke let up on the pressure to make a lighter line. Try and make the gradient from light to dark a gradual one. Draw a large circle in one stroke (it doesn't have to be a perfect circle, an oval will do), and try and make the bottom of the circle a dark line, and the top of the circle a light line. You're making this circle all in one stroke, right? This is kinda fun, right? Now try and make a pear shape that's darker on it's bottom. You can stop scribbling anytime you'd like, just do this for a few minutes.

Now that you're limbered up, this first exercise will get you thinking about all the drawing elements I listed and you probably won't even know it. Get your lap desk out and take your scribbles off, and clip on a few fresh sheets of paper and get comfortable in front of your computer. Sharpen your 5B pencil.

Click the drawing to see the whole thing.

Drawing upside down. Here's a drawing that has been turned upside down. It may not look like anything to you, but just try and replicate the drawing. Just DON'T turn it right side up. Here's the reason: since it's upside down and may not look like anything to you, all you see are lines and shapes formed by the lines. THIS IS USING YOUR VISUAL MODE! If you are able to see this drawing as only a bunch of lines and not what it really is, then you're doing good! Just replicate the lines and the shapes that you see. Take as much time as you need, and go ahead and erase any line you don't like. Keep in mind the distances between the lines you draw (space), and also where the lines fall in relation to the other lines. Can you see shapes created by lines that intersect? Then draw the shape rather than the line if you get my meaning. I would recommend starting from the top middle and work your way down the page, but you can really start anywhere you feel comfortable. Starting at the middle and working your way out may especially be challenging. Keep the drawing upside down until you are finished! You could just leave the drawing up on your computer monitor or print it out. But I would recommend just using the one on your monitor, because if you print it out you're more likely to turn it right side up and ruin the good, artistic, perception you're getting of it when it's upside down.

Are you finished yet?

Now that you're done, turn your drawing right side up. What do you see? How close did you come to the right side up version of the drawing you copied? I'd really be surprised if you were way off. Yes, yours may not look exactly like the original, but it's recognizable as a copy, right? What this exercise illustrates is a different kind of seeing. As you were drawing, you weren't thinking about drawing the nose exactly right, because you may have not known it was a nose. Hopefully you were thinking about making the curve that forms the bottom of the nose look similar to that same curve in the original drawing. This caused you to divorce yourself from your "logical and labeling" mode and not to categorize the nose as a "nose". Instead, you broke the nose down into a few lines that ultimately would give the impression of a nose. Cool, huh? What this exercise proves is that you can draw what you see without your logical mind taking over and attempting to make you draw what you remember drawing when you were younger.

Seeing  line & shape

wrinkled paper.

Here's another exercise that will show you that you can draw forms and shapes and not just symbols. Take a blank sheet of typing or printer paper and crunch it up in a ball in your hand. Now open it up again, but don't smooth it out. Open it enough so it'll lay relativly flat on your desk. Now, tape or clip a few pieces of paper to your board and TURN AWAY from the wrinkled paper so you can't see it. Turn only your head so you can see the wrinkled paper, but are no longer looking at your drawing board. Now, look intently at the creases and dents and wrinkles in the wrinkled paper, and draw them WITHOUT LOOKING AT YOUR DRAWING PAPER. Outline each fold with your eyes and mirror that fold's outline with your pencil on the drawing. Try and gauge the spaces between the folds mentally and move your drawing hand to where you think the next fold or shape goes. DO NOT LOOK AT THE PROGRESS OF THE DRAWING - KEEP DRAWING!! If you feel your drawing hand fall off your paper, just pick it up and drop it back on the paper without looking at where you've placed your hand. Draw every wrinkle and shape you see in the cloth, and draw for five minutes.

When you're done go ahead and look at the drawing. Looks like crap, right? There's no meaning to the composition and it looks nothing like the wrinkled paper. But look closer, compare it again with the paper. Find a line in the drawing and then find the corresponding wrinkle in the cloth. You found it, didn't you? As you look at the drawing you can find every wrinkle from the paper. This shows you that you CAN draw what you see, you didn't draw your "paper symbol". In this exercise the final product isn't the reason for the exercise, the process of seeing and drawing the wrinkless as you see them is the object. Here, as in the first exercise, you probably were not thinking about what it was you were REALLY drawing, rather you saw the individual shapes and forms that make up the whole.

Tracing on your frame

For this exercise you'll need your picture frame and a washable (non-permanent) marker. This time we'll be tracing a picture in the frame. These pictures show a foreshortened hand, which many people have trouble drawing. And why do people have trouble drawing foreshortened objects? Say it with me - "Your logical mind says it doesn't know how." Because the object seems to get distorted in the foreshortening, your logical mind freaks out and sees that the object you want to draw doesn't conform to the "symbol" that it knows.

Tracing is something that your logical mind will tolerate for some reason, so let's do it. Tracing is basically copying. You have the thing you want to trace and you put a piece of paper right on top of it and copy it line for line. The difference here is that we'll be tracing a three dimensional object rather than a two dimensional one.

To start this exercise, print out one of the photos of hands on this page. Now put the print in your frame (cut it to size). Now, using your washable marker, trace the photo of the hand right on the glass of your frame. Trace the contour of the hand and trace the folds of skin where the fingers are bending. Trace every line you see. When you're done, take the hand photo out of the frame and look at your drawing. You could put a blank sheet of paper in the frame to better see your work. Did you get all the foreshortened fingers? Looks good, huh? So now you know you can trace.

 

Put your hand under the frame and trace your hand onto the glass.

my traced hand.

Now this part is tougher, and the real "meat" of this exercise. CAREFULLY!!! wash the drawing off of the glass of your frame and secure the glass back in the frame without a picture or the backing so you just have the frame and the glass. Place the frame on top of your non-drawing hand. Curl your fingers so you get a little bit of foreshortening but keep your hand flat enough so the frame won't slide around. Now, using your drawing hand, trace your own hand on the glass just like you did with the photo of the hand. Again, trace all the lines you see. It's a bit more difficult because you're now dealing with a truly three-dimensional object and not a photo, but I know you can do it. You're going to have to keep your point of view the same all the time and you might want to close eyes. Try to remember how you drew the foreshortened fingers of the photo and draw your fingers in the same way, with the same types of lines and curves.

How did you do? Pretty fun and challenging, huh? If the drawing of your own hand came out anything like the photo of the hand, you really have got a handle on drawing. Now, all you need to do is draw a subject when it's not right under your drawing surface and draw rather than trace.

Using and drawing space

The past few exercises helped you to use line to express your drawings. Now, we'll use what might be thought of as the opposite of line - space. A single line on the paper segments the drawing plane into "that area" and "this area", in addition, a single line also represents the outside of an object that you are attempting to depict. Line may be the single most important element in drawing because it's what defines it as a drawing, But the SECOND most important element would be space and the shapes created by the combination of space and line.

A contour drawing.

Space is the white area on your paper that isn't marked by the pencil. It's the old "yin and yang" idea; good and evil, left and right, positive and negative, and in drawing, Line and Space. The part of your drawing surface that you DON'T mark tells just as much of the story as the part that you DO mark. A true contour drawing (a single line that follows the outside edge of a simple object) illustrates the point of negative and positive space best because, with no detail at all inside the object, you are still able to determine what the object represents. So, in this exercise we will be concentrating on what artists call the white spaces on a drawing - negative space. This exercise will help your creative mind to further confound your logical mind. Your logical mind will not be able to identify what it is you're drawing because you're not going to be drawing the object itself but the empty shapes around the object.

Can you see The Name or just the wooden shapes?

Here's a real world example of space and shape: Have you ever seen those wooden plaques that say "Jesus" on them? Actually, it DOESN'T say "Jesus", it's just a bunch of wooden shapes glued to a plaque. The spaces between the wooden shapes are what form the name "Jesus". The spaces that form the name are the "negative" spaces in the plaque, the wooden shapes are the "positive" forms. What makes this plaque fun to look at is that the negatives and positives are reversed, what you'd normally expect to be positive is negative and vice versa. In the next exercise you will be drawing the "wooden shapes" of an object or the "negative spaces".