Drawing

For
Beginners

The Ultimate Crash Course to Learning the Basics of How to Draw In No Time

By Amy Taggart
© Copyright 2014

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced -mechanically,

electronically, or by any other means, including photocopying- without the permission
of the publisher.

Disclaimer

The information provided in this book is designed to provide helpful information on the
subjects discussed. The author's books are only meant to provide the reader with the
basics knowledge of the topic in question, without any warranties regarding whether the
reader will, or will not, be able to incorporate and apply all the information provided.
Although the writer will make his best effort share her insights, the topic in question is a
complex one, and each person needs a different timeframe to fully incorporate new
information. Neither this book, nor any of the author's books constitute a promise that the
reader will learn anything within a certain timeframe.
 Ahashare.com

Table of Contents
Introduction: Are You Ready for an Amazing Journey?

Look Around You - This is Where It All Begins...

Chapter 1: Let's Get Started (Picking Materials And a Proper Place)

Chapter 2: Warming Up Like a Real Artist

Chapter 3: Basic Lines (Straight, Curvy, Thickness)

Chapter 4: Tone (Don't Skip the Exercises!)

Chapter 5: Understanding Forms

Chapter 6: Light & Shadows

Chapter 7: Proportion & Scale (Measuring, Drawing Faces, Distorting)

Chapter 8: Perspective - What It Is, And How to Use It

Chapter 9: Texture and Surface (Hard, Soft, Rough)

Chapter 10: Composition (Rules, Spacing & Lines)

Chapter 11: Drawing Figures

Chapter 12: The Art of Caricature

Chapter 13: Short Reference on Materials and Grades

Chapter 14: Extra Drawing Tutorial Techniques

Conclusion: Summing It Up - Where To Go From Here

Dedicated to those who love going beyond their own frontiers.

Keep on pushing,

Amy Taggart
 Introduction
Are You Ready for an Amazing
Journey?
Drawing is an incredibly instant, creative and expressive way to make an artwork. It
can be big and bold, or small and secretive, and people have being doing it ever since
humans lived in caves and began to draw animals and people on the walls. It is also
diverse; you can draw everything from photorealistic portraits to graphic novels, from
doodled cartoons to huge architectural studies of buildings and cathedrals. Whatever
style you like, from abstract drawings to Manga cartoons, there are a set of fundamental
principles that if you take the time to learn them, will vastly improve your ability and
talent, and you will be able to create the artworks that you have always wanted to
make. This eBook plots out these starting principles, and teaches you what they are,
how they work and the ways to learn them. Exercises are interspaced throughout the
text, along as some additional ones at the end, to help this learning process. If at times
you feel out of your comfort zone as you work through them, then that is no bad thing.

Feel free to follow the exercises and chapters in the order that suits you. They are
organized in a way that allows for this, but at the same time, regardless of experience, it
is never a bad idea to brush up on old skills. On the next page is a drawing I completed
whilst working in the Australian outback for six months. It is made up of six sheets of
A3 paper that I carried around with me as I worked. It combines every single principle
that we will work through in the eBook, and is a good example of how each exercise
and tip can be useful when they come together in an artwork.

Are you ready to start drawing?

Let's get started!

Amy Taggart
 Look Around You
This is Where It All Begins...
One of the most important things about drawing is to look at what you are drawing.
Although this seems like an obvious point to make, it is a vital one. Many people, when
confronted with an object, say a car, will draw an image of that object based on how
they think it looks, rather than what they actually see in front of them. The first thought is
to make sure that the drawing has four wheels, a body, headlights, windows and a
steering wheel. These parts are undeniably physical aspects of a car, but they will
always look slightly differently to how we expect to see them in our heads. For
example, despite knowing that when we look at a car it has four wheels, we may only be
able to see two or three of them depending on where we stand. Again, every car has a
metal or plastic body and headlights, but it is the curves and lines of these that make it
distinctive and give it character, just like a good drawing. How the car is lit affects
how the windows look, does the sunlight reflect the scene around the car, or can you
look through them into the interior and see the steering wheel? These are the details that
make the difference in a drawing, and really add to the quality and integrity of your
subject.
At first this could seem complicated and a lot to think about, but don’t worry, there is an
easy way to make sure you notice the details and bring out the real characteristics of
what you want to draw. This can be summed up into a fairly simple rule: spend roughly
twice as much time looking at your subject as actually drawing it. This may seem odd
but it works.

The rule is also as literal as it sounds. There are a few fun drawing exercises that we
will complete during the course of this book that will really help you to understand and
realize how this rule will seriously improve your drawings skills. It is directly linked
with the practice of drawing from life, simply meaning to draw what you see around
you. For example, if you wanted to draw a portrait of your cat or pet, then you could sit
down with a sketchbook and draw them while they were asleep on the floor or lying in
the sun in the garden. If you decided to use a photo as your inspiration then you
wouldn’t be drawing from life. There is absolutely nothing wrong with working from
photographs, it is essential for drawing certain subjects, but the point is that drawing
from life will give your artworks an edge of realism and knowledge of your subject that
is impossible to fake.

The great part of drawing from life is that it is so easy to practice. The potential for
choosing something that you would like to draw is limitless. Take a second to look
around yourself now, maybe you are relaxing at home, or reading on a train or even a
beach if you are lucky. Look at the view or something you are wearing, or a piece of
jewelry that you are particularly fond of; everything is a possible subject for you.
Everything at all without exception, it is important to draw exactly what you want to
draw yourself.
Copying
Where drawing from life develops the realism and integrity of your work, and trains
your artistic eye at the same time, copying others allows you to learn to draw in
different styles.

It is a technique that has been used for centuries by artists in order to practice and hone
their skills. If there is a particular style that you are especially keen to learn, then I
recommend making copies of the work that you admire. It teaches you how fine artists,
designers, cartoonists, architects and graffiti, manga and graphic novel artists all tackle
the visual intricacies of their particular craft. Through copying you will learn certain
techniques, and then you can change and adapt these into your own unique drawings and
artworks. There is also no reason why you cannot transfer skills that you learn from one
style into another. For example, learning traditional figure drawing will increase your
knowledge, skill and talent at understanding and representing the human form. You will
be able to realize how joints and muscles move and react, how to show stress, strength
and suppleness, and these are skills that will considerable improve the drawings that
you would produce for, say, the characters of a graphic novel.

At the core of all this are traditional drawing skills. If you wish to make great drawings
then take the time to learn and practice these skills. Even if you would prefer to always
work in a certain stylized way, if you learn these fundamentals then the standard of your
work, whatever the genre, will improve.
Goals and Targets
Learning to draw can often be helped along its way by having a few goals and targets in
mind. These will vary tremendously from person to person, but they are undoubtedly
useful motivations. I’m sure you already have some idea of what you would like to
achieve. Maybe it is to draw a self-portrait, or a drawing of someone in your family, or
a certain landscape. It could be to learn to draw in a particular style, produce realistic
cartoons and Caricatures but whatever your motivation and aims, there is no reason why
you cannot achieve them with patience, practice, time and work.
Drawing Exercises
These exercises build upon and augment one another. They cover the fundamental
aspects of drawing, and as you complete each tutorial you will gain artistic skills,
knowledge and techniques that all interlink. Practicing the skills that you learn in the
Line Tutorial for example will also help with figure drawing. They are designed to be
linear, and to follow a natural progression that you will develop along. If you want to
mix it up and change them around then you are more than welcome. They have been
arranged in a way that allows these skills and important artistic facts and drawing
techniques to build up with both a structured and organic feel.

It is worth dating your work. Writing the date will allow you to easily keep track of
your progression. It is a rewarding and healthy experience to look back through your
older work, with a smile on your face, and see how much your style and ability has
changed and grown. But more about this late, first you need to start making some
drawings!

On another technical note, as you will be looking at your computer screen while you
work and follow tutorials, it is worth switching your screensaver off, so that you don’t
have to worry about it later.
 Chapter 1
Let's Get Started (Picking Materials
And a Proper Place)
So you are all ready to begin, well, what are the bare essentials that you need to learn to
draw? These are the few essentials that you must have in order to start. It is vital that
you have something to draw with, something to draw on, a suitable place to draw and
something to draw. At this initial stage, don’t worry too much about feeling like you
have to buy some really expensive paper and graphite pencils from an art store just so
you can learn the basics. Start with what is accessible around you, and acquire
whatever you need along the way.
Pencil/Pen
For the first few exercises, any type of pencil or pen be it a biro, an ink pen or a simple
pencil will suffice. Of course if you do already have access to quality materials then by
all means use them, but it is important to state that that they aren’t essentials yet!
Sketchbook
A sketchbook is a must have! Not only does it keep all your drawings and exercises
together in one place, it also creates a chronology in the order of your drawings. This is
an excellent way to track your progress and development, and this idea of understanding
and learning about how you will evolve artistically is a very useful and creative
mindset to adopt right from the start.
A Working Space
You must have a smooth, strong surface to work on. This really can be anything from a
kitchen table to a state of the art drawing board. It could be a sanded plank of wood
resting on concrete blocks or a beautiful and ornate oak desk. Use whatever you have
available to you, and enjoy it for what it is.

Secondly, a decent light source is essential. This is exceptionally important; if you can
situate yourself next to a window then this is ideal, as natural light is the best option. If
you are able to, re-arrange slightly so that your work surface will catch the sunlight. If
not, or you are going to draw once the sun has set, a lamp is a great aid. It is really
worth buying a decent quality angle poise lamp so that you can change the position of
your light source to suit your drawing needs. This will also protect your eyes, as
straining your vision in a room that is too dark is not a sensible idea, and one that can
easily be avoided.
Atmosphere
When you have set up your well lit drawing space, with your materials laid out and you
feel ready to begin, take a short moment to think about this as your studio. Drawing can
be an incredibly rewarding, challenging and personal experience, so make the
atmosphere of your artistic time enjoyable and suited to your personal tastes. If you
would prefer to work with music playing, then do, it is your time and your studio, so
make it how you want it to be. Humans are creatures of habit, if we enjoy activities then
generally we are much more likely to repeat them until we incorporate them into our
lifestyle and they become familiar to us. This is exactly the same with drawing.
Subject
Of course you need something to draw. Throughout the course of the tutorials you will
draw many different objects, textures, figures, buildings and characters to allow you to
learn different skills and techniques. This will be done in a variety of styles and ways
but it is also a good idea to place a few objects around you that, for your own reasons,
you like. These will be things that you can return to if you wanted to practice a
technique, or repeat a part of a tutorial. Also by drawing the same object again and
again, you will really start to learn about it by looking closely and noticing its
peculiarities. Over time you will start to see more, new dints in its surface or the
different types of textures on its surface for example. By drawing it repeatedly over the
course of the tutorials, you will also be able to follow your own progression as you
improve. The only limitation to what these objects can be is your imagination, it could
be an old skateboard wheel, a favorite plant, a camera or even your own phone, the only
criteria is that you personally enjoy the way it looks and you have some kind of
connection with it.
Equipment List
This is a basic list of what you will need:

Eraser
Pencil
Pens
Ruler
Ink
Brushes
Charcoal sticks
Sketchbook (A4 or A3 size will give you space to draw freely and use more
expressive lines)
 Chapter 2
Warming Up Like a Real Artist
As with any other activity, warming up is a vital part of learning to draw. It makes your
hand loosen up and become free and expressive, as well as helping to get your brain and
thoughts into the right gear. This can be done in a few quick, easy and fun exercises and
doesn’t take longer than five or ten minutes to complete.

Warming up also helps you to get over that feeling of being confronted with a clear and
crisp white page of your sketchbook and worrying about where and how to make the
first mark. This can often feel daunting, especially when you are starting to learn to
draw, so warming up in this way can help to make that little, but important, first step.

The basic concept is to entirely cover a page with quick and free lines, shapes and
doodles. Work until the page is full, and don’t worry about making anything precise or
careful, it doesn’t matter what the actual image looks like, what’s more important is that
your hand and eye work together, and prepare themselves for the lesson in hand.

1. Firstly open a new, clean, page of your sketchbook.

2. Pick any point on the paper and draw ten circles

3. Now move to another section and draw ten triangles (don’t use a ruler)

4. Move your hand again and draw ten squares

5. Repeat with spirals

6. Continue this process until the entire page is full

Once you start to gain more confidence with the warming up procedure, feel free to
change and mix up the order, number and actual shape of the images that you draw. The
essential element is to make sure that the page is filled up, and that you make expressive
marks.

Once you feel comfortable doing this, start to include some of the following:

Dashes

Zig zags

Cross Hatches

Hearts

Ellipses

Change pencil/pen halfway through

Change color halfway through

 Chapter 3
Basic Lines (Straight, Curvy, Thickness)
The simplest place to start when learning to draw is to begin with learning a little about
the drawn line. Every child knows that when you press a pencil to a piece of paper and
move it around, you will draw a line. Not that many people known that the amount of
pressure you use, the way you hold the pencil and the speed of the stroke all have a
major impact on how that line actually looks, and the impression it makes on an
artwork.

For this next exercise, open your sketchbook to a fresh page and practice drawing lines.
It is best to use a pencil for this exercise.

~ Firstly, start with ten long straight strokes that stretch the entire length of the page. As
you move the pencil, alter the pressure that you apply with your hand. You will see
how the harder you push down, the darker and more pronounced that part of the line will
be. Where you ease off and let the pencil glide softly over the surface, the mark will
look softer and lighter.

~ Now draw ten curvy, messy lines using the same principle, change how much
pressure you place on the pencil each time and see how the aesthetic changes.
Although it may feel as though we are just doodling here, this is the beginning of
learning a significantly important lesson about how to put emotion, life and energy into
your artworks. When anyone looks at a drawing, the way that the lines themselves are
drawn tells the viewer something about both the artist, and the subject. Before we go
into more detail, try the next part of the tutorial:

~ Take your pencil and draw 20 short aggressive lines. Group them close together and
make them scratchy by pushing down hard and flicking the pencil quickly over the
paper.

~ Now next to this, in a blank space on the page, draw 20 longer wavy lines, let your
hand be calm and gentle and take your time. Think of them like waves on a tranquil sea.

Compare the two. How do they differ?

~ For the final exercise in this tutorial, take another page and divide it in two by
drawing a line down the middle. On the left hand side, fill the section with aggressive,
quick marks in a similar way to how you completed the warm up. When this is finished,
fill the right hand side with the tranquil, wavy and soft lines that you practiced
previously. When this is done, you will be able to see a clear contrast between the two.
The purpose of this mark making is not to depict an object; instead, we are drawing to
experiment with how the thickness, shade and way that a line is drawn can have an
emotional effect and send a certain message. To put this in context, if we decided that
we wanted to draw a weeping willow tree on a peaceful summer's day, then the
drooping branches would be better represented by soft flowing lines of pencil. On the
other hand, if we were drawing a large fight scene between two mortal enemies in a
graphic novel, then aggressive, punchy lines would be much more fitting to describe the
battling characters. In the next few tutorials, we will move onto how to create the forms
of objects and characters.
 Chapter 4
Tone (Don't Skip the Exercises!)
In art, tone means how light or dark an area is. It refers to a spectrum with white at one
end, black at the other and varying shades of grey in between. Tone is directly linked to
light. If sunlight shines directly onto a crumpled white t-shirt for example, the parts that
the light catches will be the brightest, and the recesses of the folds, where the shadows
are formed, will be the darkest. Light and shade will be discussed in greater depth in a
future tutorial, so for now, we will concentrate on learning some great techniques for
creating tone on your drawings.

Tonal change describes the movement from light to dark across a surface. For example,
diffused sunlight shining through a window onto a dining room table may leave one end
lighter than the other. If you wanted to draw this scene, Instead of a strong contrast
between the light and dark areas, a gradual change of tone across the surface of the table
would need to be created, this is called tonal change. There are a few easy to learn
techniques that can create this effect. It is also worth mentioning that in the US, tone is
sometimes referred to as value.
Exercise ~ Pencil tone
~ For the first exercise, you will need a pencil and your sketchbook. Begin by
drawing a rectangle roughly 2cm high by 6cm long, it doesn’t have to be precise.

~ Now start at the left hand side and shade the first cm row as dark as you can, press
the pencil firmly onto the paper and keep your lines all moving in the same direction.

~ Imagine this rectangle as a spectrum of tone. Darkness is now represented on the left
hand side; light is on the right. You need to gradually shade from the left across to the
right and ease the pressure from your hand as you move, making your strokes softer and
lighter as they move towards the light. You will finish with black on the left, white on
the right, and shades of grey in between.

You have now created a visual tonal change. Try this technique with different shapes
and different grades of pencils, the softness of 2, 3 or 4B grade pencils will give you a
good effect. You may notice how it is easier to achieve a smoother surface and tonal
change with these pencils. We will develop this in the next exercise.

~ Draw another rectangle of similar proportions to the last. Repeat the same process,
however, this time try to achieve a tonal change where the pencil marks are
untraceable. This may take more time because you have to build up the tone gradually,
don’t be afraid to work on one particular area for longer than another, or to draw
several layers until you are satisfied with the result.
Crosshatching
This is an effective shading method for achieving tonal change quickly, in a sketchy and
stylized way. Crosshatching is often used in graphic novels and is a great technique to
use when sketching. The basic principle is that you shade with diagonal lines, again all
drawn together in the same direction, and that the closer they are together, the darker
that area will be. Parts with widely spaced lines will seem much lighter in your
drawings. This is the first part, next you draw another set of diagonal lines that point in
a different direction, so that the lines cross over one another. Where there are more
crossed lines, that area will be tonally darker. This can be seen in the image below.
Exercise ~ Crosshatching
~ Draw out another rectangle similar to the previous ones and start to fill it with quick
diagonal lines. Closely group them together on the left hand side then gradually space
them out as you move towards the right.

~ Again, starting at the left, draw another series of diagonal lines that cross the first
ones at a different angle.

Practice this on other parts of the page, shade areas and experiment with the length and
proximity of the lines.
Ink Washes
The final method of achieving a tonal change is to use an ink wash. Like other
concentrated liquids, the more water you mix with ink, the lighter it will become. Ink is
a great artistic material to use for creating tonal change and shade because it can be
manipulated and changed as you apply it to your drawing. By adding more water to
wet ink on your page, you can spread it out and lighten the tone. For these exercises,
place a sheet of newspaper behind the page that you will be working on in order to stop
any excess ink soaking through into the next few pages of your sketchbook.
Ink wash exercise
~ Draw 2 different shapes, a large triangle and a circle in your sketchbook and make
them big enough to almost cover the entire page. You will also need a pot of artist’s
ink, a medium sized paintbrush and a small pot containing some water. An old mug is
ideal, but you can just as easily use an old yoghurt pot or small container. Black Indian
ink is best for this exercise.

~ Begin by applying ink with your brush to one side of the interior of the shape. Paint
this directly from the inkpot and be generous about how much you use. While the ink is
till wet, and with a damp brush, spread the ink across to the right until the shape is fully
covered. Try to create a steady gradient between the light and the dark.

~ With your other shape, wet the surface first, before you apply the ink. You will find
that the ink will run and swirl across the page but work quickly and see if you can
achieve a similar tonal change across the surface of the shape. With these exercises you
don’t have to worry about perfection, concentrate mainly on trying to create the
transition of dark to light.

Try and repeat these exercises in ways that suit you. Experiment and play. Take the
different materials and see what happens when you work with them in new ways. Tip:
Experimentation is a vital part of learning to draw. It is also an excellent way to learn
about the particular qualities and characteristics of these tools so that you gain a strong
sense of control over how to use them. Play and experimentation also creates artistic
confidence and this will, in turn, come across in your drawings.

Tone is an incredibly important aspect of drawing. It is present in almost all kinds of

artwork. When you have grasped the fundamentals, keep practicing and before long you
will be creating amazing drawings of anything you like, from detailed portraits to
intricately shaded tattoo designs and everything in between.
 Chapter 5
Understanding Form
The form is the shape of an object in three-dimensional space. When sketching, people
often have a tendency to flatten the subject when they draw it on the paper.
Understanding form will give your drawings volume and body, and will make it much
easier to learn to draw excellent buildings and street scenes, as well as figures and
objects. It will also give you a solid base to learn the techniques of perspective
drawing that will be taught in the future tutorial.

Basically, in drawing, to give something form means to make it look three-dimensional.

This starts with the way that you draw it, the lines, and then is finished by the way that it
is shaded, the tone. Let's start with an example, taking the simple shape of a square; we
will make it three-dimensional by turning it into a cube. You will need a ruler and a
rubber for this exercise, if you have squared paper, that will also make the task easier,
but it is not essential.

~ First draw four lines to make a square, use a ruler and make each side 4 cm long.

~ Find the middle point of the square and mark it.

~ Use this point as the bottom right hand corner of a second square that will over
overlap the first when you draw it. A tip for drawing this second shape is to imagine
that the first square has simply been moved 2cm to the left and 2cm upwards.
~ Now join, with the ruler and your pencil, each corner of the first square to the
corresponding corner of the second. Use the shape below as guidance.

You now have a cube. Take a moment and l ook at what you have drawn. This image is
also an optical illusion. If you concentrate your eyes on each different square in turn,
you will see how it pops in and out of being at the front or the back of the cube.

~ On the same page, repeat the same steps and draw another cube in a clear area of the
paper. This time, however, only draw three lines to connect the squares together.

~ Erase the other lines until your drawing looks like the image below.
You now have a cube, and it is time to use what we learnt in the last tutorial and apply
tone in order to turn the line drawing into a three-dimensional form.

~ You can see how only three sides of the cube are visible. Take your pencil and shade
the left hand side of the cube. Press down so that a darker tone is achieved and
remember to keep all your pencil marks flowing in the same direction to achieve a
smooth even finish. When this is completed, move to the side nearest to you and again
shade the square. This time, don’t apply as much pressure to the pencil and apply a
lighter tone. If you want, you can also shade a small shadow on the left hand side to
give the impression that the cube is resting on the ground. You have now successfully
managed to give an object three-dimensional form.

~ You can now continue to fill up the page with different forms. Make some larger or
smaller than others and try new shapes. You can also elongate the forms by placing the
second shape further away from the first before you join them up with the connecting
lines to make them three-dimensional. Whatever the shape, the principle remains the
same.
Ant Exercise
There is another excellent drawing exercise to try out at this point that links drawing
from life with learning to understand the form of an object. It involves thinking like an
ant and making a drawing using only one continuous line. The exercise forces you to
really look closely at what you are drawing, and although you may find the end result
interesting, the exercise itself will benefit your skills greatly in the long run. You can
use either a pencil or a pen for this, but I would recommend a ballpoint ink pen, as this
will give the most consistent line quality for your drawing. You also need a way of
timing 5 minutes, so a clock or a phone stopwatch is necessary as well.

~ Find an object that has both an interior and exterior, like a cup, or an open tin or even
something much more complicated if you are feeling adventurous. This will be your
subject.

~ Place your subject on your desk or somewhere close, where you can see it easily, in
the interests of clarity, I will say that it is a cup.

~ Now rest your pen on the paper. For the next five minutes you will draw a continuous
line that traces the path of an imaginary ant crawling all over the cup in front of you.
You have to imagine the path that would be left as the insect crawled around the back,
over the rim, inside and all around the entire outside surface of the cup and its handle.
Trace this line with your pen the entire time and never let it leave the paper. Imagine
that the ant has stood in paint, and as it walks its feet will leave little painted footprints,
your drawn line are these footprints. There is one more thing…

~ You must never look at the paper and you cannot take your eyes off the cup!

After five minutes is up, your drawing is finished and you may take your pen off the
paper and look at what you have created. This sketch may look abstract, but in
completing the exercise, you are teaching your brain to think more clearly about form. If
you have the time and enjoy the challenge, it is worth repeating this exercise but change
the parameters to suit yourself and to keep it fun. Try setting a different time limit, or
drawing for the duration of a song for example. The more you experiment with this
exercise and practice it, the more your creative abilities and drawing skills will evolve
and you will reap the rewards later on.
The main point of these exercises is to start to think about the subject of your drawing as
a three dimensional object in three-dimensional space. The more you practice both the
way you think and draw forms, the more lifelike, realistic, and better they will become.
This is also true for many different styles of drawing, and these basic shapes and
techniques are important foundation building blocks for the great drawings that you will
create in the future.
 Chapter 6
Light & Shadows
We have learnt how to draw line, tone and form. It is now time to develop these skills
by introducing light to the mix, and we will watch how it affects surfaces and changes
the way that people, buildings and objects are seen. We will learn through step-by-step
instructions how to add light and shadow to your drawings, and by the end of this
tutorial, you will also be able to draw a realistic human eye.

Light allows us to see the things that we want to draw to be seen. Seems an obvious
statement, but light also determines how they are seen. The way that a subject is lit up
has a huge effect on how we draw it. The light and shadows of an image can change the
entire mood of a drawing. It is important to remember that the direction of the light will
dictate the position of the shadows. Where the light directly hits the object, the surface
will, of course, be brighter. It is important to look at how the shadows are created and
what they look like, because it is often not what you would expect.
Understanding Shadows Exercise
Clear a space on you working area and choose a round object such as a golf ball or a
ping-pong ball. If you don’t have either of these to hand, any kind of sphere will do,
even a piece of fruit. Make sure you also have a light that can be moved around easily
and held in a variety of places. If you don’t have an angle poise lamp then a torch will
work, or even download a flashlight app onto your mobile phone and use that.

~ Place your object on the table in front of you and shine the light from the right hand
side. Observe closely where the shadows are cast. Now move the light closer and see
how the shadows change. Move the light further away and watch the length, direction
and tone of the shadows change once again.

~ Angle or hold the light source over the top of the object. Pay attention to the shade,
except this time, imagine how you would draw the object and the shadow in your
sketchbook, as this will be the next part of the exercise.

~ Once you have found a position for the light source that creates a scene that you would
like to draw, turn to a new page and start by drawing the outline of your object with a B
or a 2B pencil. Remember to spend a few minutes studying it first, and that while you
draw, keep looking back in order to keep your proportions in check.

~ Now this is done, take what you learnt from the previous section about tonal change
and start to shade your object. Make the darkest parts of the scene the darkest parts of
your drawing, look at where and how the light hits the object and make sure that these
are the lightest areas. Take your time. There is no need to rush and your sketch will
benefit from layers that have been slowly worked up over time.

Tip: As you are drawing a spherical object, try curving your pencil lines slightly as you
shade as this will help to give even more of an impression of roundness. As you learnt
earlier on, if you make your pencil marks softly, that atmosphere will be felt in the
overall feel of the drawing. The same is true of aggressive, fast lines creating the
associated mood in the finished artwork. This same principle applies here; curving
your lines will repeat the curved surface of the sphere, the way you draw always
matches what you draw. This is a subtle tip, but exceptionally useful.
Negative drawing Exercise

With the previous drawing exercise we built up an image using dark tones to represent
shadows, we added shade to a white page to create a sketch. Negative drawing works
in the opposite way. With this technique you begin with a dark background and use an
eraser to create white areas, lines and highlights where the natural color of the paper
shows through. Instead of drawing the shadow, you draw the light.

~ Use the same set up as before with your light and object. You will need to redraw its
outline, in the same way as before, except this time, shade the entire object reasonably
darkly with your pencil.

~ Now shade the background a slightly lighter tone, so that you can sense a faint
difference between it and the object.

To be able to create negative drawings well, you have to think about the light and how it
makes the object look. This sounds complicated but it isn’t. All it means is that you
need to look at what is happening in front of your eyes, and work from life.

When you are using an eraser to create a negative drawing, the way that you make
marks, and the amount of pressure you apply will of course affect the look of the
drawing. The principle is the same as the techniques that you use to achieve different
types of lines when drawing with a pencil, such as curved lines help to show the curve
of a sphere.

~ Work into your shaded background and pick out the areas of light on your object.
Look closely at how the light is sometimes spread evenly across the surface and
sometimes it will reflect sharply on a focused point. If you use the corner of the eraser,
you will be able to create clean precise lines that resemble this effect of the light. If you
erase too much from an area, simply grab your pencil and start to shade again.
When your drawing is finished, compare both the tonal and the negative drawing of your
object. Look at the differences and the similarities in the effects that these techniques
create.

Tip: Getting Stuck. Sometimes a drawing will go wrong, or for some reason, no matter
what you seem to do, it will not work out the way you were hoping for or expecting.
During these frustrating moments, don’t be disheartened. This is a perfectly natural part
of learning to draw. Often, if you can meet these difficulties in the creative process
head on and work through them, then the quality of the final piece will often be vastly
improved. If you are experiencing difficulties, then take a break and study what you are
drawing in a different way. It often helps to put the drawing that is giving you problems
to one side and try one of the drawing exercises that you have learn. The ant drawing
exercise, for example, is less about creating a finished drawing, and more about
studying what you are drawing in depth and detail. Taking a fresh look at a problem
and tackling it in a different way can be the right way to shake you out of a rut and it
makes any mistakes in a drawing easier to identify and remedy.
 Chapter 7
Proportion & Scale (Measuring,
Drawing Faces, Distorting)
Proportion in art.

Proportion and scale refer to the relationships of size between different parts of a
drawing in relation to the whole.

All objects, people, buildings and environments have their own set of proportions based
on the ways that we measure height, width, depth, weight and volume. If the correct
ratios of these proportions can be taken from the natural world and re-applied in the
drawings that we make, then they will appear natural and realistic. For example, if you
were sitting outside on a summer’s day and drawing a tree, and you discovered that its
width was half of its height, then this same ratio could be applied to the measurements
of your drawing and it would create a natural accuracy. If you chose to make the width
of the tree on the paper 10cm, then its height would be 20cm. This seems complicated
but don’t worry, once you start practicing looking and thinking about proportion, then it
will all slot into place.

An incredibly important fact to remember is that perspective affects proportion. You

will already know that objects closer to us seem bigger than objects far away. For
example, a figure in a landscape will appear larger if that person is close to you, while
the same figure standing on a rocky mountaintop 500 meters away would seem much
smaller.
Proportional rules of the human body
There are proportional rules related to the human body, probably the most famous
example would be from Leonardo Da Vinci’s concept of the Vitruviun Man. You can
see this image below but I’m sure that you will recognize it. This ubiquitous drawing
has appeared in everything from cartoon t-shirts in markets all over the world, through
to making an appearance in the popular TV series the Simpsons and the film adaption of
Dan Brown’s novel the Da Vinci Code.

One of the fundamental ideas about human proportion that the Vitruviun Man reveals is
that if you measure your own arm span, from fingertip to fingertip, then it will be the
same measurement as your height. Try this yourself and see if it is true for you. Another
rule is that the gap between your eyes is generally the same distance as one of your eyes
on its own. These rules, along with others like them, are useful to understand and be
aware of. As rough guidelines, they will help you when you sketch proportions.
However, you cannot simply rely on them to create accuracy and faithfulness to the
image of what you draw because everything is always altered by perspective.

This is why it is always necessary to look at and study what you are drawing, rather
than to merely rely on these kinds of artistic laws to ensure quality in your work.
Another objective anatomical guideline for drawing the human body is that on a standing
figure viewed from the front, the distance of the head, from the chin to the top of the
skull, will fit roughly eight times into the height of that figure. Again, this is a useful
piece of information, but this ratio only applies when the effects of perspective are not
in effect. If you were to draw this figure lying down or sitting on a chair then the effects
of perspective would change this rule. This is the same principle as the previously
mentioned figure that was standing on a distant mountaintop. He seems smaller in
comparison to a similar person standing much closer, even when we know that they are
the same height, so when certain parts of a body are further away, they will appear to be
smaller, and parts that are closer will be bigger. This is especially true for figures that
are lying down, as the perspective that is created by where you choose to sit or stand
while drawing will significantly alter the proportions of a human body.
Measuring
So how do you ensure the correct proportions in your drawings, and how do you
account for the effects of perspective on proportion? The answer to this question is to
measure. Measuring goes hand in hand with looking when you draw, and the better you
get at one, the more it will improve your skills regarding the other. The basic principle
is that when you draw, you are transforming an image of a three-dimensional
environment, containing your subject, onto a flat two-dimensional piece of paper. To
make sure that the image you draw retains the same proportions as the scene in front of
you, you need to draw imaginary horizontal and vertical lines over the scene to see
which objects and parts align, and then draw them in these positions.

Think of these pencil lines as a type of information gathering, a way for you to mentally
map what you are about to draw. The best way to do this is to take a pencil, longer
paintbrush or a stick, hold it at arms length and shut one eye. Line up your measuring
tool with various different points on the subject. You will be able to realize which parts
are parallel and at what points they cross each other. To build up to this stage, it is
important to initially understand the technique well on a basic level. For the first
simple exercise you will need to find a frontal image of a face that you would like to
use. This could be a photo that you have taken, an image from the Internet or even a face
cut out of a magazine. Make sure that your choice is not a sentimental, irreplaceable
photo because you will be drawing over the top of it. Also, try to find a face that is
looking directly at you, one that isn’t distorted by perspective or taken at an odd angle.
Measuring exercise
We will learn the basic principles of using this technique to map out proportions and the
positioning of the elements of a drawing by firstly drawing out these lines, so that you
can start to understand their purpose and how they work. A good way of thinking about
them is to imagine the lines as a kind of scaffolding that builds up the basic structure of
your drawing.

~ Take your photo and have a good look at the face. Think about which elements of the
face are similar sizes, where they are in relation to the overall face, and what parts are
in line with others.

~ Take your pencil and ruler and start by drawing a horizontal line that starts at the top
of the left ear lobe and finishes at the top of the right. Now do the same between the
lowest points of the two ear lobes.

~ Draw a vertical line right up the middle of the head that splits the nose, lips and chin
in two. Next, another horizontal line is needed underneath the bottom of the lower lip.

~ Now take a look at what you have drawn. Of course every human face is different,
and so in the case of the following observations, treat them as guidelines instead of
absolutes. Remember also that these proportions are relevant with a front on facial
portrait; they will differ slightly when the head is tilted, twisted or looking in another
direction.

- The line that stretches between the points at the bottom of the earlobes also
marks the bottom of the nose.

- The line that stretches between the points at the top of the earlobes is slightly
higher than the eyes.

- The bottom of the mouth, marked by your line, sits half way between the
lowest point of the nose and the chin. The corners of the mouth normally line up
vertically with the irises of the eyes.

- The eyes are positioned half way down the person’s face. In this example,
the width of a single eye will be 1/5th of the width of the head. Test this on your
own photograph. Measure the length of one eye in relation to the width of the
head and also test the spacing and placing. Can you place the width of an eye
 between the eyes of the person in your photograph? Test also whether you can
place the width of an eye between the edge point of their eye and the edge of the
face.

- A final observation to make is to notice the hairline. Many people, when they
draw faces, make the mistake of situating the hairline on top of the head. This
inevitably stretches the forehead and pulls the face out of proportion. Of course
if your subject is actually going bald and their hairline is receding, then draw it
accordingly!

You have now broken down the visual structure of a human face. As I said earlier, think
of these lines as a type of scaffolding that can help you build the correctly proportioned
structure of a face. As you practice this technique over time, you will develop the
confidence and skill to move away from marking the lines physically towards using your
eye to look for the junctions between various lines that mark the points between objects
and their proportions in your drawings.

In the next exercise we will now apply these lines again, except this time, you will use
them to build up a structure of the face, then draw the photo that you have chosen.
Drawing a face exercise

~ Firstly draw the shape of the head. Heads are not circular, nor are they perfect
ovals. The best way is to think of the shape as being like an egg. Tapered at the chin
and more rounded over the top of the skull. This shape will vary tremendously
depending on whom it is that you are drawing.

~ Now that you have the rough shape, start to define the jaw-line. If you are drawing a
man then it is likely he will have a stronger, more pronounced jaw-line. A softer line is
normally the case when you are drawing women. Again, this rule is not an absolute, so
look at the person that you are drawing and decide for yourself. Draw what you see, not
what you think that you see.

Tip: (Jaw-lines) If you are drawing figures or designing characters in the future, the
jaw-line is an important part of the human anatomy to get right if you want to convey
certain male or female characteristics. This is especially true in caricature drawing,
where the exaggeration of these features can create a dramatic effect.
~ The next step is to position the eyes. Take a look at your photograph again and study
the eyes of your subject to remind yourself of how they look. Draw a faint line
horizontally across the centre point between the top of the head and the bottom of the
chin. This is axis that the eyes will be located upon. It is important to measure the eyes
of your subject. The width of the eyes being 1/5th of the width of the head is only a rule
of thumb, and so it is always worth measuring to check the actual proportions of the
person that you are drawing. If one eye is indeed 1/5th of the width of the head, then
imagine that distance divided into five sections. The middle section contains the brow
of the nose and beyond this, to either side, are the eyes. The outer sections are the
distance between the edge of the eye and the edge of the face. Draw the eyes in place,
sketch them in lightly and concentrate on their shape and form, don’t worry at this stage
about tone and shading. It is worth gently marking in the bridge of nose, as this will
help to give definition and shape to this area of the face and will help you to see if the
eyes look correct.

~ Now it is time to draw the ears. As a loose rule, they will extend downwards to
somewhere around halfway between a little above the tops of the eyes and the bottom of
the chin. Careful observation is essential here. As with any observational drawing,
remember to spend twice as much time looking as drawing.

~ As the ears have now been drawn in, you can easily work out the proportion and
positioning of the nose. Place it on the central line and the horizontal line that joins up
the bottom tips of the ear lobes. You can begin to see why these visual lines are useful.
Now we know that the lowest point of the nose is aligned with the shape of the two ears
in this way, it means that once we have the proportions of the ears, we can work out the
proportions of the nose.

~ The next stage is the mouth. As you discovered earlier when you marked in the lines
on your photograph, the bottom of the lips sit pretty much halfway between the
horizontal single line that marks the bottom of the ear lobes and the nose. You also
know from studying the face in your photograph that the mouth is usually as wide as the
irises of the eyes. Of course this varies, so look carefully at the face that you are
drawing. If you want to be as accurate as possible, which I recommend, then draw two
vertical lines with your ruler on the photograph that start from the furthest corners of the
mouth and move upwards over the face. This will determine the point at which these
points cross and intersect with the eyes. You can now draw the mouth into your
artwork.

If for some reason the mouth seems too big or small, then return to the measurements and
positioning of the eyes. If they are incorrect, then it will throw the mouth out of
proportion as well.

~ The next step is to draw the eyebrows. These give a face character, and are
incredibly diverse, so study the face you are drawing and pay particular attention to the
shape, direction and thickness of the hair. Eyebrows that are lovingly shaped and
plucked to perfection will be much different from unkempt, bushy old brows, and they
should be drawn accordingly! A good rule here is so start by drawing out the shape of
the eyebrow. Think about the form of a human head, you know that the brow ridge
above our eyes sticks out further, and that this is where they are positioned, so think
about them as a form that is on a raised or curved surface. Use the line method of
measuring that we are currently studying to draw marks on your photograph with your
ruler to locate the exact positioning. The next rule is to draw your pencil marks in the
same direction as the hairs of the eyebrows. You have to look closely to observe this
detail but it is worth the effort, as this kind of added consideration can add a lot of
character to your artworks. If the hairs are long and wispy, then make the strokes of
your pencil match that. If they are short and controlled, again, mirror that with your own
pencil marks. A difficulty that may arise here is if you are sketching someone with
drawn on or tattooed eyebrows. Since that means that they have shaved off the hair in
order to do so, it will be impossible for you to match the texture of the hairs that make
up the eyebrow. No worries, all you have to do is draw them into your drawing, if they
can draw on their eyebrows onto skin, then so can you with a pencil on paper!

~ The penultimate stage is the hair. You have already spent time looking at exactly
where the hairline is located on your subject’s face; now you will sketch it into the
drawing. Begin with a soft pencil, a B or 2B so that you can roughly sketch out the
overall impression of the hair first, before focusing on tone, line quality and realism. If
you begin at one point and spend ages shading and completing each individual strand
before you move onto the next area, then you may find that the overall proportions are at
risk of being pulled out of shape if you make a mistake. You will know if this happens
because the drawing will seem visually incorrect and feel wrong. There is also a
psychological reason for drawing in this way. If you have spent a long time working on
a certain area of the hair, or any part of the drawing for that matter, and it seems
‘finished’, then your brain will be much more subconsciously adverse to re-adjusting
that part, even if it is incorrect compared to the rest of the proportions of the drawing.
In other words, if you have invested a lot of time, you will try to convince yourself that
that part of the drawing is correct and in proportion, even if it is not. This is why it is a
good idea to roughly sketch out a drawing first and ensure that the proportions are
correct, and that you are happy with the layout, before you start to work on the next
stages of tone, texture and lighting.

~ The final stage is detail. Look for any features that are unique to that individual and
draw them into your artwork. This can be anything from freckles, scars, tattoos, or any
other quirks that you have noticed about their face as you have been studying it.

When you have completed this stage, compare your drawing with the photograph. If you
drew the same structural lines on your own drawing, would they line up in the same way
as the lines on the photograph? How closely do you feel the features and proportions of
the drawing match those of the photograph. Also, congratulations, you have now learnt
how to draw the correct proportions for a human face!

This exercise is designed to make you start thinking about using these structural lines as
a technique to help you draw. It is also to start you measuring proportion while you
work, and to be able to use this technique to identify what may be wrong about a sketch
or artwork that you make. These take time to develop, but even if you are sitting at your
desk and you notice outside that a telegraph pole is parallel to a phone box next to it; or
that a tree against a building in the distance comes up to exactly the height of the third
floor for example, then these ideas are starting to internalize themselves. Doing this
will improve your artistic eye, and you can perform these quick and easy little exercises
wherever you go.

Look at objects, people, places and buildings and draw these imaginary structural lines
in your head. Here are a few ideas to start you off:

- On Skype, study the facial proportions of your friends and family while you
talk.
- Watch people on the street and study their physical proportions.
 - How many times could the height of a pedestrian walking by fit into the height
of the nearby coffee shop or building?

All these little games can be completed inside the privacy of your own head, and are
often entertaining; especially when observing people is involved. Invent your own and
see what you can come up with. Although light-hearted, the exercises will improve
your drawing and looking skills, two incredibly important aspects of creating decent
artworks.
Deliberately distorting Proportion
As with everything, practice makes perfect, and this certainly applies to proportional
rules and skills. Once you begin to master these concepts and techniques, and know
when to apply them and when not, you will also be able to break them for stylistic
effect. This can be seen in the work of many artists, cartoonists, designers and other
professionals that draw, from Pablo Picasso to Ralph Steadman. This type of distortion
can especially be seen in caricatures, which you will learn how to draw later on in the
book. In any of these different areas, genres and styles of art, your ability to alter
proportions on purpose will be significantly improved by the ability to draw in
proportion first. In other words, you need to know the rules before you break them.

Once you have been drawing for a while, in whatever style you choose, you will be
surprised at just how helpful it is to know these rules and be able to apply them or alter
them to suit your own artistic needs. The technical base will give your artwork quality,
and that applies whether you are drawing fashion illustrations, photorealist portraits,
designing your own graphic novel or any other artistic drawing style.
 Chapter 8
Perspective - What It Is, And How to
Use It
Drawing perspective effectively is one of the most useful artistic techniques that you
will develop. They teach you how to place people, cars, plants, trees, billboards, bikes
and anything else you can imagine into rooms, streets, cities, landscapes and
environments with accuracy and precision.

Perspective affects all things, so consequently in one form or another, it is always

present to some extent within any drawing of three-dimensional space. This is of course
if the rules are stuck to.

Perspective is fun to play around with; the level of a horizon or the proximity of a
person or an object can have a huge effect on the mood, feel and style of a drawing. As
you practice and become more familiar with the perspective rules that govern the way
that objects, people and buildings perform in three-dimensional space, you will also be
able to start to bend, twist, exaggerate and ignore them to suit your own needs, but we
are getting ahead of ourselves. Firstly we need the basics.

If you stand on a road that travels away into the distant horizon, you will notice that the
further away it gets, the closer the two sides of the road seem to be. If you look far
enough, you will notice that the two sides eventually join in one place. This is called a
vanishing point. In the next exercise you will learn how to draw this effect, and learn
about how distance and the vanishing points affect objects. You will need a ruler as
well as your sketchbook and a pencil or pen.
Vanishing Point exercise

~ Start the exercise by drawing a horizon on your page. Choose a particular point on
this line to be your vanishing point. Draw a dot in that place.

~ Next draw three squares in various places around the page. They can be above or
below the horizon, and you can make them different sizes if you wish. These shapes
will become cuboids, and you will see how perspective alters the way that they appear.
Draw a line from each corner point of each square to the vanishing point on the horizon.
When this is complete, take a look at the drawing and you will see the effect that
perspective can have on an object.

Perspective causes lines that are normally parallel to one another to intersect at a
vanishing point. In this example, you know that the shapes that you drew were cuboids,
and that cuboids have evenly spaced parallel edges, however you can see how the effect
of perspective distorts this form.
Vanishing points and figures exercise
This exercise follows the same perspective principles, except instead of three cuboids;
we will use a person instead. This will give you an impression of how this rule can
make someone appear far away or close to the forefront of your drawing. It is a useful
technique to learn because it allows you to create depth in an image where two or more
figures are involved. This is useful for crowd scenes such as a rock concert or a
crowded beach.

~ On a new page in your sketchbook, sketch a figure whose height is roughly the same
as half the height of your paper. Place this person on the far right hand side and pick a
point, around head height, on the far left hand side to be the vanishing point.

~ Using your ruler, trace a line that runs from the top of the head to the vanishing point.
Now draw a second line from the bottom of their feet to the same point. You now have
two perspective lines that determine the position of the top of the head, and the bottom
of the feet of your figure, all the way back to the vanishing point.

~ Pick another point within the perspective lines and draw the figure again further
backwards towards the vanishing point. If you need more guidelines as to proportion
and scale, simply pick the part of the body that you want to draw on the original figure
and trace a line with your ruler from that point back to the vanishing point. Say for
example, you needed to know where the hand was situated, you would find that point on
the first figure, then link it with the vanishing point. This line would intersect with the
second figure that is further away. The exact place where the line crosses the second
figure’s body is where you would draw the hand.
Corridor perspective exercise
In this exercise you will use what you have learnt to practice drawing objects in
accordance with these perspective rules. Below is an image of a long corridor with the
vanishing point at the end. There is a window on the left hand side, your job is to
redraw this scene and add a window on the right hand wall.

~ Firstly draw out a large rectangle that fills the majority of the page in your
sketchbook. Imagine where the middle point of this shape would be then move slightly
up and to the right of this dot and mark your vanishing point. The dimensions do not
need to be exactly the same as the image above; it is only essential that your image will
be made up of all the same parts. So draw four lines that start at each corner of the
rectangle and end at the vanishing point.

~ Nest you will need to draw in the first window on the left hand wall. We are going
to do this by firstly drawing in some light structural perspective lines then draw the
window into place. This allows you to see if you are happy with how the window
looks and where it is placed, as well as ensuring that the angles of the edges fit with the
perspective rules of the corridor.

~ Start by picking the point for the nearest bottom corner and using a pencil that gives a
light tonal line, a 2H for example, and trace a line using your ruler from here back to the
vanishing point. Remember, you want the line to be light and barely visible so don’t
apply much pressure when you are drawing it.

~ Draw another structural line, this time make it vertical and begin at the same nearest
bottom corner. Make this line further than you think that edge of the window will be and
extend it all the way up to meet the perspective line that flows from the top left hand
corner of the rectangle to the vanishing point.

~ Now put a dot where you want the other bottom corner of the window to be. Draw
another vertical line from this point upwards until it intersects with the same
perspective line as before. When you are drawing this window in this way, it helps to
think of it as a trapezium rather than a rectangle. You learnt earlier how perspective
vanishing points affect forms and objects that we know in our heads look a certain way,
such as the cuboids. This is the same for drawing this window; the perspective alters
the way that its shape is seen. These are both examples situations where you must draw
what you see, rather than what you think you see, because if you do, then the drawing
will not turn out well. Unlearning what we know about the way that we see and
perceive the world around us is a difficult process to work through, but all of the
drawing exercises in this book incorporate this element of drawing to some degree.
Each one, in its own way, is designed to do much more than simply leave you with a
new drawing in your sketchbook when you have finished that particular exercise. This
exercise teaches you to draw a shape that you know by its empirical measurements is a
rectangle, but in this case, with the influence of perspective, it will now be seen as a
trapezium.

~ You have three sizes of the window structurally marked out now so it is time to
complete the frame. A good tip for judging its size is to take your ruler, and keeping the
edge on the vanishing point, adjust the edge to a height that is not too big or small and
seems to fit proportionally with the rest of the corridor. When you are happy, draw in
this top line of the window and join up the top and bottom edges by tracing along the
structural vertical lines you drew earlier. You will now have a completed window.
The tricky part is to replicate the same form on the opposite wall.

~ Return to the beginning of the tutorial if you need to and follow the same steps, except
switch them over for the right hand side. Remember to draw in your structural
guidelines, this will allow you to see whether the overall drawing and the lines are
correct before you mark the lines in properly. At the end of the tutorial, it is up to you
whether you decide to leave these guidelines showing or not. I personally would, as I
believe they will reinforce the lessons that you have learnt in regards to perspective
every time you return to the sketchbook. If you would prefer not to, and you feel that a
cleaner, more succinct drawing will better help your progression, then simply erase
them.
Double-Point Perspective

Once you feel like you have grasped the concepts of single-point perspective, it is time
to move onto double-point. Initially, the introduction of another vanishing point can
seem complicated, but in reality, when you break it down, it’s not too hard to learn and
become proficient with. If you think back to when you drew the cuboids with a single
point perspective, you will remember that the square shapes you drew first became the
front facing sides of the cuboids, and the sides were drawn in afterwards according to
the perspective rules. Two-point perspective is needed when your object can be seen at
an angle, for example a building of the corner of a street. With this technique, the
vertical lines remain vertical in the same way that you drew when you used a single
vanishing point in your work. The difference is that each surface of an object is affected
by both vanishing points, and so they are changed from being rectangular. Again this
sounds more complicated than it actually is, and this next exercise will help to clarify
and explain these points in your mind. You will need your sketchbook, a ruler and a
pencil.
Double-Point Perspective Exercise
We will again use cuboids.

~ In the same way as the first perspective exercise, draw a horizon on your page. Place
a dot on the far right, and a dot on the far left, at a two or three cm indentation from the
edges of the paper. These dots are your two vanishing points.

~ When we drew the squares earlier, they were faces of the cuboids and the single
vanishing point perspective only affected the lines that travelled back towards the
horizon. As two-point perspective distorts all the sides of the cuboids, we must start by
simply drawing a line to represent the edge that is nearest to us in the picture. The line
will also be the height of that form, so think about the scale of the shape when you draw
this first part. You will be creating two cuboids, one above the horizon and one below,
so mark in these two first lines and make them different lengths.

~ We will concentrate on the lower form first. Take your ruler and draw lines between
each end of the line and the vanishing point on the right. You will have a triangular
looking shape. Now, from the same places at each end of the same line, draw two more
lines back to the other vanishing point.

~ You now need to decide how wide and long you would like the form to be. Hold
your ruler vertically against the paper and move it to the right of the front edge of the
form. Find the place where you are happy and mark this vertical line over the
perspective lines that run towards the vanishing point on the right. This line will start
and finish at the exact points where it intersects with the perspective lines.

~ You now have one side ready. Repeat this process exactly, only this time, move the
ruler to the left and draw the left facing side.

~ It is now time to complete the first form by drawing the topside. To do this you will
need to line up your ruler with the point where the vertical line on the right meets the top
perspective line, then angle your ruler so that the other end is in line with the
perspective point on the left hand side and faintly draw this line.

~ Repeat for the other side and mirror the process. Start with the left hand line this
time and draw your perspective line across to the right hand side vanishing point.

~ You will be able to see that these two lines intersect and create the top of the form.
Draw this in and you will have your first of the two cuboids completed.

~ To draw the other form, simply follow the instructions of the exercise again. In this
second example you will be looking up at the form and will be able to see the bottom
side rather than the top face. The rules apply in exactly the same way.
The Horizon
At this point is it important to have a think about the position of each shape in relation to
the horizon. When you look at the form below the horizon line it looks like it is located
on the ground, while the one above the horizon seems to be floating up in the air. This
is a good lesson to think about when you are drawing because it shows how an object’s
relationship to the horizon line affects how it is seen. So long as long as you position
your object with its base beneath the horizon, it will appear to be rooted to the ground,
regardless of how high it stands. The opposite is true for an object that is placed above
the horizon and has perspective rules applied to the way that it is drawn.

The position of the horizon itself has a huge impact on the way that viewers will
understand the scene that you have drawn. For example, if you have a figure on a page
and you draw the horizon right at the top, it will create the illusion of a vast expansive
space, as if the figure had a huge empty desert or space in front of them. If you kept the
exact same proportions, and instead redrew the horizon at the bottom of the page, just
above their ankles so that they still seemed rooted on the ground, then the person would
look as though they were on the edge of a building or a cliff, with a drop in front of
them. The position of the horizon changes the amount of distance and background in a
drawing.
Creating distance using the horizon line
exercise
We will now explore this idea in a playful way and this will teach you how to create
distance in your artworks. Turn to a clean page in your sketchbook; you will only need
a ruler and a pen or a pencil for this exercise.
Horizon distance exercise
~ Firstly divide the page into four rectangles by drawing a vertical and a horizontal line
to make a cross.

~ In the top left hand rectangle, sketch a standing figure. Make the person fairly large
but don’t worry about any detail or too much precision. All that you need for the
purpose of this exercise is the impression of a human. Once you have completed your
figure, replicate it in the same place with the same proportions in the top right
rectangle. Draw the figure as similarly as possible but it does not have to be an exact
copy. The main point of the exercise is to learn about creating distance and space in
your drawings, learning how to draw figures properly comes later on.

~ Now take your ruler and return to the top right. Draw a horizon line towards the top
of the rectangle and leave a gap of a few centimeters to show the sky. Add a small
amount of tonal shading around the feet to make the figure look as if they are actually
standing in the landscape.

~ Turn your attention to the second figure that you drew. This time, draw the horizon
much closer, at around knee height to your figure. Add the tonal shading again and then
compare the two scenes.

You can see how distance and space has been created in the scene on the left hand side,
and how by simply bringing the horizon closer to the front of the landscape, a drastic
effect can be achieved.

~ For the bottom two rectangles, you will need to draw your figure again, however this
time, change their scale. Sketch them miniscule or huge and experiment with where you
place the horizon in each drawing.
Experimenting and sketching is a great way to internalize these basic perspective rules
once you have completed the exercises. Testing the way that certain objects appear in
different environments with alternatively placed vanishing points and horizons will
undoubtedly develop your drawing skills.
 Chapter 9
Texture and Surface (Hard, Soft, Rough)
Learning to draw the texture and surface of an object realistically can really bring your
artworks to life. Generally there are three types of categories used to classify the
different surfaces that you will draw; these are hard, soft and rough.

Hard surfaces - These smooth and sleek surfaces such as metal or glass are highly
reflective. Light bounces off the surface at odd angles and this creates sharp highlights
with strong, clean edges and clear tonal contrasts between light and dark.

Soft surfaces - This category includes materials like fabrics and plant leaves, surfaces
that absorb the light and have smooth tonal transitions between the shadows and
highlights.

Rough surfaces -Tree bark is an excellent example of a rough surface. As these

surfaces are jagged, worn or heavily textured, the light hits less of the overall surface.
There will often be an uneven distribution because the surface itself is not regular and
uniform, and so there will be softer variations in tone. However, if the surface is
heavily textures, as in the example of tree bark, then there may be crevices and ridges
that will create strong contrasts between light and dark.

As you can see, the way that light reacts with a surface has a huge effect on how we
draw it. Light and texture are inextricably involved with each other, and you must think
about this when you draw. Before we start drawing, there are a few tips that make
drawing larger areas of texture much easier and more efficient. These are also good
rules for general drawing practice, so they can be applied whenever you are practicing.
Tips
Start drawing the most detailed focal point of the surface first. This will enable you to
sketch other areas in slightly less detail if you want to create tension and contrast in
your work.

If you are right handed, work from left to right to avoid accidental smudging. Reverse
this principle if you draw with your left.

Don’t be scared of the dark! Avoiding making drawings too light by starting with the
dark areas and working tonally towards the light. This will allow you to use the whole
tonal spectrum from black to white, and will also add richness and depth to your work.

Use the paper as a highlight. This is a technique taken from negative drawing that is
especially useful here. Instead of drawing the parts of the surface where the tone is
brightest, don’t make any marks on these areas and simply let the white of the paper
show through. You can also create highlights by erasing. When you have finished
drawing the overall tone of your subject, use your eraser to clear the areas of light by
once again letting the white of the paper show through.
Hard surfaces
When you are drawing hard, reflective surfaces, high contrasts and sharp highlights are
key to achieving lifelike representations. Think of a surface as a series of different
tones, rather than an object with borders that needs to be filled up with pencil marks.
Start at the darkest areas and gradually work your way up to the highlights.

When you draw reflective surfaces, you will also draw the surroundings that are
reflected in the surface. For example, if you wanted to draw a mirror, you would draw
whatever would be reflected in its surface. This can make these kinds of surfaces
difficult to depict, but they are a fun challenge and a rewarding experience when drawn
successfully. It is especially important to spend a lot of time looking at these kinds of
surfaces and study in detail the way that the light looks as it reacts with the façade of
your subject.
Hard surface exercise

For this exercise you will need your sketchbook, an eraser and a selection of different
pencils of various grades. Choose a shiny, reflective object to draw. Try to find
something that has a large surface area rather than a lot of complicated detail.

~ To gain more understanding of the way that the light and reflections look, try placing
your object in a few different places with varying light levels and study the changes that
you see. The sharpest contrasts tend to happen in the brightest lights.

~ Return to your working space, place your object nearby and start to draw. Sketch out
the rough form first, but keep this light and use a B or 2B pencil to apply pressure as
softly as possible.

~ Start on the darkest areas and gradually build up the tones. Don’t worry about going
over the same area many times as this will give you an even, rich tone that will add to
the overall quality of the finished artwork. Also mark out the highlights, the areas
where the light is brightest, and allow the paper to show through in these parts.

~ If you accidently cover over areas that you realize should be highlights while you
draw, then use your eraser to create them once again.
Soft Surfaces
The tonal difference is normally a lot less pronounced in soft surfaces, and there is
usually more texture than the hard reflective surfaces have. The best way to draw them
is to build up the tone gradually. Use soft pencils as the transitions from dark to light
are often slow and subtle, but with materials such as cloth, there are normally still deep
recesses that will contain dark shadows.

Soft surfaces exercise

You will need to select a type of cloth or material for this exercise. Anything from a t-
shirt to a tablecloth will work. If you can find something textured, with a visible thread
or linear pattern then that would be ideal.

~ Arrange your material in front of you. Make sure that it falls in drapes, rather than
being scrunched up into a confusing mess. Now turn to a clean page in your sketchbook
and start to sketch out the rough form of the folds and the raised areas. Think about how
certain parts of its surface have been stretched taut, while others are loose and baggy,
and how these different characteristics can be represented in your drawing.

~ Pay attention to how the thread and pattern of the cloth appears to change in places
where the material is crumpled or stretched, you can use these patterns as guidelines to
help you draw. Follow the lines of the pattern and add them to your drawing. They will
help you to think about the three-dimensional form of the material in front of you, which
is turn should help to increase the realism of the drawing. Remember the way that you
shaded the circle to turn it into a sphere earlier in the book when you were learning
about tone? You used curved lines to shade areas of the drawing, lines that also gave
the viewer more information about the surface and form of what you were drawing. The
concept is the same here, only slightly trickier, but you will be able to manage. Imagine
the linear pattern shows the lines that you have to draw and work from there.

~ Build up the tonal differences by working from dark to light, and take your time with
this first sketch. You don’t have to shade every bit of the drawing equally. In fact,
starting with the most complicated section will enable you to leave other areas of the
drawing with deliberately less detail, creating in your work a strong contrast between
these different areas.
Rough surfaces
Rough textures are often easier to draw because they are more detailed than smooth, soft
or reflective surfaces. Materials such as tree bark or rusted metal often have course and
uneven facades, which creates heavy textures and irregular areas of light and shade.
With a soft surface, for example, the light is generally spread much more evenly across
the material. When the same light source reacts with a rough texture there will often be
many places that it cannot penetrate, such as the recesses in the bark, so there will
normally be many darker areas as well. Rough textures can also maintain their grain
and detail throughout the material that they are made from. For example, if you look at a
plank of wood, you can see the patterns of the grain on the surface and at the ends and
sides where it has been cut. When you are drawing, adding detail like this gives the
viewer more information about what they are seeing because they can look at the texture
of the plank from more than one angle. Including a way of showing a cross section of a
rough texture in your artworks can reveal the depth and other hidden qualities of the
material, giving more depth and information to the overall artwork.

Rough surfaces exercise: drawing a block of wood

For this exercise, we are going to use the edge of a contour to reveal the inner texture of
a piece of wood. A fine point ink pen is the best drawing tool for the exercise, and you
will also need a pencil and your sketchbook. As always, remember to complete the
warm up exercises to relax your hand and eye before you begin. You will also need to
find a piece of wood if you can. The aim of the exercise is to represent the surface and
a cross-section of a rough texture, in this case, wood. In order to be able to do this, you
need to be able to see the wood from these two angles.

~ Start by sketching out the form of the wood and keep in mind perspective and
proportion. You don’t need to use a ruler as developing your freehand skills is
important. Try to think about the rules that you have learnt and keep them in mind when
you work.

~ The first step is to draw the grain of the surface of the wood in pencil. Close
observation is the key to this. Keep looking at the texture and build up your pencil lines
in the direction of the grain, just as if you were sanding the wood. When you are
drawing in the areas of more intricate detail, such as knots, keep in mind how some
areas of grain will be closer and more tightly knit, whilst others can be further apart.
When you have blocked in the entire surface, it is time to move onto the cross section.

~ This part is trickier, but if you get stuck, simply put down your pencil and study the
object in front of you. All the information you need is contained there in front of you.
When you look at the cross section of a piece of wood, you will see how the grains on
the surface become rings of the interior. We all understand how tree rings look and
grow, but try to ignore what you already feel you know and trace the lines of the rings
onto your drawing carefully and accurately, in the way that they are in front of you.
Match the grain lines that you drew to mark the surface of the wood with the tree rings
in the cross section. Take a moment to follow these parts on your object in front of you
and then replicate that in your sketch. Work with your pencil to achieve a sense of
texture where the lines are flowing in roughly the same direction because this will add
to the sense and feel of the form of the wood, and it will improve the standard of your
drawing.

~ Finish the pencil sketching stage of the drawing by applying the same principles to
the side of the plank of wood if you can see it. Remember to only draw what you can
see, not what you think you can see.

~ The next stage is to trace over the pencil lines with your fine point ink pen. You can
now be more specific and detailed than you were when you used the pencil. The fine
tip of the pen will pick out the intricacies of the wooden texture effectively, and build
on top of the general impression of the wood that you created initially. Use the pen for
the sides and the cross section as well. Don’t rely wholly on your pencil sketch, make
sure that you are constantly looking back at the wood in front of you to check the way
that the pattern, detail, and texture actually is.

Now that you have seen ‘into’ a rough texture by drawing its cross section, it is time to
practice with other materials, this time stone.
Drawing stone exercise

Find a rough stone, any kind will do so long as it has a jagged or heavily textured
surface. In this exercise we will work expressively and quickly to create sketches that
concentrate on using fast marks to capture the look, feel and texture of the stone. You
can work in whatever medium you wish, pencil, graphite stick, pen, ink, charcoal or
anything else that you wish. Feel free to mix different artistic tools together in these
sketches as well.

~ Open your sketchbook and start to draw the stone in front of you. We will be
drawing three different versions of the same object on this page but don’t worry if they
overlap one another; in fact, I would highly encourage you to make them do so. Work
quickly in expressive marks and gestures. Scribble hard where the texture is
particularly rough and shade with thick crude strokes. Charcoal is an excellent material
for this kind of work and I would highly recommend using it because you can smudge
and smear it with your finger to indicate shade and shadow. Spend no longer than ten
minutes maximum on this first drawing.

~ Before you start the next sketch, pick the stone up in your hands and spend a minute
thinking about how the texture feels, how heavy it is and its overall shape. Now place it
in a different position and start to draw again in the same way, switch to a different
pencil, pen, piece of charcoal or a graphite stick and use repeated marks this time to
represent the texture. Don’t start with an initial outline, instead begin with an area of
heavy texture and character and as you work, spread out your marks as you create the
different areas of texture until the entire stone has been sketched on the page. Again use
smudged charcoal or black ink to add tonal change to the drawing. The time limit for
this second drawing is ten minutes maximum.

~ Now that you have completed two quick sketches, it is time to add some additional
pressure to the exercise. For the final drawing, you will only have two minutes to
complete the sketch. Move the stone again so that the sharpest edge or the most gnarled
or split part of the stone is visible. Sketch out a rough form first, so that you have the
shape of the stone on your paper, then start your two minutes and concentrate solely on
this area of rough texture. Don’t worry about rubbing anything out or being precise, be
bold and forget about being anxious of making mistakes or creating a drawing that
doesn’t look realistic. The aim of the exercise is to expressively represent rough texture
and everything else is secondary.

Repetition and variation in texture

Texture is often well represented through repetitive marks that mirror the surface of the
subject of your drawing. For example, a tennis ball is covered in tiny fibers that look
like hair, so when you are sketching, the best way to draw this texture is to draw
hundreds of tiny marks that will give an overall impression of the tennis ball. The same
principle also applies to depicting the surface of a golf ball. In this example, the
surface is made up of many small circular craters that help the ball to fly. To draw the
texture of this surface, we can use small repetitive circular marks to mirror the overall
spherical form of the ball.
The other advantage of this technique is that whilst you are drawing the texture, you can
simultaneously shade the object. If you think back to learning about tone, you will
remember the way that as pencil marks are built up and sketched closer together, the
darker that part of the image will appear. Using textural marks, such as the tiny fibers
for the tennis ball and the circles for the golf ball, in the same way can also create the
same tonal effects. Whatever shape or textural mark you choose to use, if you repeat
them many times in close proximity to each other, then that part of the drawing will
seem to be have been shaded more, and will appear darker. If you need or want to
work quickly, this is a handy tip because it can save you time by representing texture
and tone at the same time. There is also no reason why you cannot shade on top of the
area of the textural marks if you want to achieve a richer, deeper tone in your drawing.

Practicing to effectively draw different kinds of textures will hugely improve the
realism of your drawings. It is worth taking the time to draw textures in different lights
to test yourself and expand your artistic skills. This will also prepare you for the many
people, scenarios and settings that you will want to draw in the future.
 Chapter 10
Composition (Rules, Spacing & Lines)
Composition refers to the placement of the different parts of your drawing in relation to
the overall image. If you drew a picture of man and a woman together in the centre of a
piece of paper, the composition would be different to another drawing of the exact same
people standing on the left hand side for example. Composition can make or break an
artwork, and it plays a large part in a drawing feeling and looking right. There is a
selection of compositional rules that will help you to improve the positioning of the
elements of your drawings to create the effect that you desire. If you have any
experience or love of photography, then you may already be familiar with some of these
concepts. These rules do occasionally contradict one another, but as drawing is an
expressive subject, this is ok. They are creative rules, so use what works for you. I
would highly recommend learning about and using as many rules as you can and try them
out to see which ones work for your style and needs.
Rule of thirds
The human eye tends to be more attracted to images that contain an odd, rather than an
even, number of elements. When you are thinking about the compositional structure of
your drawing, imagine that the page has been divided with the lines of a grid into thirds
both horizontally and vertically. At the points where the lines meet are the best
locations to place focal points and areas of interest. If you are drawing a scene with a
flat horizon then it is generally better to put this on one of these dividing lines, leaving
the remaining two thirds of the image either above or below.
The same principle applies if you are drawing people, the composition will look more
effective if you place them to one side on a vertical lines rather than directly in the
middle.
Rule of odds
This is an extension of the rule above, based on the same principle of odd numbers
being more aesthetically pleasing that even ones. For example, if you were to draw
three little birds perched on a doorstep, it would create a more effective composition
than if you included four. This is because the human eye naturally wanders towards the
middle of a group. If you had five or nine birds, the same rule would still apply.
Another good tip for the rule of odds is that if you have a large group of people, animals
or objects on your page, then the image will seem more dynamic if you group them into
smaller collections of odd numbered congregations rather than evenly distribute them
across the page.
Leaving space
If you leave a large area of white space around a subject, then it will concentrate the
viewer’s attention solely on this main focus of the artwork. It will also have the effect
of elevating the importance of the subject and force the viewer to look at the texture,
detail and characteristics of your work without any distractions from the background.
Fill the frame
On the other hand, filling the picture completely also produces a strong visual effect.
Leaving no white space and drawing on every square cm of the paper can create a sense
of closeness and intensity. These two principles, at first, seem to contradict one another
but experiment with both of them and see what kinds of effects they can produce. Often
these rules are specific for creating a certain feel or look to a drawing but once you
become more experienced with using them, the more you can twist them to suit your own
needs!
Balance
This leads well into compositional balance, where these different techniques, and styles
of drawing can be combined in just the right way to create a sense of balance and style.
Balance can work in a variety of ways, as the compositional elements of a drawing that
you have learnt about are put together to create an artwork. Balance works in a variety
of ways; for example, if one of your drawings has an incredibly busy area of texture and
detail in one part of it (hopefully on a grid line – don’t forget the rule of thirds!) then it
would be accentuated and balanced by other areas of less intense detail. We explored
this idea earlier when we drew the stones, and this kind of contrast is a great way to add
excitement and life to a drawing.

This sense of contrast creating balance can be found in other types of textures and
themes converging in one artwork. A shiny reflective metal object could be combined
with a crude old bone or rough piece of fabric for example, and achieve similar results
to those described above. Balance is a part of composition that you will get better at
without realizing. As you develop your drawing techniques and especially your looking
ability, you will find that balancing the different parts of a drawing will become more
and more natural to you.
Lines
Finally, the way that the lines of a composition are placed will be exceptionally
important in determining how your drawing will be seen. I don’t mean the texture lines
that form surfaces, but the large flowing lines that underpin the composition. For
example, an image that looks out into the distance along a deserted American highway
will lead your eye down the road and into the distance. If the road leads into the
drawing, then that is where the viewer’s eye will follow. If the road zooms off to the
right and out of the page, then that is where the observer’s gaze will be taken. This is
called implied movement. As you want people to look at your drawing and not away
from it then you must try to block these strong lines and point them where you want them
to go. You can do this by adding a perpendicular line to any strong visual lines leading
out of the picture frame. This will stop the viewer’s eye zooming off the page and will
redirect attention back into the picture. You can use strong lines to move attention
around your drawings, which is an incredibly effective way of creating intrigue,
narrative and depth. Knowing that the human eye naturally and unconsciously follows
these compositional lines, think about the effect that a closely detailed drawing of the
spiral of a snails shell may have on the way that a picture is seen. That’s right, this
pleasing form will pull in the gaze of an observer, like a plughole sucking spiraling
water from a sink.

Frame cropping exercise

You will firstly need to find a small frame. You can normally pick these up incredibly
cheaply from stores or supermarkets. It does not matter what the frame is made of as it
is going to become a viewing device for you to create compositions. You can even cut
a rectangular frame out of cardboard if you are feeling inventive. Find a selection of
images and drawings from magazines, books or artworks that you have created
yourself. Pick out some that are detailed and others that contain a single subject. You
will also need a digital or phone camera but no drawing materials this time.

~ The aim of this exercise is not to draw something, but to practice making new
compositions for the images that you collected by using the frame. Choose an image at
random and crop it by placing the frame on top until you have a new composition and
the picture has been changed. Try the frame in three different positions and see if you
can find a compositionally balanced new picture. Think about the rules that you have
just learned about or recapped if you were already familiar with them and try to apply
them to the exercise. After each time you place the frame and crop the image, take a
photo so that you can compare them all at the end.

~ Keep working through all the imagery that you collected and take pictures as you go.
When you finish, upload the photographs and pick the most balanced and exciting new
composition. Take a moment to think about why this composition is successful and
balanced, and analyze the reasons that you chose it based on the compositional rules
above.
 Chapter 11
Drawing Figures
When you are creating figures, I cannot stress enough how important it is to look at the
person that you are drawing! You must also measuring and think about the effects of
perspective if you want to go improve your skills. The best way to think about drawing
figures is to work from the skeleton outwards.

~ Begin with rough lines to mark out the spine, shoulders, hips, head, neck and limbs.
Think about the pose that the person is in and how that angles these parts of the human
body.

~ From this point, the next phase is to flesh out the forms of the body. Keep to simple,
organic shapes that you have practiced drawing. If you feel like a part of the person’s
anatomy looks wrong, then measure again and align your pencil or paintbrush with
certain parts to identify the incorrect aspect.
~ Next, add the hands and feet, but draw them as shapes and don’t pick out individual
fingers and toes yet. You can also join and round the shapes into a more identifiable
human form. Instead of drawing in the details of the face, sketch a horizontal and
vertical line to mark the middle of the face, where the eyes would be located. The
reason behind this is that the eyes are one of the most important parts of the body that we
use to communicate. As a result, when we draw a figure we want to sketch them in.
However, the direction of the eyes and their positioning on the head has a huge impact
on the way that we look at a figure and can often upset the overall drawing if they are
positioned incorrectly. Practice drawing basic figures in this way first. Once you feel
confident that you can represent the figure, then add in all the detail, clothes, hair, eyes
etc at the end.
 Chapter 12
The Art of Caricature
Learning to draw Caricatures is an especially fun process and once you can do it, the
possibilities are endless. It can be a great party trick or surprise birthday present for
anyone with a good sense of humor! Before you even start drawing, you must look
exceptionally closely at the person that you are drawing. The same fundamental rules
exist within all different types of drawing. The more you understand and look at your
subject, the more depth and character will be achieved in your artwork.

Try to pick out the distinguishing features of your subject. Does the person have big
eyes, crazy hair or a mischievous smile? Notice their nose, eyes, mouth, ears, eyebrows
and hair, what stands out to you? These are the features that you will need to exaggerate
in your caricature.

Start with the shape of their head and go from there. If it is long and thin then elongate
it. If it is short and wide then flatten it. Although this can seem mean sometimes, the
purpose of a caricature is to humorously bring out the features of a person that gives
their face character and originality, and in doing so you will capture their personality in
a charming and whimsical way (at least tell them that if they don’t like it). People with
no distinguishing features are often the hardest to caricature.

If you already know a bit about the personality of the person you are drawing then use
this knowledge to your advantage. Try to include their passions, as it will give the
drawing warmth and create a personal feel. For example, if they love skydiving, you
could draw them jumping out of a plane, or if they are a keen gardener then put some
flowers or soil in their pockets. You can get away with being a bit silly here, as
generally these kinds of touches and details add a fun sense of sincerity to the artwork.

It is good to be bold when drawing caricatures. Practice by drawing quick sketches of

people from magazines and newspapers. Pick expressive, emotional faces and famous
recognizable people at first.
 Chapter 13
Short Reference on Materials and
Grades
As you learn to draw, and practice increases your abilities, it is a good idea to
understand the principles of the different types of pencils, and how they are graded. The
European System, by which all pencils are generally classified, uses the letters H and
B. H stands for hardness and B stands for Blackness. HB, one of the most common
types of pencil, gives a good quality of both line and a strong tone.

F stands for the grade of pencil in between H and B. As you can probably tell from the
descriptions, B graded pencils are softer, and are great to use for larger areas of tone
and shade, whilst H grade pencils give out a precise line, and are excellent for intricate
detailed work. As you move higher through the grade of B pencils, the tone of the effect
becomes blacker. The opposite is true for H grade pencils, the harder they are, the
lighter the effect of shade that they will make. As you become more accustomed to
drawing in pencil, you will find the grades that suit your style and needs. Using
different pencils for various parts of the work can also create strong and effective
artworks.
 Chapter 14
Extra Drawing Tutorial Techniques
Overlapping Sketches
This exercise is useful for building confidence in your own drawing ability. It allows
you to draw figures quickly without worrying about creating a finished artwork. You
will create multiple sketches that overlap one another, a process that forces you to clear
your mind and ignore the previous sketch that is right there in front of you on the paper.

Once you have tried this exercise a few times you will start to be able to draw with
much more confidence in a relaxed and sketchy style. For the purpose of the exercise,
we are going to use a human figure as the subject of the drawing, however this is
applicable to anything you choose to draw, so feel free to adapt to suit yourself and your
own aims. I do highly recommend that you attempt this at least once with a human
model. This doesn’t have to be a life model; it could just as easily be a family member
who is chilling out watching a film, or your girlfriend/boyfriend standing talking on the
phone or something similar. It doesn’t take long, so use a bit of charm and a smile and
persuade them to stand or sit still for 20 minutes so that you can practice.

You will need a piece of paper or your sketchbook for the exercise, A3 or larger is
ideal because it allows you to be expressive and free with the lines in your work. Four
different types of pencils and pens will also be needed. Pick different colors as well,
this will allow you to distinguish between the layers more easily at the end. A timer,
clock, phone stopwatch or any other tool that can alert you to when five minutes is up is
also necessary.

~ For the first sketch, position the paper portrait way up, take a pencil and draw the
figure in the centre of your page. Be expressive and work quickly, and aim to create an
impression of the person rather than a laboriously measured out anatomical drawing.
Pick out the head, hands and feet, and look at their posture. You will only have five
minutes so draw in the limbs in free, flowing lines as well as picking out small details
on their clothing. After five minutes is up, stop working and leave the drawing exactly
the way it is.

~ You will now need to kindly ask your model to switch into a slightly different pose,
they could angle their body in a new way or cross their legs, move their arms or
whatever they wish to do. The new pose doesn’t need to be drastically different from
the last; it just needs to present you with a new challenge. Next, select another pen or
pencil, and remember to make sure that it is not the same color as the previous one. The
final step before you begin the second part of the exercise to rotate your
paper/sketchbook 90 degrees clockwise.
~ Start the timer and draw again, in exactly the same way as before. Centre the figure
right in the middle of the page, and draw directly on top of the previous image. This
may seem odd at first, but it is important not to be precious, as it is going to get much
messier! If this feels uncomfortable then don’t worry about it, this is a feeling to work
through and it means that you are pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone,
persevere until the end of the exercise. Again stop drawing when the time is up.

~ Repeat the same steps, ask your model to change to a new pose and rotate your paper
90 degrees clockwise again. Pick a differently colored pencil/pen and draw. Complete
this cycle once more after this until you have drawn the figure four times, in four poses
with four alternately colored pencil/pens.

Stand back and take a look at your work. Rotate your paper back to the initial portrait
position and analyze the figure amongst the others. When you compare the figures, how
does the last drawing contrast and differ from the first? Is it freer and more
expressive? Drawing with a time constraint creates a bit of pressure, and this forces
your brain to pick out the parts of the person that you are drawing that it deems to be
most important, the parts that together can make up their image and personality. The
first sketch in the case of this exercise is difficult. It isn’t easy to try and capture
someone in a drawing in five minutes, but as you got used to the timing aspect, did you
feel like you were drawing in a more fluid and free way? The exercise places the
figures on top of the other to make it harder for you to see what you are drawing. It is
deliberately designed to create the potential for expressive lines, amongst the numerous
other quickly sketches lines, a slightly out of proportion shoulder or a leg that is too
short cannot be focused on easily. The exercise is deliberately designed to forgive little
mistakes, and as a consequence, the hand and eye concentrates on the overall impression
of the figure.

The exercise also introduces you to how abstract drawings can still be connected to real
life people and objects, and if you have never tried an abstract drawing before, be
proud, because now you have just completed your first.
Single Line Drawing
This exercise creates a highly stylized drawing and develops both your actual drawing
ability and the way that you look at your subject. It takes a while to get used to drawing
in this style, but once you are, it is a great technique to have within your artistic skill
set. This is a popular aesthetic in graphics and fashion. It is widely used within Fine
Art in a plethora of creative and unexpected ways.

The idea is to create an artwork using a single line, in other words, by never taking your
pencil or pen off the paper. It is still possible, one you have practiced, to make large
scale and intricate drawings using a single unbroken line. Even tonal shading and cross
hatching can be achieved using this method. For this tutorial you will need a ballpoint
ink pen and your sketchbook. You will also need a subject. Pick something exciting
with plenty of detail and lines. I will use a tree for this exercise as the form of the
branches; trunk, leaves and overall shape of the tree lend themselves well to being
drawn in this way.

It is best to start slowly with this exercise. Your natural inclination will be to lift your
pen away from the paper when you reach the end of a line, you must control this feeling.
When you do reach the end of a certain point in the drawing where it seems impossible
to draw the next part without lifting the pen and starting a new line from another point,
simply retrace the line until you find another place to start. This is a little like reversing
a car down a street because it was a dead end.

When drawing, you don’t have to keep an even looking line the entire time. Vary your
speed once you become more confident, and change the amount of pressure that you
apply your pen to the paper. It is worth reading through the whole exercise first before
you start to draw because it may be difficult to keep your pen on the drawing and read at
the same time.

~ Take a good, long look at the object in front of you before you start. Now pick a
point somewhere in the middle of the form of the subject and start to draw. For
example, I will begin at the centre of the tree trunk.

~ You don’t need to try and draw differently than you normally would but it is
important to pay attention to the form of the tree as a three-dimensional object. Build up
the basic shape of the tree first. Draw the trunk and use this as a solid base to extend
your lines outwards and upwards as the branches and twigs. Once you have a basic
framework for your sketch, start adding the texture and detail.
Drawing texture and detail with a single line
This can seem tricky at first, because to build up texture, normally a repeated stroke,
line, crosshatch or tone is used, and this normally involves lifting your pen away from
the surface of the paper. The trick is to be light with the pen strokes that you make.
Repeated shapes also work well with these kinds of line drawings.

~ In order to draw the leaves, I simply repeat a small leaf shape many times until an
area of shade is created.

Another handy tip is to roughly mark out an area that will all be one texture, then draw a
few areas of detail and leave the rest free. This makes the drawing process quicker
without compromising quality, and creates a clever psychological trick in the mind of
the viewer. These clumps of texture will allow the viewers brain to understand that this
is the texture for that entire area of the drawing. If you provide enough information, then
the viewer’s mind will fill in the gaps.

~ Once you have finished your drawing, only then can you remove your pen and see the
end result properly!
 Conclusion
Summing It Up - Where To Go From
Here
Drawing is one of the most expressive art forms that you can use, and its real quality
lies in its simplicity. It is a fundamental part of any artistic pursuit, and if you work on
the basics that are outlined and described in this eBook, then you will see and feel the
progress in other creative areas of your interests and life. Drawing teaches us to look,
in depth, at the world around us, giving us a creative set of tools to find a way of
understanding the places in which we live, travel through and experience. Richard
Serra, an American artist, said that ‘to draw is to see, and to see is to draw’, an
eloquent way of articulating this idea. The quote can be exemplified by the famous work
of genius all-rounder Leonardo Da Vinci, who used drawing as the tool to dissect the
world around him. He used drawing in conjunction with mathematics, engineering,
physics, biology and the natural sciences to create some revolutionary ideas about the
world that are still relevant today.

I’m not saying that you need to re-invent the helicopter, but you can use drawing in
whatever way that you wish. Often, artistic instruction comes on strong and tells you
that you must paint in this or that way, or sculpt in a certain exact style, offering
singular, simplistic and boring lectures. The aim of this eBook is to teach the basics.
Don’t be fooled into thinking that they are easy, because they aren’t. Even Michelangelo
said that ‘if people knew how long it took me to make my work then they wouldn’t call
it mastery’. It takes time and like with any skill and pursuit, from weightlifting and
surfing to making films or drawing a cartoon, if you work hard on the fundamentals, the
rest will follow naturally.

Don’t ever be discouraged by anyone ever telling you that your drawing doesn’t look
like real life, or that it isn’t accurate enough to be ‘good’. An artwork can never be
judged as good or bad, only successful or unsuccessful, and since it is you making the
drawings, you get to be the judge of those criteria. If you make a drawing and you learn
something from it, then your next one will be even better for your efforts.

To your success!
Amy Taggart
 Preview of "Digital SRL Crash Course!
- A Beginner's Guide to Understanding
Digital Photography & Take the Best
Shots of Your Life"

Introduction
Are You Ready for an Amazing Journey?
Everyone thinks they’re a photographer. Everyone thinks that simply by picking up a
smartphone camera, snapping some shots on vacation, popping an Instagram filter on
them and setting up a Flickr account, they’re automatically a photographer.

They aren’t. Unless you know about photography, the ins and outs, the form as an art and
as a medium for communication, you’re just someone who takes photos.

Make no mistake: anyone can be a photographer. Some have an innate talent, sure, but
anyone can take the time to learn. But learning is essential.

Think of any other art form: painting, illustration, sculpture. Sure, anyone can slop paint
on a canvas. But is it always art? Is it always good? Is it always honest?

Photographer sneaks by because everyone has a camera, but to truly understand the
medium takes as much time, effort and dedication as any art form.

And it’s not just photography as an art, either: this breezy mentality applies also to
photojournalists (Twitter has taken care of that) and wedding photographers (who needs
one? We’ve got our friend, she’s got a great camera!). With the rise of pro-sumer SLR
availability has come a dearth of integrity in the field.

And, really, you know this. You know that what distinguishes professionals from
amateurs is not just the hardware—everyone’s got that now—but, rather, what one can
do with the hardware.

It’s about more than just gear. It’s about knowledge.

With this book, I want to equip you with the knowledge that it takes to become a
professional photographer. I want to help guide you through the maze of amateur
theatrics into something real. Any shmoe can buy a Canon EOS 5D Mark III and take
shots on automatic, but if you want to really delve into what makes the camera special,
you need to understand its points of autofocus, its full frame sensor and its white
balance modes. You need to understand what lenses to use and with what filters.

In short: you need to know your camera.

So thanks for picking up this book. I promise that, by the end of it, you’ll have not just a
solid understanding of cameras from a technical standpoint, but also a solid
understanding of photography as an art form—what makes good composition, and what
shapes can create pleasing images.

I won’t guide you through specific models, because even though I’m writing in 2014,
you may be reading in 2015, and a hundred new models may have been released. But
we’ll touch on a few popular current trends, like digital high dynamic range (HDR)
photography and the new wave of mirrorless cameras, which should give you a sense of
what’s going on in the industry.

And even if, by the end of this book, you’re still grasping at some of the concepts, don’t
worry: you can always look up terms on Google for more detailed explanations, videos
and walkthroughs. This is, after all, a crash course.

So, let’s get crashing.

 Chapter 1
A Brief History of Digital Photography
Any good crash course ought to start at the very beginning—the beginning not only of
good digital photography sense, but of digital photography itself. Don’t worry, we won’t
spend too long on this chapter, but it might give you a deeper appreciation for the art
form, its capabilities and just how far its come in a relatively short span of time—in
fact, proper digital cameras as we know them were only introduced in the mid- to late-
1990s, a far cry from their humble beginnings in the late ‘70s.

The first true prototype began with Kodak, engineered by a man named Steven Sasson in
1975. Sasson grabbed a Kodak movie-camera lens and combined it with some CCD
sensors and Motorola phone parts to create something the size of a small toaster oven
and weighed about as much as a large newborn baby.

Sasson’s prototype could capture black-and-white images on a clunky old cassette tape,
but the resolution of 0.1 megapixels was literally unheard of. The first photograph
reportedly took 23 seconds to record, to give a sense of how far technology as come.

Of course, Kodak—which would soon fall behind in the digital photography game—
didn’t capitalize on this early technological feat. Kodak stuck with film all the way, and
it would come back to haunt them three decades later.

A few more filmless cameras went through experimentation phases throughout the
1970s, but nothing took off commercially until 1981, when Sony launched a magnetic
video camera—the Mavica. An analogue counterpart to film, the Mavica operated on
AA batteries, and stored photos on giant floppy disks that could store up to 50
photographs. The light sensitivity was roughly equivalent to ISO 200, and the shutter
speed fixed at 1/60th of a second.

The Mavica launched a brief period of analogue creativity in the camera world, which
was followed up by Canon to only some success. In general, analogue cameras cost
much more than their quality attested to, though photojournalists put them to good use
during major events like the 1984 Olympics, and late-decade events like Beijing’s
Tiananmen Square protests and the Gulf War. For standard commercial users, paying
$1,500 for poor quality didn’t make sense.

After the first “true” digital camera was produced in 1981 by scientists at the University
of Calgary in Alberta, Canada (it was produced mainly for night sky and space
photography), Canon took the helm by commissioning a proper digital camera in 1983,
though it never went beyond trade shows—presumably, it was either too expensive, not
user-friendly enough or too clunky to ship.

Either way, it would be nearly another decade before digital cameras actually hit retail
stores in 1990. It was called the Dycam Model 1, and used a CCD sensor to record
pictures digitally and upload them directly to a connected PC.

That same year, a pre-Adobe version of Photoshop was launched, roughly around the
same time some entrepreneurs began attaching digital backs to film single-lens reflex
cameras (SLRs). The digital revolution, though still in its infancy, had begun to fully
take shape.

In the early 1990s, every major tech company joined the fray with more devotion.
Kodak launched a camera called the DCS 200 with a built-in hard drive, while Nikon’s
N8008s offered images in both color and black and white. Apple even ventured forward
with something called the QuickTake, a collaboration with Kodak (and later Fuji) that
was the first digital camera for under $1,000, but which did not take off.

CompactFlash cards, those large chunky cards that even Canon digital Rebel SLRs stuck
with up until very recently, were introduced in the mid-‘90s, with Kodak once again
helming the tech charge with its innovative built-in CompactFlash technology in 1996.

But 1995 was the true year for digital camera innovation.

But it wasn’t until Casio ventured forward that compact cameras became truly, well,
compact. Casio’s QV-10, released in 1995, offered a 1.8-inch LCD screen on the back
and a pivoting lens. It still used a CCD sensor and stored up to just under 100 color
images, but introduced the world to features like the macro preset, auto-exposure and a
self-timer.

This was also around the time that movie and sound capabilities entered the picture,
bumping up the cost of a standard compact from $1,000 to $1,500. Webcams, too,
became commercially viable in 1995, with Logitech spearheading the territory with its
VideoMan product.

Canon’s now-infamous PowerShot series took flight shortly after all this technology
was introduced in 1996. It boasted a larger CCD sensor than most others before it
(832x608 pixels), as well as camera mainstays like a built-in flash and optical
viewfinder, not to mention auto-white balance and an LCD screen on the back. In other
words: it was what we understand today to be what a digital camera. Canon also
figured out how to drive costs down, so they could charge a cool $949 at the start.

Since then, Nikon’s CoolPix and Sony’s CyberShot series became serious contendors,
while Fuji, Olympus, Kodak, Casio and Panasonic would rise and fall to varying
degrees throughout the next two decades. But commercial digital photography—the
basics of it—is not even 20 years old, as of this time of writing (in 2014).

That means that everything in the last two decades—every digital SLR, mirrorless
camera, phone cam, filter and app—all came flooding in a very small span of time.

We can then understand digital photography as a recent art—even though photography is

a much older one, the ability to produce magical digital artscapes, put images into
Photoshop and play around, and combine exposures quickly with methods like multiple
digital exposure and HDR, are all relatively new experiments.

Digital photographers are still figuring this game out. Even the best in the business
haven’t been doing it as long as you’ve been alive. That gives you an advantage, really:
even if you’re just starting out in the world of digital photographic art, you’re not nearly
as far back as you think.

Click here to check out the rest of "Digital SRL Crash Course! - A Beginner's Guide to
Understanding Digital Photography & Take the Best Shots of Your Life (with
pictures!)" on Amazon!

Ps: You'll find many more books like these under my name, Amy Taggart.
Don't miss them! Here's a short list:
Crochet For Beginners!
Crochet Creations (Clothing, Jewelry, Gifts & More)
Cleaning And Organizing FAST!
Much, much more!
About the Author
Amy Taggart is a self defined "endless learner", devoted to helping
others to unlock their full potential all around the world.

From a very young age, Taggart understood the value and potential of
leading a healthy lifestyle, where the balance between work,
hobbies, and crafts is found. And because of her genuine
appreciation and enthusiasm for all things health-related, she has
dedicated a great deal of time and effort to researching the best of
what wellbeing programs have to offer.

In the beginning, Taggart focused on working with people in various settings and
coaching groups. Before long she became exceedingly in tune with the solutions that had
the best results for her clients’ issues and goals. But after years of accumulating one
expertise following another, Taggart decided she wanted to reach out to even more
individuals.

She wanted to help people on a bigger scale. For this reason she resolved to share her
extensive knowledge with people through writing and publishing books pertaining to her
vast knowledge. Currently she has authored books on such cutting-edge topics as
Crochet, Knitting, Cleaning and Organizing, and so on.

Taggart has a real passion for all the subjects she writes about and she takes the job
seriously. She knows self-development is, for a lot of people, as significant as it is for
her. But she also knows how tough it is to change one’s lifestyle. With this in mind, her
aim while writing is to make the concepts and instructions as helpful and accessible to
her readers as possible. After all, for her the end objective is improving the lives of
others.