Lena's Drawing 101

Art lessons, resources, advice, and answers! Click for All Lesson Posts

[evankart]

Life model drawing

[drawing-with-lena]

LESSON NINE: PERSPECTIVE PART ONE - LINEAR PERSPECTIVE

We perceive things differently based on our relationship to them in space. I’m obviously not telling you anything new here -- we can all observe the way objects farther away look smaller than objects that are very close to us.

Perspective drawing is a way of drawing the diminishing size of an object, or the diminishing distance between objects as they recede from the viewer in space, in such a way that the illusion of depth in three dimensions is present in a drawing.

Linear perspective is a type of perspective used by artists in which that relative size/shape/position is determined through the line of drawn or imagined converging lines.

A little history context: linear perspective in art first appeared in the western art tradition in the 14th century. Prior to that, works of art primarily portrayed a flattened view of space -- seen below in ancient Egyptian, and medieval French art: 

Compare these to the early Italian Renaissance -- what differences do you notice?

Now, not every work needs to have a strong architectural component showcasing linear perspective -- but a solid understanding of perspective will help you as an artist to work with issues of depth in any drawing where you are trying to realistically depict any subject in three-dimensional space. 

Before we keep going, let’s cover a few terms:

Horizon Line - In any scene, there is a line where you, the viewer, will perceive the horizon. Obviously, you may not see the actual horizon (where the sky meets the earth) in every scene, since you’re often, say, indoors, but in this case, we’ll define the horizon line as your eye-level. 

Vanishing Point - A vanishing point is a point on the horizon line at which receding parallel lines viewed in perspective appear to converge. 

Orthogonal line - A line that recedes toward the vanishing point. 

Ok? Now, let’s get started with:

ONE POINT PERSPECTIVE

One-point perspective is so called because all orthogonals recede to a single vanishing point:

In the example above, the edges of the road, the tree line, and the train tracks are all parallel. But because they recede in space, they give the illusion of converging at a single point at the horizon.

But what if we’re not drawing objects that recede into infinity?

As a kid, you may have been taught to draw a cube by drawing two identical overlapping squares, and then connecting the corners with diagonal lines:

While this creates a passable cube... it has some issues. For instance -- is the upper or lower square the front? Is the top of the cube visible, or the bottom?

Using perspective, we’re able to create a cube that more obviously has a front or back:

The front of the cube remains the same, but our orthogonals appear to converge toward the vanishing point instead of being parallel, so the back face of the cube appears smaller than the front. 

To draw a block in one-point perspective:

Locate your vanishing point on the horizon line. 

Draw the front face of your block using verticals and horizontals.

Use orthogonal lines to connect the corners of your block’s face to the vanishing point.

Add in verticals and horzontals that intersect at the orthogonals to create the back of your block.

Erase the unnecessary orthogonals. Ta-da!

Also, using one-point perspective, we’re able to orient the cube in space:

The cube to the far left is above the horizon line/viewer’s eye level. The middle cube is in line with the viewer’s eye level, and straddles the horizon line. The rightmost cube is lower, so the viewer is looking down on it, and it is below the horizon line. 

In one point perspective, one face of a cubic object is parallel to the viewer: the 3 dimensions of the object are shown with vertical, horizontal, and orthogonal lines. 

Here are some examples of scenes where one-point perspective factors in:

But... what if you aren’t viewing an object head-on? What if you’re looking at something from the corner instead? Then we use--

TWO-POINT PERSPECTIVE

In two-point perspective, we use not one, but two vanishing points on the horizon. Instead of viewing a cube head-on, we are viewing its faces at an angle -- the 3 dimensions are shown with vertical lines, and orthogonal lines in two different directions. 

To draw a block in two-point perspective:

Locate both of your vanishing points

Draw a vertical line for the corner of the block nearest the viewer

Connect the top and bottom points of the line to each vanishing point.

Add verticals intersecting with the orthogonals for the terminating sides of your block.

Connect the end-points of those verticals to the vanishing points. 

Erase your unnecessary orthogonals. 

Examples of scenes that use two-point perspective:

THREE-POINT PERSPECTIVE

Three-point perspective, as you’ve probably guessed, uses three vanishing points. All three dimensions are depicted with orthogonals. Two points are on the horizon line, while a third is either above it (the zenith) or below it (the nadir). 

Three-point perspective is useful for dramatic foreshortening; for a bird’s eye view, or ant’s eye view. It admittedly isn’t used as much as one- and two-point perspective, but it’s still useful to cover.

In this instance, the horizon line is not necessarily the eye level of the viewer -- instead, the three points form a triangle, with the viewer’s focal point at the center:

To draw a block in three-point perspective:

Pick three vanishing points (2 on the horizon line, one above or below it, depending on whether you are viewing the object from below, or above)

Pick a point that will be the corner nearest the viewer

Connect that point to all three vanishing points

Draw two orthogonals from one of the vanishing points, to either side of the initial orthogonal from that vanishing point. Every time your orthogonals intersect with another line, connect that point to all three vanishing points. 

You should be left with a foreshortened-looking block, and can erase the unnecessary orthogonals. 

For an example of a scene using three-point perspective, here is a photo of a skyscraper viewed from an ant’s eye view, with a third vanishing point at a zenith (above the horizon line):

EXERCISES

Recommended Materials: You will want a pencil, an eraser, and a ruler.

EXERCISE ONE:

Using one-point perspective, draw the inside of a room, with furnishings. It can be any kind of room you want -- kitchen, bedroom, living room -- you can try to draw this from observation if you want, but where we’re trying to focus on principles in this lesson, drawing from your imagination may actually work better. 

TIP: It helps to start with the floorplan using horizontals and orthogonals first! If you have round or irregularly shaped objects, eyeball them for now -- we’ll talk more about drawing circles in perspective in a future lesson. 

EXERCISE TWO:

Using two-point perspective, try drawing:

a house

a staircase

a bus

If you’re feeling ambitious, add shading! 

This is just the first lesson covering perspective -- there’s more to come! In the meantime, if you have questions, drop me an ask.

[mattiaspilhede]

[junkmixart]

Here are also some tips on how i practice doing my lines.

[ke-neil-we]

[dappledwithshadow]

Albrecht Dürer Albrecht Dürer was a painter, printmaker and theorist of the German Renaissance. Born in Nuremberg, Dürer established his reputation and influence across Europe when he was still in his twenties, due to his high-quality woodcut prints.  Born: May 21, 1471, Nuremberg, Germany Died: April 6, 1528, Nuremberg, Germany

[verdantbones-deactivated2024022]

Some floating ink skulls, drawn from two in my collection. Stippled coyote, and American marten skull. 

[drawing-with-lena]

Hello new followers!

Quite a few of you have started following me recently, so as a little bit of housekeeping:

Hi -- I’m Lena, I run this blog, and I hope it’s helpful for anyone learning to draw! (Or anyone who already has drawing skills who is looking to do a little refresh on the basics)

All my lesson posts, tangent posts, and Tips & Tricks posts are located here.

All posts reblogged from elsewhere on tumblr are tagged #reblogs.

You can ask me questions here (answered questions live here), or submit art for feedback. If you don’t want to submit art publicly, but would like some private constructive critique, you’re also welcome to message me! I will get back to you as soon as I am able. 

I don’t currently have a set schedule for when new lessons go up, but I am working on a series of posts about perspective next, so stay tuned.

Cheers! -Lena

[drawing-with-lena]

LESSON THREE: GETTING IN SHAPE(S)

Today’s lesson will focus on geometric shapes and forms, and how to render them with light and shadow.

Now granted, very little of what you may want to draw will consist of perfect spheres, cubes, or cones. But almost every complex, organic shape? Can be reduced to basic geometric components. A nose might not be a standard geometric form, but you can build one by combining spheres for the tip of the nose and nostrils with a rectangular prism for the bridge – and if you know how to render and shade those forms, then shading a nose gets a lot easier.

Now, a sphere with no shading at all, just looks like a circle. It’s a little easier with boxier shapes to convey 3-dimensionality just with contours, but it’s still tricky sometimes to convey depth. You can convey a lot with just contours and linework, but we’ll be talking about the technique involved in that in a later lesson. For today, dealing with light and shadow to communicate shape and depth will be our focus. We’ll be concentrating mainly on simple geometric forms, because these are our building blocks for constructing more detailed, complex images as we feel more comfortable with our skills.

To start, let’s make sure we have some terms defined:

SHAPE: A two-dimensional figure. ie, a circle, square, rectangle, triangle, etc.

FORM: A three-dimensional figure. ie., a sphere, cube, prism, cone, etc.

Technically nothing we draw is three-dimensional, since the page itself is two dimensional, but with shading and depth indicators, we are able to create the illusion of three-dimensional space in a two-dimensional drawing.

So, there’s our terms as far as shape. Now, for light and shadow, let’s look at some more terms:

HIGHLIGHT: The area of a form that faces the light source and reflects the most light.

MIDTONE: What it says on the tin.

CORE SHADOW: The area of a form furthest from the light source which has the deepest area of visible shadow.

REFLECTIVE HIGHLIGHT: An area of dimmer light where the form catches light reflected by other surfaces.  

CAST SHADOW: The shadow the form casts on the surface it rests on, or on objects around it.

On a curved surface, such as we see in the sphere above, and also in cones and cylinders, we see shading in a gradient. There is a gradual shift along the same continuous surface from an area of highlight to an area of shadow.

On flat surfaces, such as on cubes, prisms, or the flat top of a closed cylinder, the light hits all points of a surface at a more similar angle, making each visible side a comparatively flat area of highlight or shadow. (You may see some gradation, depending on proximity of the light source, reflections, or small variations and imperfections in the form – but not to the degree you would on a sphere).

Now, the most important step in drawing shaded objects? Is IDENTIFYING YOUR LIGHT SOURCE.

On each of these cylinders, the light is coming from a different direction. On the second cylinder to the left, the light is coming from the front; the area of brightest highlight is visible; the area of deepest shadow is on the far side of the cylinder. On the cylinder immediately to the right of it, the opposite is true – we can see the deepest shadow, and the highlight is on the far side.

Now, in reality, there are often multiple light sources – two lamps in a room, natural light through a window plus indoor light, lights reflected off multiple surfaces, etc. But for the sake of our drawing exercises, we’re really just going to focus on a single primary light source in a given drawing, plus some slight amount of reflected light.

When you have multiple objects in a drawing, or a complex object made of multiple geometric forms, keeping track of your light source is important! It’s logically consistent, and makes everything in your drawing appear to occupy the same space. I often make a little arrow to remind myself of the angle of the light, which I can erase later.

Recommended Media:  If you have gray-toned paper and drawing chalks/gray pastels, this is a great time to break them out. Otherwise, charcoal is great, or pencil and paper is fine.

EXERCISE ONE: VALUE SCALE

When we talk about values in drawing, we are’t talking about our moral principles (though there is a fantastic quote by G. K. Chesterton that “art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.”) Instead we are talking about light and dark in very literal terms.

Before drawing any shapes, let’s take a minute to explore the full range of your value scale. Draw at least 9 to say, 12 boxes of equal size, all in a row with touching sides.

Now, starting on one side, fill in the first box as dark and black as you possibly can.

Using your materials, in whatever medium you’re in, try to fill in the boxes from one side to the other in a gradual scale, with the opposite box being white (if you are drawing on gray-toned paper, you will want to fill in that box with white chalk, conte or pastel). Make the transition as even and gradual as possible. In the end, it should look something like this:

The value of this exercise (ayyyyy see what I did there?) lies in making you explore the FULL range of value available to you, so you’re aware of just how deep you can make your shadows in comparison to your highlights. A lot of folks go light on their shading instead of really getting in there with a full value scale. Pin this up as a reminder of what you have at your disposal!

EXERCISE TWO: DRAWING FORMS

On different pieces of paper, draw, and then shade:

a cube

a sphere

a cylinder

a cone

and a pyramid

(links provided for example – you can use them as reference, or you can find your own, online or in real life!)

For each form, identify a direction for your light source. Figure out your area of highlight, your area of core shadow, and your cast shadow. Refer to your value scale! If you’re feeling ambitious, try drawing the forms more than once, with your light source at different angles.

EXERCISE THREE: GET IN FORMATION

Now, on a new sheet, try combining and overlapping the forms, maintaining a consistent light source.

If you want to do this with references, you can look online, OR – look in your pantry. Canned goods and boxes make great simple geometric references. Eggs, while ovoid, shade similarly to spheres. Shine a desk lamp on your composition for a clear light source, and then draw away!

As always, my askbox is open, you’re welcome to @ me, and I’m happy to provide feedback via message if asked. 

[drawing-with-lena]

LESSON TWO: DRAW WHAT YOU SEE, NOT WHAT YOU THINK YOU SEE

The single most valuable art advice I have ever been given is “draw what you see, not what you think you see.”

What does that mean?

Human beings love pictograms. We communicate effectively, across language barriers, by using icons and other visual shorthand to get ideas across. We’re very good at this, because we have a knack for reducing a complex visual to a few minimal, key pieces of information, and then extrapolating from that minimal information by recognizing what it stands for.

For instance, we take the very complex image of a human face, with all its individually unique characteristics, specifically expressing happiness through muscle movements we know to associate with that emotion – flexing of the muscles around the mouth, showing of the teeth, but without upper lip curling, contraction of the muscles around the eyes – and we strip it down to two dots and a curving line:

We cannot tell looking at it who is happy; who is being depicted, whether they are old or young, male or female, anything about them – but we understand that that pictogram translates to someone smiling. The person who draws the smiley face does not draw what they have seen; they draw the idea of what they have seen. In this case, “happiness.”

This is a pretty useful way to be wired. We recognize things quickly, and are able to reduce complex visual input to a few simple characteristics that we can remember.

But it’s less useful to someone trying to learn to draw accurately and representationally.

When we draw, our instinct is to look at the object, recognize the object and apply those simplifications, and then record the simplifications. In doing so, we draw what our brain has already refined and coded, dropping ‘unnecessary’ details and hitting the checklist of items we think we need in order to recognize the subject matter (ie., the sun has yellow lines radiating out from it) – all without realizing that we’re doing it. We draw what we think we see.

A big part of learning to draw is unlearning the pictographic instinct. It’s about bypassing that simplification process, and drawing what you actually see, in whole, without paring it down. It’s about seeing that maybe the smile doesn’t actually curve down in the middle – but if you render it as you see it, you can still have it recognizably be a smile.

This lesson’s exercises will focus on techniques to help you practice seeing what it is you’re drawing.

LESSON TWO EXERCISES

Required Materials: It’s recommended to draw from life by pulling on random objects in your environment for some of these exercises, such as a chair, but nothing too unusual.

Recommended Medium: Pencil and paper. We’re keeping it simple!

EXERCISE ONE: NOT-VERY-MUSICAL CHAIRS

Do you have a chair nearby? Preferably not the one you’re sitting in, but any other chair around that’s pretty lightweight and easy to move. Dining room chair, folding chair, lawn chair, etc. If you don’t have a real life chair available, you can use this picture of one of my chairs:

Now, draw the chair.

Done? Okay. Great. Good job!

Now, flip the chair over.

Draw the chair again. Feel free to give yourself as much time as you need.

When you’re done, look at the two drawings. The first one might say “chair” to you more clearly when you look at it. BUT! Which one is more accurate? Which one more closely resembles the specific chair you were drawing?

The trick of flipping an object upside down is an old favorite when it comes to bypassing your brain’s impulse to replace the object it sees with the object it wants to condense information into. When your brain sees a chair at an angle where it looks like a normal chair, it really just wants to draw something like this:

But flipping it upside down? Makes it look nothing like that. And so you’re forced to look that much more closely instead of relying on your pre-existing mental image of what a chair looks like.

I recommend trying this exercise a few more times with various household objects, sketching them at weird and unusual angles, flipped upside down, etc.

EXERCISE TWO: BLIND CONTOUR

Full disclosure: I hated blind contour drawing for a long time growing up and swore I would never teach it to anyone, which makes me a big honking liar. But while blind contours can be really frustrating because they don’t tend to produce accurate, attractive pictures, they are very helpful in forcing you to look at your subject and rely entirely on your visual input to draw.

Pick a subject. It can be a friend who is really patient and willing to sit for you. It can be your sneaker. It can be one of the toys from the proportion lesson. Or a houseplant. Or your own non-dominant hand. Choose something reasonably complex. If you can’t find anything, try using this photo.

Now, get comfortable. There are two rules here:

Your pencil, once it touches the paper, does not leave the paper. You are going to draw one long, continuous line. You can bear down as heavily or as lightly as you want, but don’t lift your pencil.

From this moment on, you do not look at your paper. It’s tempting, I know! But what is on the paper is not what’s important. Your subject is what’s important.

You aren’t going to worry about shading here, or accurate proportional masses, but you are going to be looking at every single bump and detail (basically the exact opposite of what we did in the proportion lesson). DRAW SLOWLY. Take all the time you need or want, but move very slowly.

Look at your subject. Maybe you start at the toe of the shoe; the tip of the thumb; your friend’s ear. Let your eye trace very slowly along the edges, or contours, of that area. Your pencil should move with your eye. Keep a slow, steady, constant pace. As your eyes trace over the ridges in a knuckle, let your pencil slowly draw each of those ridges. As you look at the eyelets around the laces of a shoe, let your pencil record that information, at the same pace as your eye. There’s no rush here.

Do not look at the page.

Take all the time you need, and when you feel you’re done, lower your pencil and let yourself look.

Odds are, it doesn’t look a lot like the subject. You may be able to pick out bits of detail where you see where you were drawing the pinkie finger/mouth/criss-crossing laces. A lot of it may look like scribbles. And very little of it will be in proportion.

If you got something that looks like any of these? You did great:

Now you may not have drawn something that looks a lot like what you were drawing. Heck, you may have drawn something that looks like a picasso fell down the stairs. But while you were drawing, by not letting yourself look at your paper, you really looked at your subject – and probably recorded details you wouldn’t have normally paid attention to.

Blind contour drawings can actually produce some really cool looking images, even if they aren’t accurately proportional, because of the density of detail they often result in.

And as an exercise, they train you to spend more time looking at the subject than just what’s on your paper.

I recommend trying several more of these. See how slow you can go; see how much detail you can note. Pick more and less complex objects. Let yourself have some fun with it.

That’s it for this lesson, and as always, my askbox is open. You can check out other posts in this series here. In the next lesson, we’ll be talking about shapes and shadows!

[drawing-with-lena]

Hello. I just read your post about drawing fruits, rule and all. I don't remember any art lesson in school so do i try draw fruits only? I'm kind of lost because so far i have draw cartoon and i admit i always scared to draw the body. Sorry for the weird question ╭( ๐_๐)╮

Oh dear, definitely not fruit only! Fruit was an example, as it’s a pretty common still-life subject for basic observational drawing exercises, and one that’s been popular for hundreds of years. (Simple organic shapes, easy to shade, and unlike working with a model, you don’t have to worry about a banana ruining your drawing because it decided to move to pick its nose)

My main point was that to get good at drawing, it’s really helpful to work on the basics (and all the sometimes tedious exercises involved, fruit or otherwise) instead of just jumping into the fun stuff. I made this blog to cover those basics, which I’ve been doing a lesson series on. Cartoons are fun, but developing an understanding of how to draw realistically will help you develop in turn a more versatile cartoon style, with more control over what you choose to stylize.

Hope that clarifies things! :)

[drawing-with-lena]

INTER-LESSON TANGENT #1: LEARN THE RULES BEFORE YOU BREAK THEM

Not a lesson, but a bit of rambling.

Looking back on my art education, I’m reminded about all the exercises I bitched and moaned about and thought were stupid at the time, which I retroactively see the value in. But when I was 11 and taking an after-school art class, I didn’t wanna sit and draw fruit for 3 hours. I wanted to draw DRAGONS and X-WING FIGHTERS and COOL SHIT. (I drew a lot of X-wing fighters in my math book anyway.)

And yeah, now that I’m an adult I draw dragons and superheroes and I have a grand old time. BUT!

Drawing fruit was good for me. And I have to grudgingly admit it, as tedious as it was. Because it made me learn the rules and the basics which I was then able to apply to the things I wanted to draw (X-wings included). And while artists flaunt and break the rules and do stuff unrealistically all the time, it’s usually because they learn the rules first, and get comfortable enough with them to learn what they can and can’t afford to screw with.

See this painting here?

It’s nice, right? Realistic, evocative, well-crafted.

It was painted by Pablo Picasso.

Yes, THAT Picasso. Who later painted this:

Picasso trained classically before breaking convention with his work in cubism. e e cummings learned all the rules of language before throwing them out the window with his experimental poetic forms. Hell, even mathematicians and physicists had to learn the high-school level building blocks of arithmetic and basic physics before they got to play with all the crazy shit where the math doesn’t even have numbers anymore and quantum physics ignores all the rules ever (seriously, quantum physicists: what the hell??).

The same rules I learned for shading a bowl of goddamn fruit became the rules I applied for shading in a dragon’s scales. Knowing why certain guidelines and ways of drawing things existed let me know what impact I could have if I deviated from them purposefully (like getting a really surreal, weird scene by deliberately messing with perspective).

“But what if I just wanna draw cartoons?” someone invariably asks. “What if I only want to do stylistic stuff, and not realism?”

Well, you certainly can. Some webcomics pull this off just fine, but usually because the visuals are not a central focus. Most professional cartoonists do have some more formal art training.

And do you know what happens when you launch into the stylized stuff without ever really studying anatomy or learning how to draw realistically first?

Do you know what happens?

DO YOU?

YOU GET ROB. GODDAMN. LIEFELD. ART. THAT IS WHAT GODDAMN HAPPENS.

...

So I really encourage everyone to draw fruit, do the tedious Art 101 exercises, and learn the boring rules for drawing realistically. You WILL be able to apply them later, to as many dragons and x-wings and pirates and gay superheroes kissing as you want. Or you might toss some of the rules out, but you’ll be doing so knowingly, while making a strategic choice. And that choice gives you all the more control.

[drawing-with-lena]

LESSON ONE: PROPORTION

Have you ever started a drawing, and drawn, like, the best eye you’ve ever drawn in your life? It’s detailed and perfect and you love it, and you sit back–

– And you realize that the eyes are completely crooked and in the wrong place?

Getting things proportioned properly and in the right place can be tricky, but it’s an important early step in any drawing. By getting the proportions sketched out early, you save yourself grief later on and don’t waste time drawing detail on something if it’s in a place where it doesn’t belong.

For this lesson, we’re going to focus on an exercise in very simple observational proportion.

LESSON ONE EXERCISE

Materials: you will need a small, complex object, capable of being comfortably lifted in one hand – I recommend child’s toy, such as a toy soldier, action figure, plastic animal, etc. Something reasonably detailed in shape. If you have more than one, even better! You can get a bag of cheap little plastic toys at the dollar store sometimes that work great for this.

Recommended Media: (Optional) Vine charcoal on newsprint works well for this exercise. You’ll also want an eraser (kneaded eraser works really nicely).

Set up your work space with your paper, and your toy within easy reach.

Hold up your toy. Look at it. Set it down next to you.

Me? I’m using my cute little Natasha

Now, draw your toy’s silhouette.

The silhouette should be solid and black. Do not draw any interior detail – JUST the silhouette, completely filled in. If you’re working with vine charcoal, let it take up most of the page.

Set a timer if you can (your phone should work fine) and work for up to 10 minutes.

Once you’re done, you should have a silhouette drawing a little like this:

Now, hold your toy up in front of your face between you and your drawing. You might want to tape the paper to the wall to get a good angle. Look at the proportions.

How accurate did you get?

Was it pretty close?

If this is your first time trying this, it’s probably not. That’s normal. Now, when you started, did you start with an outline, like this?

If you did – you’re in good company, because most people do. We tend to translate silhouette as ‘outline’ and then just fill it in. But drawing the outline of an object freehand is pretty difficult to do accurately.

I want you to try this same exercise again, but this time, start from the inside out. Whatever external detail there is – little ridges & bumps, etc. – get to those last. Put in rough shapes – circles, lines, squiggles – for the general shapes of your figure first. Get them the right size and in the right places first before you fill things out.

Start with something a bit more like this:

Give yourself another ten minute drawing. You can switch to a different toy if you have more than one.

When you’re done, hold your toy up again. Compare between your first and second drawings – did the proportions improve?

TIP: If you’re still having trouble, try flipping your toy upside-down when you draw it. The less it looks like something recognizable, the less your brain will try to (inaccurately) fill things in.

Question: did you lift your figure while you were working on your drawings? Did you hold it up and squint and compare it to what was on your page? Some of you maybe did. Some of you might be blinking and asking ‘well isn’t that cheating?’

And it isn’t cheating – it’s using your reference! Now, granted, a lot of times you’ll be drawing things that you can’t pick up and hold in front of your page. So it’s good to practice drawing things that don’t afford you that luxury. But in this case – I’m not gonna yell at you for it! But if you’ve been doing it, try doing a drawing without touching the toy. And if you haven’t been doing it – do one where you do lift it. Change it up!

I recommend trying this exercise a few more times. If you have an object with more detail, try giving yourself 20 minutes on one of your drawings. It should start getting easier, and a bit more accurate with every try.

Again, only draw the silhouette - no inside detail. Try drawing it at different sizes. Try drawing different solid objects. And remember – draw from the inside-out! Focus on getting the proportions as accurate as possible. Even if your outside contours aren’t perfectly detailed, if the overall proportions of your drawing are accurate, then you’re doing great.

If anyone has questions, or wants feedback, hit up my askbox! 

[drawing-with-lena]

Hi Lena! Just letting you know that I love your blog and shared a link to one of your posts in my newest colouring challenge. <3 Crystal

Hi Crystal -- I’m so glad you’re enjoying the blog! Thanks for taking the time to drop me a note. :)

[drawing-with-lena]

Small housekeeping announcement: I’m going to be reposting some of the earlier lessons I did that were originally posted to my main blog, so that I can consolidate them on this blog. I’ll try to space them out so as not to spam anyone’s dash!

[drawing-with-lena]

PRE-LESSON: SUPPLIES

Hello folks,

Before any of the actual lesson stuff, let’s talk about supplies.

A friend asked me recently how much the quality of art supplies mattered in learning to draw, and if she needed to invest in really good, high-end materials to learn.

I told her hell no.

Do materials matter? Sure. But they mostly matter for the end product. If your focus is on producing a very high-quality, enduring piece of art that you can frame on your wall, materials matter. And at a certain level, yes, the quality of your materials matters for technique. But for starting off, and focusing purely on the act of learning to draw and developing skill? You don’t need to invest in super expensive supplies. If all you have is printer paper and a No. 2 pencil, you can still learn.

Now, I do have SOME recommendations for supplies that are helpful for certain exercises. Graded chalks, for example, are really great for light/shadow studies.  So in some lessons, I will include recommended supplies, for the folks who want to try them out. You can raid your local art & craft supply store, and employees there might have additional recommendations. But if you don’t have the budget – don’t sweat it! And if you’re working purely digital, that’s okay too! Most of the concepts I’m going to try to focus on should work in most media or can be simulated digitally easily enough.

A list of art supplies I would recommend, if you want to try out a range of traditional media in these lessons (based on supplies I used a lot in my college 101 class – and don’t feel like you have to get these specific brands, I’m mostly highlighting easily-acquired examples):

Newsprint sketch paper. Don’t draw anything on this you want to last, because newsprint tends to become brittle and break down over time, but it’s great for practice. (x)

A sketchbook (x)

Gray sketchbook (really good to pair with the chalks) (x)

vine charcoal (x)

Gray chalks (x)

Compressed charcoal (x) (be warned – this stuff gets MESSY)

Graphite pencils (x)

kneaded eraser (x)  ***seriously, get one of these if you get anything on this list they are MAGIC***

white eraser (x) (this brand is my personal fav)

India ink & dip pen (x)

But again, these are purely optional. As long as, at minimum, you have a pencil with an eraser and a fair amount of paper, we should be good.

[janeeunjikim]

Blind contour drawing my left hand