Back to Basics - Sketch Dump 3

One interesting way to practice drawing is to take an object and draw it in outline, draw it again in mass and then combine mass and line in the last one. My drawings below aren't in any particular order, but each subject is drawn three times. I would draw the outline, then take the charcoal and put it on its side and go to town on the paper- making really dark marks and trying to flesh out the shape and negative space around the object without making any hard lines. For the last drawing, you combine the two and give the line gesture some shading.

Back to Basics - Sketch Dump 2

Here is another exercise where we practiced ellipses. That strange unicorn horn shaped thing was some sort of strange ceramic object. As you can see on the right hand picture I started to use shading with the conté crayon turned on its side. Don't be afraid to sharpen your conté or charcoal stick to a long tapered point or use the side of it. Even try breaking it and a square edge! It becomes fun to play with and experiment with.

In this picture we practiced drawing a bunch of cubes with 2 point perspective. I think that my teacher only may have thought that one of these was successful at proper perspective. I think I tended to make my squares look like rectangles or give them a 3 point perspective instead of 2. I also tend to exaggerate how tall the top square plane is. I would make the top of the cube longer, as if I were looking down upon it from a higher elevation. But I think doing that is pretty normal for beginners, so don't be surprised if it frustrates you!

Back to Basics - Sketch Dump

Last semester I had to take a basic level art class- Drawing 111, which is probably the most elementary drawing class you can take in college. Even though I've been drawing for a long time, there was no way around it since I didn't have the requirement filled. It was a good class and as long as I was drawing something, I didn't really care what it was. I actually don't think I've ever sat down and just drawn a simple still life with basic shapes and so it was surprisingly refreshing to draw really simple things and not worry about perfection.

Anyway, I'm going to post my drawings in here so you can get an example of beginner studies that one would expect from an elementary drawing class. There will be line gestures, shade and light studies, contour, etc. These are the kinds of basic studies that any beginner should start out with. Sure they can be really boring, but when you learn to draw you have to draw stuff you don't always enjoy.

These are all in conté or charcoal on 18 x 24 rough newsprint.

Here above we have some quick gestures of a tricycle and some still life. The one on the bottom right was some kind of attempt at mass gesture. These were all done very quickly. The goal when doing a gesture is not to be perfectly accurate. You just want to get the general outline and form of the object.

In the middle picture at the top is a simple line drawing, and at the bottom you can see that we started to practice elipses, which can be more difficult than you would think to get right.

Above are still lives where we used scribble gesture, and simple line. I think we had about 10 minutes to do each of these. When you do a gesture, try to get everything you see on to the page as quickly as possible, don't worry about fine details. As a beginner, you may have some trouble getting everything centered on the page. You will get better with practice.