Draw What You See Not What You Think You See: Learn How to Draw for Beginners

Oil Painting Medic

Draw What You See

Not What You Think You See

Learn How to Draw for Beginners

Rachel Shirley BA Hons

To my sister Heather and my mother Sylvia

ISBN: 9781476341620

Text, photographs and illustrations copyright Rachel Shirley 2011

All rights reserved. The Right of Rachel Shirley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 Section 77 and 78.

Smashwords Edition License Note this ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Drawings featured within this book

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: Distorted perception in drawing

Chapter 2: The A, B and C of drawing

Chapter 3: Fields of vision

Chapter 4: Abstract shapes

Chapter 5: A picture within a frame

Chapter 6: Upside-down drawing

Chapter 7: Objects in foreshortening

Chapter 8: The weight of marks

Chapter 9: Light and shadow

Chapter 10: Advanced drawing exercises

Chapter 11: Shading on grey paper

Chapter 12: When rules apply

Part I: The viewfinder

Part II: Plotting your drawing

Part III: Vanishing points made simple

Part IV: Ellipses without corners

Glossary

References

Other books by the author

Introduction

You may have picked up this book because you are at the edge of hope of ever being able to draw. You might be an absolute beginner. You might have spent a lifetime away from creative activities due to work or family commitments and now you cringe at the idea of picking up a pencil. You might be an art student who forever sits apart from others during life class in fear someone might see your work. You might be a child who has a flair for cartoons and doodles only because your attempts at realism are even more cartoonish.

A weary old frustration might descend upon you every time you read about vanishing points, perspectives, plotting and measuring, how everything comprises cuboids, pyramids and spheres. Books proclaiming to be for beginners actually begin with an exercise on drawing shoes or a spider-plant or a street. Basic exercises move on to ever more advanced projects all too abruptly leaving you flagging. Of course, the book is filled with beautiful drawings proving the author can at least draw, even if you can’t.

You might be too familiar with books that proclaim you can draw anything so long as you remember the proportions of various subject matter within; the sequence of lines to make up a rabbit, a goat or a horse. And that is on condition your drawing is to feature the subject concerned in certain postures. If only your memory could retain these sequential instructions without continual referral to the book.

Pages of specialised art equipment required for drawing might leave you feeling overwhelmed. Ink washes, pastels, crosshatching and chalk impressions grace your eyes. Different types of paper, special putty rubbers, scalpels, easels and fixatives for charcoal would seem requisite to achieve professional effects. This might be all well and good if only you could put a pencil to paper and be able to draw something – anything that convinces, that comes close to the truth.

Consider the cases of gifted autistic people, who since childhood are able to draw complex subject matter such as the Houses of Parliament, horses and portraits. For the most part, these subjects are unaware of the laws of perspectives, proportions, plotting or have special drawing equipment to hand. They simply sit down and draw instinctively.

For this reason, the main body of this book will contain no mention of perspectives or vanishing points, the use of specialist equipment (except for within chapter 11) or an opening chapter on drawing shoes. I have placed these prescriptive items in chapter 12 at the back of this book should you need to refer to them.

Instead, this book is going to start at the beginning, to learn the language of line from A, B and C.

Within you will find a series of drawing exercises geared towards the absolute beginner as well as some questionnaires designed to decode the underlying causes of your drawing difficulty. This book opens with distorted perception in drawing and the question of how lateral your brain is. This might help shed some light onto my choice for the ensuing exercises.

We will explore symmetrical drawing which exercises all fields of vision, followed by the exploration of abstract forms, negative shapes, the weight of marks and upside-down drawing. Further chapters exercise shading techniques from the most basic practice. Exercises progress gradually onto the shading of various forms.

Opportunities for progression are available in the form of advanced drawing exercises in chapters 10