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By Adamduncan
Using Line
Drawing is about representing something. Not necessarily in a realistic way and not necessarily representing something in the real world. In order to show the viewer what you want them to see you have to be able to describe that 'something' on paper. Line is often badly used because people don't use a range of marks. When they are describing something they use the same method of description over and over again.
In order to help explain exactly what I mean about mark making and line quality I would suggest looking at several experienced and popular artists such as Marshal Arisman, Ralph Steadman, Chloe Cheese and Lane Smith. Although I haven't been able to locate many of Arisman's drawings on the internet there is a large collection of his painted works. Mark making applies as much to painting as it does to drawing so I would recommend looking at his paintings. Ralph Steadman and Chloe Cheese are both very skilled at drawing. Steadman's website includes sketchbook work so I strongly suggest stopping by there. I also recommend viewing the Amsterdam exhibition work of Mario Minichiello (you can find it on the internet). Take a look at the work of these artists and look around at the many others, decide what you find visually appealing and why. By doing this it will help you to discover what your own personal style is.
To help you describe something using line, I am going to cover a few basic aspects of line drawing:
Quality of Line and Line Thickness
What do I mean by quality of line? Different lines have different properties. You change the properties of a line by changing how hard you press down on the paper, by changing from using the tip of a pencil to using the edge. By changing the way you are drawing you can achieve many effects. For example:
This drawing shows how you can create the illusion of depth in an image by changing how hard you press down on the lines. In areas you can even make the line fade out (not all detail is necessary but I'll go into that more below) even with a medium like pen. There are many more effects that can be achieved with just a simple line.
Economy of Means
You do not need to draw everything. Areas of the image (as I noted above) can fade in and out, quite simply by changing the amount of pressure you apply. This technique has seemingly been labelled 'Lost and Found,' where you lose the line (by gently decreasing the amount of pressure you are applying to the pencil until you take it off the paper) and then continuing it later (by reapplying pressure).
Another point I'd like to mention is that you do not have to draw every detail of an object to make it look like that particular object. For example, let us take a face. You do not have to draw in every wrinkle and feature, if you get it right, using only a few lines you can create a recognisable face.
I want you to remember that sometimes the drawings you do quickly are the best drawings you produce. Just because you spend a long time on a drawing does not mean it is going to be good. If you're a professional artist it never hurts to speed your work up and still maintain a similar level of quality (you never know it could even be looser, more dynamic and more expressive - making a better piece of artwork).
Exercise
1.Begin by drawing a face -
NB. If you are going to copy a face, try to copy from life and not a photograph but it wont kill you if you do use a photo.
2.Take as long a you like to draw the face but do a line drawing (no tone)
3.Now after you have finished drawing and studying the face (this is good if doing a self-portrait), try and speed up your drawing.
4.Spend time doing a series of faces (using the same reference, self-portrait or whatever) but trying to do them using as few lines as possible (and still make it recognisable) and do it as quickly as possible (and still make it recognisable).
Important things to note in this excercise:
- Try and work from life to get reference for the face (just use a mirror and do a self-portrait!
- By quick I mean less than 10 seconds per drawing (and remember you still have to make it recognisable - quite a challenge isn't it? The only way you learn and progress is by pushing yourself)
- Try and do at least 10 (more is better) fast drawings and work as big as possible (as large as A3 or A2 would be good but admittedly very difficult)
- Practice, practice, practice. Keep doing drawing exercises like this every day (not necessarily this one, in fact I recommend variety, do this once or twice then try other exercises, invent your own.).
Here is some of my work as an example, I don't want you to copy me but it is just to get a general impression. The image on the left is a 20 second portrait, the middle is a 10 second one and the right took me 5 seconds (probably a little too quick but you learn something new all the time.
Contents of Article
I have broken this article down into several smaller chunks in order to make it easier to navigate.
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| |  | Sketching With A Pencil: For Those Who Are Just Beginning
Hamilton explains, in a fine text accompanied by many simple sketches and finished drawings, how to sketch. He succeeds in encouraging development of competence and increasing satisfaction for amateur artists using the simple materials of paper, pencil, and eraser. Concentrates on fundamentals: how to hold a pencil and compose a drawing; and creating the illusions of depth and distance. |
| |  | Pencil Sketching, 2nd Edition (Paperback)
The complete, classic guide to the art of pencil sketching. So many art books give long-winded descriptions of what to do, and even how to do it, yet they fail to capture the essence of what makes a drawing good. Wang concentrates on simple elements and rules of thumb, providing a wealth of wisdom in a few words and pictures. |  |
FARP Article Guestbook
| Date | Name | Comment | | | 23 Feb 2009 |  Anon. |  Loading... | |
| 19 Aug 2009 | Anon. | Loading... First of all I just want to say thank you for taking time to make this tutorial. Second, to all of those who have commented about this tutorial saying negative things, you should just follow the saying "If you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say anything at all."
Personally I love to draw or should say I wish I could draw better so that I can love to draw more. I have little drawing knowledge so I sought out a tutorial on how to get better at drawing, and to hopefully learn what the reason was that i haven’t been getting any better. The biggest problem that i face with drawing is that I’m a perfectionist, when I draw something i try to get it perfect the first time, I get frustrated when i spend time sketching something and it doesn’t turn out how I intended it to. Having the ability to draw/sketch well and not take all day doing it is very important to me. I’m 18 years and since I was 4 years old I have been playing video games, I love them and can’t get enough of them, which is why I plan on going to college for the graphical end of video games. This is why i want to improve so much, I want to be able to draw all the concept art that i need to for my future career in the video game industry. Also in past several years i have gotten quite interested in anime and manga and I have been working on a story that i think is quite good and would translate well into a manga/anime type setting. I had got one of my friends at my school to help me with the art end, since she is an amazing artist. Problem is she hasn’t done any of the sketches that i asked her to do and I’m getting impatient, as it has been over 6 months since I originally asked her to do them. So I have decided that it would just be easier if I do the sketches, which is another reason that i was looking for a tutorial like this.
(Didn’t have enough room to finish comment, continued into the next comment) | |
| 19 Aug 2009 | Anon. | Loading... (Continuation of previous comment)
Sorry, seems like I went on a bit of a rant there. I just wanted to let you know how important it is for me to learn how to draw better. Normally I’m not the type of person to leave a comment but after reading the whole tutorial I felt that I had to. I loved this tutorial and thought that it was very informational, I plan on putting into practice what i have learned. | |
| 20 Sep 2009 |  Nathan Joseph Smith | Loading... too drawn out and dull, to write a good tutorial, make it more interesting and shorter, im 12 and read 1 sentence of the whole thing and almost fell asleep | |
| 21 Sep 2009 |  Kimberly Renee Worden | Loading... It’s well written, in my opinion. Some people just don’t have the patience to read reference articles, and they are missing out. | |
| 5 Oct 2009 | Anon. | Loading... Plain  | |
| 5 Oct 2009 | Anon. | Loading... fastenatin ;D | |
| 6 Oct 2009 | Grendel | Loading... Adamduncan, very well done mate! | |
| 8 Oct 2009 |  Kyle prentis walker | Loading... okay okay okay!okay okay okay!okay okay okay! | |
| 12 Nov 2009 |  David Drawingdude Elrod | Loading... Very good work! When do you publish your book? (Hint hint) I’m just starting to draw freehand and could use more help like this tutorial. | |
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