Find a Centre Of The Square Or A Rectangle In Perspective
It's a very simple process, using diagonals to locate the center of a square or rectangle in perspective. From there, you can use this point to divide the shape into half or four, or use the center points to place the vertex of a roofline or column. Works in one or two point perspective.
To really have fun with perspective drawing, you need two vanishing points. Now you can draw cool 3D effects! It's a little more complex than one point perspective, because you have to make sure that you draw your vanishing lines to the right vanishing point. But once you get the idea, it's a breeze - you barely have to give it a second thought.
An understanding of perspective drawing is important no matter what subject you choose. It's easier than you think. Just start at the beginning, follow the examples, then progress to the next lesson when you are comfortable. Don't be afraid to experiment with perspective drawing. Your eyes will tell you when something looks right or wrong. Have fun!
1. simple box in one point perspective
Learning to draw simple boxes in one point perspective is a great introduction to 'three d' perspective drawing. Because the shapes are simple, you can easily see if you've made a mistake. Follow along with this lesson to draw our own three-d boxes using one point linear perspective.
A Pencil Drawing technique that is very hard to master and at the same time can bring a photo realistic finish, is the smooth shading technique.This pencil drawing technique consists of shading gradually the drawing with the pencil tilted, to give it a 3D look. This can be done only using the pencil or with the aid of a tool to diffuse the tones.This pencil drawing technique requires patience, and concentration. You have to really have control over the pressure of the pencil, and at the same time choose the right pencil hardness to achieve the desired results.You also have to keep your work clean, because sometimes this type of shading can go wrong, and your work ends up looking bad.
Cross contour lines are drawn lines which travel, as the name suggests, across the form. Cross contours may be horizontal or vertical, as on the right side of the example, or both. Often, in more complex forms, cross-contours will be drawn at varying angles. In this rather lumpy example, the grid of cross-contours looks a bit like the gridlines on a globe or a diagram of a Black Hole in space.
Are wonderful techniques for loosening up your drawing hand. The movement itself is relaxing. Circles and scribbles are a great method for making a distinction between objects of similar tone, by creating contrasting textures. The overall effect is dynamic, with its unique texture and energy. The technique is wild, and inspires you to release your creativity by using intertwining and overlapping circles. And best of all, it’s simple!
Ideal for sketching, cross-hatching is predominantly used by pen artists, but creates tonal depth and can produce realistic textures when employed with pencil. Cross Hatching is ideal when creating a ‘light map’ for your piece. By ‘light map’, I mean the paths in which light takes across your subject. By using different directional strokes, you leave an indication of the different light sources and their strength. Using a compact and meticulous crosshatching technique one can create breathtakingly realistic art. When the individual lines are tightly woven they can be undetectable, and the overall impression smooth, realistic and accurate.
One of the most common mistakes is to attempt to draw every hair as a pencil-stroke. A single pencil line cannot represent the many changes of tone along the shaft of hair, so this approach is invariably disastrous. Another problem is lack of care - you should spend at least as much time on the hair as on the face. Drawing long hair is in many ways easier than short hair, as the 'surface' tends to be a little smoother, with broader sections of highlight, less dispersed than in short hair. Curly or frizzy hair can be more of a problem, but if you take your time and observe carefully, it is quite acheivable. You might need to ask your model to tame their hair a little with conditioner prior to sitting.
First, look carefully at the model or reference photo and identify the major sections of hair. Curls will often be rather flat, like ribbons curling back on themselves. Try to ignore odd strands at first, concentrating on the main bulk of the hair, and lightly outline the main shapes and sections.
Next draw in the darks with a soft pencil, being careful to leave the highlights well alone. At this point, you might wish to lightly sketch in prominent lighter hairs that need to be left, bringing the darks up close beside them, to avoid problems with erasing them. Where strands of hair cross, small marks may be necessary to separate them. Make sure you follow the direction of the curl.
Now that you've got the basic structure of the hair and put in the darks, you've won half the battle. Drawing lifelike hair is in part a test of observation, and in part a test of patience. This approach will certainly work for quick sketches when applied judiciously, but for really lifelike hair, you will need to take your time and pay attention to detail.
Now draw the mid-tones, with pencil-strokes following the direction of hair. Draw the darker lines separating sections of hair, and patiently draw the dark areas showing behind lighter hairs. At this point I use a harder pencil over the darks, filling in the paper-grain and blending the tone out along the hair. For super-smooth and shiny hair you can use a blending stump along the hair.
To finish off, I've added a few stray marks to loosen up the drawing around the edges. Some sections of hair are smoothed with a stump and highlights picked out with an eraser. The original drawing is a little sharper than shown by the scan - after blending tone and erasing, I use a hard pencil to lightly re-define nearby areas and keep them crisp.
(Source by - http://drawsketch.about.com/library/weekly/aa032303b.html)
Drawing hair presents a challenge for most beginners in figure and portrait drawing. It can still remain a bugbear for quite experienced artists, who may go to all kinds of lengths to avoid having to draw it! It is a great pity to spend time and effort drawing lifelike features only to be defeated by a mass of curls. This drawing lesson will help you learn how to draw hair that looks three-dimensional and shiny. You will need: paper, soft, medium and hard pencils (I used H, B and 5b), a white plastic eraser cut to a clean surface, and blu-tack or kneadable eraser.
When drawing short hair, first ensure that the skull is accurately drawn and in proportion, with the ears properly placed. Begin by drawing in the darkest areas, with pencil strokes going against the direction of growth, carefully leaving white where there are lighter hairs.
Build up the hair in short strokes, working up to lighter areas. Take care to leave highlights clear. Use a harder pencil to lightly even out the tone beween dark and highlight.Where hair is very short, or lighter hairs cross over dark hair, very short marks may be needed. Further highlights may be picked out with an eraser, or if need be, a sharp Exacto knife or scalpel. (Try this last on a scrap piece first!!)
---------------------------------------------------------------Kitchen implements make great subjects. The first thing we do when beginning to draw is contour drawing, which is another name for drawing the outline. With contour drawing, we are focusing on the edges - the outside of an object or the line made by a fold or pattern. The line that goes across an object, hinting at the form, is called a cross-contour. Don't get fooled into using the line to draw light and dark. The WEIGHT of a line, that is, how dark and thick it is, will make it jump out from the paper (if it is a strong, dark line) or sink into the paper (if it is light or thin). This is useful when you are trying to give the impression of something being closer or further away. When you look at an object, the shapes you see vary depending on your point of view. Take a simple mug, for instance - you know it has a perfectly cylindrical shape, with a circle top and bottom and sides that go straight up. But look at the cup on the table - the circles seem a little squashed, and if you are look from a higher angle, so that the top of the cup is nearly circular, the sides seem to taper. When you are drawing an object, you need to select a viewpoint and stick to it. This means setting the object down, and sitting so that you can look from your object to your paper with minimal movement. You want to always have your head in the same place whenever you look at the object. In this way, the shapes will always look the same. A small movement can make a surprisingly big difference once you start drawing details.
Contour drawing uses the 'taking a line for a walk' approach, picking a spot and continuing until the drawing is complete. Along the way, the relative sizes, shapes and directions of lines are noted and copied, a bit at a time. Take your time in the beginning, as the first parts of the drawing establish scale for the whole drawing. A common mistake is to run the picture off the page, having started too large or in the wrong place. If this happens, don't worry - either finish off, use another part of the page for a drawing, or start afresh.
(source by -http://drawsketch.about.com/cs/drawinglessons/a/contourdrawing.htm )
Colored Pencil for Beginners - Basic Pencil Strokes This lesson introduces some basic color pencil strokes which will be useful in your drawing. Make sure to go on to the next page for some exercises to help you practice your color pencil technique. It is a good idea to spend some time exploring the color pencil medium with small pieces before attempting a major drawing. As with graphite pencil, there are a range of techniques which you can employ when drawing with colored pencil. Which one you choose will depend on the final effect you are aiming for: SHADING Using a straightforward side-to-side shading motion, a smooth even layer of color is built up. A very light touch can be used to deposit the faintest amount of pigment for graduated shading. HATCHING Rapid, regular, evenly spaced lines are drawn, leaving a little white paper or underlying colour showing.
CROSS-HATCHING Hatching overlaid at right-angles. This can be done with different colors, or carried through multiple layers, to create a textured effect. SCUMBLING The 'brillo pad' method, tiny overlapping circles rapidly drawn. Again, it can be used to build up a single color or different colors. DIRECTIONAL MARKS Short directional lines which follow a contour, or the direction of hair or grass or other surfaces. These can be densely overlaid to form a rich textural effect. INCISED MARKS Incised Marks: Two thick layers of color are overlaid, then the top color gently scratched into with a blade or pin to let the lower layer show through. BURNISHING Burnishing is simply layers of colored pencil overlaid with strong pressure so that the tooth of the paper is filled and a smooth surface results. This image shows a burnished surface compared with a basic overlay of color. With some colors, especially with waxier pencils than the watercolor pencils used for this example, a quite translucent and jewel-like effect can be obtained with careful burnishing. ~Helen South (Source by - http://drawsketch.about.com/library/weekly/aa051303a.htm )
You can learn how to draw. It's easier than you think. Start here with these free learn how to draw lessons. This Learn to Draw lesson hub will guide you through each step of the process, so make it your homepage for easy reference. Work through each article in each section, doing the exercises and trying out the ideas. Don't skip the exercises - they are like scales for musicians and will help you learn to draw much faster.
These beginner drawing lessons can be done with any scrap paper and pencils, so you can start learning to draw right away, before you need to visit the art store. A number 2 pencil and some A4 office paper or an old exercise book will do fine. Tip: Don't think of everything as a masterpiece. Exercises might just be scribbles, but will help your technique. Think of a musician playing scales.
Seeing negative spaces correctly is a skill worth developing. Negative space is used a great deal when you want to avoid outlining and create true value drawing. It is needed when you have a texture like light-colored hair or grass, when you need to focus on the dark shadows behind and underneath the strands. The 'foreground' - the positive shapes of light hair or grass - are 'left behind' as white paper while the shadows and darks are drawn with dark charcoal or pencil. A sound understanding of negative space drawing is critical for watercolor painting, as a watercolor is built through a progressive overlaying of negative-space areas, working from light to dark. In the photograph below, note how the red-outlined dark areas lock together to reveal the form of the foreground shapes of the leaves. Focusing on the leaf forms is fine for a line drawing, but if you want a shaded value drawing, you'll need to observe the negative spaces as shown, so that you can leave behind the positive space, drawing the leaves lighter, and leaving the white edges and veins of the leaves clear.
The correct approach to negative space drawing involves observing the shapes formed between different parts of the object, or between one edge of the object and a boundary. By drawing the background spaces or shapes between the edge of the object and the opposing edge or boundary, the positive form of the object is left 'undrawn', resulting in a correct negative space drawing. This is the reverse of normal positive space drawing, where you would be looking at the form and drawing its edges. In the in-progress example below, note how a sketched border closes off external shapes. The stripes in the background cloth allow the observation of small shapes which add up together to reveal the silhouette of the object. The most obvious example of clear negative spaces in this drawing are the arches and triangles, which are easy to observe.
In negative space drawing, instead of observing the positive shape of an object, you draw the shape of the space around the object. This may include any background detail or pattern, or it may be drawn as a simple silhouette. In many drawing books, you'll find an example which begins with drawing an outline of the object, and shading all around it. Although it is a silhouette, this is NOT correct negative space drawing. As you draw the outline, you are doing a POSITIVE drawing - focussing on the positive spaces - the solid shapes of the object. The in-progress example below has been drawn that way, looking at the shape of each part of the object, and drawing its outline, then shading. This method will not help you achieve the objective of the negative space drawing exercise, which is to understand the shapes and spaces around an object.
Archieving Dense Color Watercolor can be densely layered like regular colored pencil. Water can be applied to heavily applied color, though it can be tricky to control. Experiment with applying just a little water at time, to minimise dilution of the pigment. Applying more water can give a painterly effect, though it is difficult to control.
Sketching With Watercolor Pencil When using watercolor pencils with water, use watercolor paper, as regular drawing paper will buckle when dampened. The most common approach to watercolor pencil is to loosely color an area, then brush water over it to create a wash effect. When applying color in this manner, remember that the wash will look a few shades lighter than the pencils you are using, once diluted by the wash.
Eraser marks usually have a soft edge, which you can sharpen by lightly redrawing the ajacent dark values with a sharp pencil. You can also use a sharp corner of plastic eraser to 'draw' white lines, if the layer of graphite is not too thick. This sketch uses vigorous shading to maintain a sense of energy in the drawing. You can create a smoother, more realist surface by shading more finely (use a slightly harder pencil - B and 3B) on a softer paper - and using a great deal more patience and attention to detail! You can create a more dramatic surface by experimenting with strong, directional shading or hatching, with strong contrasts. Try using a torn paper stencil to keep white areas clear when using strong, hard-to-erase marks.
(Source by - http://drawsketch.about.com/od/drawtheskyandclouds/ss/drawingclouds_2.htm )
aper - Texture and color are very important when drawing winter scenes. For some, a little texture will be fine, but generally you'll want a smooth surface that will let you capture reflections and the crisp, bright highlights of the snowy landscape. Smooth office paper is okay for sketching, or else choose a hot-pressed watercolor paper or Bristol board. Choose a very white paper - off-white paper will give a dull, gloomy result. Pencils - Coarse shading will sabotage your drawing. You can use a bit of texture in other elements of the drawing, but the snow and ice surfaces will call for very fine, detailed shading. Use a full range of pencils and keep them sharp. References - Choose your reference source carefully. Not every photograph, however pretty, is going to be suitable for drawing. This is particularly true of frozen waterfalls - sometimes they look pretty odd! Take photos from several angles to give yourself a choice. You also don't have to draw the whole photograph - sometimes you might want to crop out a detail to draw. Using Value - Remember, the white paper is the brightest white you've got, so you have to use it carefully. Only your brightest sunlit whites are going to be pure white, with other areas off white. That said, the sun on the snow can obviously be dazzling, with large areas of white dominating your scene. You'll need to look carefully and decide where you are going to make the transition from pure white paper to fine shading. Texture - Use a hard pencil or some brushed powdered graphite for very light areas. A hard pencil and fine shading is best for light areas rather than smudging, to keep the tones fresh and bright. You can also try use a tortillon as a drawing tool, by rubing it over graphite heavily shaded onto some scrap paper, then drawing with it. Use the hardest pencil you can for each level of tone, as very soft pencils look grainier. For very dark areas, try layering soft and hard pencils to create a smooth finish. Organize Your Scene - The large, smooth areas of white, tangled areas of bare tree branches in a winter landscape can seem to flatten space and make it very difficult to organize your scene. Look for dominant features, such as a group of large trees, or the slight line of a bank, to give form and direction. Remember, you can leave things out or add them! You can also use 'steps' of tonal value, making clear divisions from one tone to the next. Keep the same level of shading as you work on connected or similar areas across the scene. This is a bit like limiting your palette in painting. Plan out clear steps of light, mid/light, mid, mid/dark and dark. You might then decide to even out the transition from one tonal value to the next, but in the planning stages, visualizing these clear steps can be helpful. Try doing a thumbnail sketch first. You can also use texture to help organize space. Accentuate atmospheric perspective - the background trees will have a smoother look than the close ones, and distant edges will be softer. You can use these effects in your drawing, even if you can't see it in your source photo. Emphasize different textures - coarse bark, woodgrain - to set off the smoothness of the snow. Ice forms may be complex, sometimes with crisp edges or detailed highlights. Be patient and draw these carefully. Don't be a Wimp with Value! - Lastly, don't be afraid to use dark shading. It might be winter, but you can still use strong darks on tree-trunks and shadows. The presence of strong dark areas makes the white look whiter. Try using a value finder to help judge the tone of difficult areas.
(source by - http://drawsketch.about.com/od/naturedrawing/a/draw_snow.htm )
Control the Direction of Marks: Don't let your shading just follow the curve of your arm as you move it across the page. Use direction to describe your object. Follow the form, or create an edge using contrasting direction in two planes. A casual-looking but carefully executed effect of shading everything in one direction can also look effective. Direction direct the viewer's eye or create energy. Even randomness is often carefully considered, in order to look 'artfully dishevilled' rather than 'scruffy'. Where are your marks going? The Art is in the Mark: The marks you make on the paper are like the notes played by a musician. No matter how good the written music, if the 'notes' are carelessly played, the result will be ugly. Likewise, by thinking about the kind of mark on your paper, you can make your idea as beautiful or dramatic as you choose. Is it a lyrical, gentle, flowing idea? Let your pencil strokes reflect that feeling. Often the subject (a spiky dried flower, or a curving vase) or model (a wrinkly older person, or a smooth-faced child) will imply a certain kind of handling. Take a critical look at all the little marks you make, as well as your overall composition. Those marks are your notes. Make them sing.
Keep Your Pencils Sharp Chisel-point or blunt pencils are useful for some techniques, but for most pencil drawing, keep your pencil sharp. Don't worry about 'wasting' graphite in the sharpener - better than wasting your drawing efforts! Brighten the point by rubbing the side of the pencil on scrap paper between sharpenings. If you need a darker line, use a softer pencil, and be aware that a softer pencil goes blunt quickly. Use a Variety of Line: When drawing lines, either in a linear drawing or within a texture in a tonal drawing, note that you can vary the weight of the line by lifting the pencil or pressing harder. This might seem obvious, but it is important, and most people don't exploit lineweight enough. Note the example above, which shows how lifting the pencil towards the end of the stroke can be used to give a grassy or fluffy effect. It can be useful to reduce the weight as the pencil is applied at the start of the stroke, rather than dropping it straight into full pressure.
Pencil Drawing and Mark-Making In this pencil drawing lesson, we'll focus on the importance of mark-making. Mark-making is the expression we use to describe the process of applying pencil to paper. You can improve your pencil drawing skills by carefully considering your pencil and how it hits the page. Controlling and exploiting the possibilities of the mark is an important step in developing as an artist. (Source by - http://drawsketch.about.com/cs/pencilgraphite/a/pencildrawing.htm )
First of all lets talk about pencils. Pencils are woodcased writing utensils containing pigment. The pigment could be colored, pastel, charcoal, or graphite. I will be talking about graphite in this case. Graphite pencils are available in many different grades ranging from 9B (softest) to 9H (hardest). Soft graphites have less clay in them and they are darker than H graphites. Hard graphites have more clay and are lighter than B graphites. Below is a chart illustrating the different grades of graphite.
There are lots of different pencil brands. I use Derwent Graphic Pencils. Most grades are unnecessary in my opinion. For most of my drawings I only use the following 5 grades, 7B, 3B, B, HB, 2H. Anything harder than a 2H graphite will most likely dent your paper, ruining the fibres.
A Pencil Drawing technique that is very hard to master and at the same time can bring a photo realistic finish, is the smooth shading technique. This pencil drawing technique consists of shading gradually the drawing with the pencil tilted, to give it a 3D look. This can be done only using the pencil or with the aid of a tool to diffuse the tones.
---------------------------------------------------------------Kitchen implements make great subjects.
SHADING
HATCHING
CROSS-HATCHING
SCUMBLING
DIRECTIONAL MARKS
INCISED MARKS
BURNISHING
. Most grades are unnecessary in my opinion. For most of my drawings I only use the following 5 grades, 7B, 3B, B, HB, 2H. Anything harder than a 2H graphite will most likely dent your paper, ruining the fibres.
