I have it on good Doper authority that while I am a decent painter, my drawing needs work. A reassessment of my skills confirms this deficiency.
Forget perspective, proportion, mass, and all that junk. I can’t draw a straight line! If I draw quickly in a generally northeast direction, and move from my shoulder only, I can do OK, but that’s about it. And even then, I have little control over the placement and length of the line. Any other direction and I’m a mess. I can sometimes do OK with down.
One drawing book I have suggests reorienting the paper so that all lines are in the favored direction. Great for a drawing pad, not so much for watercolor paper affixed to a plywood plank.
And with a brush, things get even worse. I have a hard time even getting the bristles to touch the correct starting point. And from there, all bets are off.
Use a straightedge. I can’t draw a straight line without one and I’m a professional illustrator. in fact, almost NONE of the artists I know can draw a straight line without using a straightedge. As for the idea that you should be able to draw a straight line before you move on to the rest of the fundamentals; nope, sorry, all the things you mentioned as “all that junk” are absolutely essential to good draftsmanship. Add to that a good understanding of light and shadow and edge relationships as well. Don’t waste your time practicing straight lines.
The only artists that need to practise drawing shapes over and over are cartoonists and animators, and they (we) don’t even bother with straight lines.
Cheat!
If you don’t want as straight a line as you’d get with a straightedge, use a mahling stick raised off the surface. If that’s still too much “cheating*” for you, stand at arm+brush-length from the surface and make the straight movement from your shoulder.
*: In art, there is no such thing as “cheating.” Stealing, yes, but no “cheating.”
When you say “not straight” do you mean “a bit wavy” or bizarre uncontrolled squiggle, Charlie Brown style?
For the “a bit wavy” problem either use a straightedge or start with shorter lines. Drawing a strightish line on paper mounted vertically is usually quite difficult… can you work flat or at a moderate angle, drafting-table style?
Truly straight lines are very rare in nature, by the way. Even paved roads are less than straight. This might be less of a problem than you think.
THey say that lines drawn with straightedges tend to be dull and lifeless. By that logic, my lines are pretty much monkey zoos.
A straightedge can work for drawing, but painting is a whole other animal. I once used a ruler to paint ship’s rigging, but that was an extreme case where I could get away with it. The real point of this all is to get some mastery over my pencil and brush. A straightedge might work for a building, but not for hair, and certainly not for (curved but precise) eyelids.
My easel is normally set at about 30 degrees, so that’s no problem.
It depends on the project, acually. For the horizon on a seascape, absolutely straight is absolutely essential, but I’ll use masking tape for that. For trees, a little squiggle is OK, but not so much that it looks like something from Transylvania. Ships’s masts? Straight. Oars? Straight. Siding on a house? OK, straightedge there.
My freehand straight lines were pretty awful when I started drafting out ideas in architecture school.
I learned from a prof that instead of keeping your eye on the point of your pencil and trying to go straight that it worked much better to keep your eye on the point you were trying to get to and just draw to it.
Nah! You don’t need to be able to draw a straight line – truly!
What you do is draw the negative space, which is the space that surrounds your subject. Keep working at that, at the same time that you’re drawing the subject itself. The whole “straight-not straight” business will resolve itself, because your objects will have authority and authenticity. THAT is the goal, not “straightness” (which would look really odd, unless your whole piece was about straight lines, a la Mondrian).
Take a look at Charles Demuth. Lines all over the place, but they aren’t perfectly straight.
Daggone it, there’s a well-known landscape painter whose name escapes me, and it’s not Sargent but I think he was a contemporary. Wanted to look at him, 'cause I’m pretty sure his seascape horizon lines aren’t perfectly straight. Can’t find that – but here’s my old favorite Edward Hopper – some of his lines are straight, some are not. Sometimes the slight curvature defines space a lot better than an abstractly perfect line (which can’t exist in reality, and therefore seems unreal).
Okay, wait - here’s a little Homer for you. What do you think?
I’m with the others who say that if you want a straight line, use a straight edge.
But if that perfect, technical line quality isn’t the thing you’re looking for… that you need just a “little” humanity to it…
Try orienting your drawing surface so that your “straight” edge will be vertical. Start at the top and pull towards you, bending at both the shoulder and elbow. Sometimes, even leaning or moving backwards — depending on whether you’re sitting or standing — can be helpful.
Obviously, you’ll want to practice a few times before you potentially muck up a masterpiece-in-progress.
They aren’t? Those lines are far straighter than anything I could possibly hope to accomplish in my lifetime, freehand, anyway. Even the Homer is better than my best.
But besides negative space, what do you think I should be concentrating on?
You could try drawing a very light line using, say, an H3 pencil along with a straightedge, then tracing that line with paint on brush freehanded. Having a guiding line might help.
Kind of depends on where you want to go. Other than straight lines, is there some other aspect of painting that you find frustrating?
I’m torn between wanting to tell you all about the things we did when I was in school, all those drills and exercises (because I went back and did Drawing 101 and Painting 101 several times)…and saying just fuck it, do whatever you want! Don’t worry about being “proficient” in order to have permission to paint, because that’s a whole involved journey and it really doesn’t matter.
Frankly, I think what you really want to do right now is draw some perfectly square boxes and straight rectangles with your ruler, and fill them with those lovely sunsets! Why not?
Don’t obsess over straight lines, unless you’re going into architectural rendering or drawing up floorplans. Get over it! It’s FAR, FAR more important to understand how to render forms using light and shadow. MOVE ON! GROW!
Good question. (But remember, dearie, you’re the one that encouraged me to work on my drawing, so I look to you for guidance. :))
I decided to get a little sketchbook and take it to work so I could scribble a bit during lunch. I went out to the med school just now and found a wonderful scene. There’s a sort of complex staircase with stone sides, and a column at each corner. Atop each column is a large faux vase. There are 8 in all, and from my perspective, they were arranged on the picture plane in a beautiful tempo. If I went there at a different time of day, the shadows might make for a striking work. But aside from the vases, it’s all lines at different angles. If I attempted a real drawing of that (not to mention a painting), it would be a mess. If I could manage at least some straight lines, maybe I could make it look like a 6th grader didn’t do it.
And paint for pleasure, but there’s not much pleasure in sucking. I want to increase my skill set to the maximum possible level.
Yeah, if you can tell me the exercies you did in school, I’d love to hear it. I’ll work through every one of them.
Actually, you know — I have a word document that could get you started. I had visions of self-publishing a little pamphlet, back when I started doing art fairs and people would ask “How do you do that?”
I pulled it up (haven’t looked at it in a few years) and the page layout is a little off (not sure why), plus I’d designed it to be printed as a 2-sided document. Let me clean it up and add some stuff, and I’ll email it to you.
I’m not a terribly accomplished teacher, but I have taught pastel drawing a dozen times. You might find some value in what I wrote, I dunno. I like your meticulous ways, in how you paint…but you might have to let go of what you’ve already accomplished in order to move forward. That’s the big challenge in teaching adults.
To get started, I’d suggest you pick up a pad of newsprint (the biggest one you’re willing to lug around, 18" x 24" is a good choice if that doesn’t feel too conspicuous to you) and some charcoal. Cheapest stuff in the supply store! I like vine charcoal, but pressed is OK too (small rectangular sticks, about 1/4" x 1/4" x 4"). Comes in various hardness, “medium” is fine. Get that, and a kneaded eraser and a little chamois cloth (cheaper at the auto supply store).
Go to that delightful setting you described (which sounds VERY challenging), and draw it 3 different ways (so, this is actually 3 different exercises):
Just draw the outlines of the dark shapes (shadows). And here’s the trick — don’t look at the paper. Yep, the first thing one learns in formal art classes is to quit looking at the paper! It’ll be a mess, that’s fine. Do it quickly, do it slowly, do it over & over again. You’ll become more sensitive to the shapes, the more you do it.
Fill in start marking in JUST the darks, and JUST big shapes. You will make a HUGE mess of yourself, don’t wear white! Draw only the darks and how the connect to each other, and don’t worry about making it “perfect”. Don’t be a slave to the finished image - work quickly.
Fill in the whole page with charcoal before you even begin (with the chamois cloth) so that it’s really black, and then erase to find the white shapes.
Those sound like some great ideas, thanks! And I’d love to see that document. I’ll PM you with my e-mail address.
Thanks to everyone else for the suggestions, too. I can see the wisdom of them.
It dawned on me earlier this week that drawing isn’t really drawing, it’s painting with charcoal (or carbon, which I seem to like better). Many of the same principles seem to apply.
I took animation courses, where the idea is to draw rough and then trace over and make it look like it’s all clean lines that were drawn in beautiful strokes. But even tracing long beautiful lines is pretty tough and you can only do it for for a certain distance between the angle of the line or your arm switch too much. So what you do is lightly start in with your pencil (or brush), draw the line, and then lightly pull the pencil off as you’re still stroking, so that each end of the line trails off into a point rather than a sudden end. That way once you reposition yourself and continue the line on, you can start at the end of the line and it looks like you did it all in a single stroke.
Still, doing that, it’s a pain in the butt to do nice straight lines that aren’t wiggly or anything. But doing it a bunch gets it better so that you can trace a rough line and look good.
