OK, I´ve been struggling to improve my drawing skills lately; straight lines, no problem, I can do them with ease; but curves and, oh dear!, circles are a royal PITA, I have reached the conclusion that I must be holding and moving the pencil wrong; should I keep my fingers and wrist stiff and just move my arm to draw?, what´s the best way?
I should point that in fact, I´m fairly good drawing; but I can´t do a quick sketch even if my life depended on it; I always end up drawing using shading; what I´d really like to learn is old plain line drawing, but that so far eludes me.
Keeping your wrist straight will help. It should feel comfortable and automatic. An exercise that might help is to find a picture of a face you’d like to draw, turn it upsidedown to draw it. It changes your expectations and makes you see the lines instead of the whole face.
If you really want to learn line drawing, take a class.That said, being an artist doesn’t necessarily mean being able to draw. And circles!? A compass works. I’m not putting down your desire to learn more, nothing wrong with that. But don’t sell what you can do short.
The web site has a few of my pieces, & I can’t draw at all!
It helps to keep the wrist straight when making long strokes, and pivot it for curves. I think the key with any drawing is to lay down very light sketch lines first to guide the proportions of your whole drawing. Let your wrist pivot and flow freely when drawing guidelines. Don’t try to make every line perfect. If you try to contain the flow of your lines, the style looks confined. Making circles is the same thing … just move your whole arm in small circles with the wrist held stiffly and slowly draw a basic circular shape and keep pressing harder until it is fleshed in solidly. It is hard to explain and takes a lot of practice to do well. I like to draw car design ideas, and when I do, I always start with the wheels, doing that technique to establish the size of the car, then proportioning it with very light contour guidelines before really fleshing it out and shading. The importance of using sketch lines lies in the use of “line weight”. You will notice professional artists use varying degrees of sketch line, density, and darkness to bring out shadow or depth in an object without really shading it. For example, if you draw a scene with objects in the background, their lines should be lighter than the objects in the foreground, focusing more attention on the foreground. This is a very hard concept of sketching to really explain … it has a lot to do with how the eye perceives contour in relation to light and shadow. I found this post on a message board and it closely relates what I am trying to say.
It doesn’t really give you a good before/after rendition of the technique he’s trying to demonstrate, but it’s a decent explanation nonetheless. Line weight is critical to bringing out the life in a sketch. Just let your arm flow, don’t try to restrict movement, and practice watching how good artists sketch and you’ll get the idea of how to better move your pencil. Look at drawings you admire and would like to be able to draw yourself. That’s what I do with cars (there are plenty of cars to draw inspiration from!). Combine your observations with proper movement and good line weight usage … and practice, practice, practice.
What are you drawing…what types of things in general. There are a number of tools one can use for assistance.
I was a pretty good artist (natural ability) I used to do a lot of landscapes. Then art classes in high school we did a lot of object sketches. Some human form and portraits (toughest for me)
Then in college I studied technical drawing. Talk about perfectionism in detail. I learned quite a bit in the few drafting classes that I had.
What you are drawing and the style in which you present it determines how you accomplish the work.
I’m not an artist or draftsman…I just like to draw/paint. Although I have sold some of my work. It’s kinda strange…over the years I’ve done hundreds of paintings (at least). Yet, I don’t have a single one. Sure, I’ve sold a few…but the rest have all been given away to friends and family, whoever really loved a particular piece. Hey it’s yours…happy b-day, Merry X-mas, whatever.
BTW hold your pencil as if you were signing your name, whatever is most comfortable. Take your time and rest your hand often.
There are some techniques for drawing freehand lines, arcs and circles. BUT if it has to be that particular get a few tools and practice. Various types of protractors can be used to draw curves with ease. Of course a compass is best for circles.
I freehand just about everything but when I’m laying out a blueprint…oh, I build stuff for people, anything from the concrete to ridgecap. Landscaping etc. Furniture…picture frames, fences…the list keeps going. My point was that while I’m not a draftsman or architect. I do have to blueprint a lot of stuff and also do a lot of sketches for people who just can’t imagine the landscape or house or whatever. It also helps when figuring bids
Back to drawing…
If you work w/ an easel, that’s a little tricky. I’ve got an easel for painting but use a drafting table to draw on.
and yes keep your wrist stiff and just move the arm.
If the paper you’re using is able to rotate you can use your index finger and thumb like a compass, holding the pencil in the palm of your hand w/ the three fingers remaining. your thumb should be holding the pencil along the inside of the fingers. The point should be near the end of your index finger. The eraser end sticking from the outSIDE of you hand. Simply set your index finger where the center of your circle is/should be. Let the pencil slide away from your finger making the radius. Touch the lead to the paper and simply rotate the paper in a circle w/ your free hand w/out moving the pencil/hand. You should make a perfect free hand circle w/ little practice.
This may be childs play for many, but I’ve been surprised at how many folks have never seen this done. You can draw perfect curves in much the same way.
One minor thing I may slightly disagree with other posters on is the manner in which you hold your pencil. This is obviously a very subjective thing, so as always, YMMV.
For me, I can’t sketch holding the pencil like I would if I was writing on the page; instead I prefer to hold the pencil about halfway up its length, in a much looser way. The side of my hand (between pinkie and wrist) would rest on the page often, with the pencil end in the web of my thumb. The business end of the pencil does most of the moving under the control of my thumb. And a quality, chunky pencil will also make a huge difference to the style and ease of working - never underestimate the difference this can make.
In the end it comes down to what feels best and most comfortable for the way you wish to work.
Of course, this all depends again on the size / scale of the drawing you are producing. There will be times on large scale drawings when wrist or even the whole arm movements will ‘draw’ the necessary curves.
If you are interested in learning to sketch better then I suggest that you go do some “gesture” drawings. Basically, get a few sketch pads, some pencils or charcoal and a stopwatch. Go to the park and do 5 second drawings of people passing by. These will help you to both recognize the crucial lines in any given drawing and will help to losen you up both in the physicality of drawing as well as how you approach drawing. Being able to put lines on paper and not worry about where they are and whether or not they are the absolute correct line is very valuable to an artist.
In so far as doing line drawings (also known as contour drawings) practice practice practice. The more you do, the more confident your lines will become. IMO, the thing that makes contour drawings so successful is the percieved lack of mistakes. Commit your line to paper and move on. Don’t worry about it being the right line or being exactly what you see. If it’s close enough to what you want, just keep going. Even if one particular line is slightly off, having an entire drawing that isn’t marred by eraser marks or “sketchy” looking lines will make any improper lines look correct. Try to use complete lines, rather than many line segements or lines that you have traced and retraced and retraced again.
Some of the art snobs are gonna hate me for suggesting this but a good was to get nice line drawings is TO TRACE!
I have a degree in Visual Design/Illustration and have worked as a commercial artist for more than twenty years. I do lots of pen and ink work, cartoons, maps, graphic design for corporate logos, etc. Tracing vellum and a light table are my best friends.
I’m not suggesting that you trace photographs or other people’s art. I’m talking about tracing your own rough sketches. Comic book art and animation art is done by inkers who trace the original artists’ rougher sketches. Do preliminary sketches then lay a clean sheet of paper on top and trace the good parts.
There’s no right or wrong way to hold your pencil. Or your paper. Do what’s most comfortable. Being right handed, I can draw curves and profiles facing toward left far better than curving to the right, which is going against the natural motion of the hand. So I turn the paper upside down or sideways!
Well, that´s exactly what I´m doing right now! That´s what I´d like to be able to do, but more oriented towards concept art creation.
I think I have an issue about how I hold the pencil because after some minutes of practising I start to feel quite a bit of strain on my fingers and wrist, so i infer that there has to be a problem there; perhaps I´m holding the pencil to tight; and I´ve got to admit that I´m a bit perfectionist (not to talk about my lower digestive tract behaviour ) So I think that Wet Marble idea of doing gesture sketches may very well ease my hand.
OK, so here´s an example of what I can do: Pegasus
I have to admit that I messed the head quite a bit thou…
