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Practical Drawing Series:
Lines
By Nick Ustinov
Foreword
In our Practical Drawing series, you will learn to draw. Saying that, I mean real art--with pencil, pen, brush, airbrush, et cetera. Being just a talented person is not enough--in order to draw (using Photoshop, Illustrator or just a simple pencil) you must know the basics. Under basics I include things like how the human eye understands the picture, how the shadows are cast, how the perspectives are built, and so on. When you see a non-professional artwork or image you can always say there's something wrong with the picture, but in many cases you can't determine what exactly is wrong with it.
Mastering drawing starts from simple exercises that train your hand and eye. These exercises may seem easy, but they are very important if you want to learn to draw and you are serious about it. Moreover, when you start practicing, you will notice this is not as simple as it first seemed.
You can't draw a cube, cylinder, ornament, a model or anything else without being able to draw straight lines applying the correct pressure.
Introduction
In this article we look into elementary practical lessons that will help you to learn drawing straight lines and curves on the plane, building simple geometric figures and stroking. All the lessons must be done without a ruler or anything like that (just "by hand"). If you use a ruler or dividers it will just bring you harm--anything that is mechanically measured looks incorrect. Here are some simple examples of visual illusion.
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| Lines on picture a) are perfectly parallel. But they don't look parallel because of illusion effects. Lines on picture b) are the same size. Inner circles on picture c) are also the same size. |
Straight Lines
Put two dots under one another and connect them, using a pencil, by drawing a straight vertical line without hard pressure. Do this many times until you achieve really straight lines--wide, narrow, light, dark ones, but if possible with the same pressure on whole line length. After that, practice drawing horizontal and diagonal lines.
Next, do the following: put various numbers of dots in random places on the piece of paper and connect them using straight lines. You can use these paper sheets with lines for another good exercise - finding proportions visually; find the middle of the horizontal and vertical lines and divide lines to 3, 4, 5 and 6 similar parts.
Circular Curves
Take 3 random dots and draw a curved line that would connect them. Do that a few times, changing dot position.
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This article first appeared in November 1998.
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