Tag: drawing class

Drawing Class 9

Once you practice putting it all together in a sketched skeleton you can begin to add shape. Some artists sketch in circles and ovals for the belly, arms, hands, legs sop they have the general shape there before they add details. Other artists add the drawing right on top of the skeleton. It is up to you which you decide to use but I suggest you try doing it both ways.

Take a skeleton which is drawn VERY lightly–so you can easily erase it, and using light lines draw the general shapes . For instance a belly is sometimes rounded and other times more rectangular. Think of the drawings of children who are just starting to draw–often they will draw hands that are a circle with 5 6, 7 or 10 lines coming out. 🙂 You want to think in terms of shapes in order to draw in this manner.

Take some time adding shape to your skeletons, try different shapes and see how they people turn out.

Art Lesson 8

We will, God willing, be out of town next week but I will try to get the lesson posted anyway.

For this week we are going to review all that you have learned then next week I will explain how to develop that into a full drawing.

When beginning, consider the age of the person you are drawing–if you want a small child the head is bigger in proportion to the body than a teen or grown up.

Next consider where the joints will show be, draw a very light skeleton, using ovals for shoulders and hips, all at the angle they would naturally occur.

When laying out the face, remember that the eyes are at the center, not at the forehead, or the nose–unless you are trying to exaggerate to make a point (for instance, drawing an ogre you may want all the facial features squished towards the bottom half, or drawing an elf the face may get spread upwards.)

Also keep in mind that, in general, a face is 5 eyes wide at the ears, and 7 eyes tall. This will help you position the features on the face, even when you don’t have a face to look at when drawing.

Review what we have learned and practice making sketches for various people using skeletons.

Art Class 7

This week, I would like you to review the previous weeks lessons and practice drawing skeletons in motion,

with faces.

Also, if you have drawings to post, please share them here. 🙂

Yes, I am busy, I have a commissioned watercolor (a large house portrait) that I would really like to et finished and shipped this week. When I am finished with it I will share the process I go through working on them–very different than my doodles. Hopefully I will be done before next week and able to get together a more detailed lesson.

Art Lesson 3: Measuring the model

If you missed lesson 2 that is all right, you can go back and look at it here and either do that this week or continue on to this one which will clarify lesson 2.

Last week I talked about how artists measure people in heads. This is a difficult idea to grasp (it took me years to get it figured out and even now it isn’t an exact science.) There is a bit of a trick to it that I didn’t mention but which will help you “get it”.

Let’s start with a picture in a magazine–choose one where the person is standing up straight and tall. Now get a scrap of paper at least as tall as the person in the picture. Measure the persons head then make a another tik mark for the head, and again till you have something similar to a ruler. Now figure out how many heads tall that person is.

This week I just want you to focus on measuring. For each individual picture make a new head ruler (since each head is a different size:)). Th emore you practice the easier this new form of measuring will get. In fact after a while you will be able to “see” it in your head or just use a pencil and your thumb to measure how many heads tall a person is.

Let me show you some examples.

As you can see, the little girls here is three of her own heads tall.

The lady in the bridal gown is 7 of her own heads tall.

The lady with the hat is 7 of her own heads tall. (An interesting note–on going through magazines I found that most models are 7 heads tall.)

I made a new “head ruller” from scrap paper for each of these. I think it is interesting how people end up being either full heads tall or a number of heads and a half (though that is usually when they are still growing.) However, where their hips, shoulders, and knees fall on this scale varies.

The more you practice measuring people using their heads the easier it will be to figure out how tall to make them and to get them in the right proportions for them.

Art Class: lesson 2

Now that we know what we already know we can start to learn more about the body and its proportions.

Look at another person (either in real life or in a magazine). Look at how tall they are, how long their body is, how long their arms are, how long their legs are.

If you know anything about horses you have probably heard of a horse being measured buy how many hands tall they are. Artists use a similar measurement when measuring people. You can measure a person using their head (unlike horse measuring “a head” is not a specific height, it is the height of that individual’s head). You can “eye it” (use your eye to estimate how many heads tall) or you can use your pencil and thumb like a ruler to figure out how many heads tall and wide a person is.

Look at your person again (if you are in the room with someone else it will be better if you actually walk over to them and a piece of paper or pencil to measure their head then how many heads tall they are.) Also measure how many heads wide they are at different points. How many heads wide are they at the shoulder? At the waist? At the hips? How many heads wide is one leg? An arm?

If there is more than one person in the room (or in the magazine if you don’t have a person) do this test on the others. Compare them. Keep in mind the person’s age when doing it. Is the person a child, a baby, a grownup?

Notice the difference between a baby, a child, a teen, a grown-up. A baby is about 3 heads tall, as she grows she gets to be about 4 heads tall , then 5, and once she is grown up she will be about 6 heads tall. A boy may end up being 7-8 heads tall. Width also changes as a child grows. A baby is only about 1 and a half heads wide, moving to about 2 heads wide as a toddler until adolescents. A 10 to 12 year old girl starts to widen slightly at the hips and by the time she is grown she will probably be about 3 heads wide both at the shoulders and the hips. A boy on the other hand will probably be about 2 heads wide at the hips and 3 at the shoulders.

Yes, everyone is different which is why this is a general rule. It gives you something to go on and will help you figure out proportions when drawing from the imagination AND when drawing from life. It will also help you if you want to draw in another style–for instance comic book illustrators tend to exaggerate certain proportions to make a point and manga/anime artists exaggerate them in a different way. If you know the general rules for real people it will make learning to draw other styles easier.

This week I would like you to draw a family, it can be your’s or someone elses. You can use stick figures or draw realistically if you like but I want you to use what I just explained about figuring out a person’s proportions using their head. Draw people of different heights and ages.