Lesson 2: Line An Essential Ingredient.

The Essentials Of Line drawing

Remember - "Don't Try To Eat The Whole Elephant" Take each step in very baby and easy stages. Even professionals can benefit from going back to the pure simplicity of the quickest line drawing.

• Make sure you have positioned your model in an interesting pose. If you don't have a model you can draw a flower or just about anything. The method works no matter what you are drawing.
• Draw a rectangle to define the space in which you are working.
  1. This helps you develop an understanding of negative space.
  2. It also helps you see that you need to measure proportion.
• Draw a directional line.

1. This line gives you the position of the object
2. and allows you to begin to place shapes around it.
3. It will act as a pivot.
4. Imagine at all times that you can rotate your image on this axis.
• Draw the largest shape onto this line using scribble lines or whisper lines.
  1. They must be very light
  2. so that you can come back and correct them.
  3. This way you can learn from your mistakes and not be 'put off' by dark lines that aren't how you want them to be.

• Work around your drawing in a circular fashion attaching the adjacent shapes to the shapes you have already drawn.
• Keep working around the centre of the drawing doing the same thing.
  1. Compare and contrast the shapes as you go.
  2. If they aren't the right size change them
  -
  3. this is why you have been drawing so lightly.

• Keep crawling around your drawing as many times as is required for you to correct and to reposition.
  1. Judge each shape against the other
  2. starting from the centre moving outwards so that you are continually becoming more confident
  3. gain a feeling of accuracy with regard to size and position.
• As you become more confident that your drawing is in the proportions you desire - become firmer with your pencil.
• Look closely at the places where shapes attach to each other.
  1. Do they need to be widened?
• 1. Once you have settled on exactly where your lines should go,
  2. and once you have made each line as expressive as you want to.
  You can either rub out the whisper guidelines
  3. ....or not...
  4. depending on the look and finish you desire.

  pssst!! Personally I like the whisper lines left in, as they make the drawing look more authentic and give the viewer a clue that a human has been present.

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