Lesson 2: Line An Essential Ingredient.
Combining Line and Shape.
How to draw up soft guidelines and recognize shapes within objects, composition and design.
Why is an understanding of shape so important to drawing?
Without understanding shapes and their relationships to each other the artist can not draw up basic guidelines and layout basic designs adequately. By gaining a very good understanding of shapes and how they work together with lines the artist can lay the foundation for good design and clear and concise expression.
A shape is an enclosed line - it reaches back to itself.Yes it is that simple! And everything that we see is made up of
- shapes....
- lines ....
- or lines and shapes combined.
- The rest is added extras. (Shadows for example.)
How simple it is!
- The shapes fit together around an axis.
- If you draw them lightly enough you can play with them until they are positioned correctly.
- And so long as you don't complicate it by adding extraneous elements of design you will be able to practice until you feel
- comfortable,
- familiar
- and confident.
How do artists learn to copy shapes adequately? One way to learn to draw accurately is to copy pictures upside down. This helps us to focus on the shape itself instead of what the shape is. However there are many, many ways to improve our ability to adequately describe what we see. And so in the drawing exercises section I have set out drawing experiments and tasks taken from other websites. Explore these ideas and techniques. Seek out other drawing exercises. There is a huge library of them on the web. They are either free or very reasonably priced. I never begrudge paying the artists for the time and effort they have put into setting out these exercises as it keeps the community going. All of the exercises have value and they all benefit our visual literacy by focusing on a different aspect of training the eye to see.
Try them all. Don't try them all at once though. Don't spend too much time or you may get frustrated and discouraged. If you are gentle with your attempts at literacy you will succeed. When you have had a fair go at what you find..... pop over to the discussion area to have a yarn about what you have discovered. Don't forget to sign and date your drawings.
