Saturday, August 24, 2013

How to draw...

I'm procrastinating.

There are so many YouTube clips that claim to show you how to draw something realistically but really it's not the how but simply watch me draw.

So I thought I'd write about something a little different. I'm not claiming you will learn how to draw from reading this but maybe find your own approach to learning this skill if you so wish.

Rule 1: What you see, not what you think it looks like.

I've always believed that everyone has the ability to draw - If you can write. You can draw. Writing in itself is like drawing. Letters are symbols after all, and symbols stem from pictures. I had a friend in high school - well I also knew her in primary school - she chuckled at this belief. She'd claimed many times that she could not draw and based on her outputs it's hard to argue against her. But put it to a simple test and I soon realised it was not that she couldn't draw it was more she didn't try. Her overwhelming belief that she could not, paralyzed any effort.

Have you ever participated in a simple realistic drawing exercise where four people sit around a table with a still life arrangement placed in the centre? Each individual attempts to draw the objects as they are sitting in front of them for just a few minutes. The participants are then instructed to rotate seats and move around the table but leave the drawing they were working on for the next person taking their seat; and so each individual will have to continue the work of their predecessor and draw the objects from each of the 4 perspectives.

I remember doing this activity with a glass mug and an interesting-looking hammer. I started my drawing, paying attention to the shape of the forms I could see from where I was sitting and transferring it onto the page. Moments later I then moved to the seat next to me where this friend had sat as instructed. And to this day I can still visualise the sketch I saw all those years ago as I looked down at her drawing. It was a sketch of the still life sitting in front of me - yes. But it resembled an abstract drawing as if she had only read a description of the composition and promptly attempted to depict it rather than drawing what she could see in front of her. The oval shape I saw as the rim of the mug was depicted as a full fledged circle and drawn physically larger than the body of the rest of the mug. The mug handle put simply as a double C and the hammer... well, remember how I mentioned it was unusual-looking, she had replaced the hammer head with a plain regular one. I realised that she had not tried to look at what she could see. Instead she succumbed to her belief and drew haphazardly of what she knew of the shapes.

Ask yourself, what do you actually see?

****To be continued... stay tuned.

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