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A Course in Drawing

Objective

To learn the analytical and expressive language of representational drawing, including the following elements:

Course Philosophy

We are interested in learning techniques for representational or "illusionistic" drawing. The focus is on the human form because (a) it's a demanding subject and therefore a good teacher (people that couldn't tell one tree from another at any distance can tell if a person is sick or malformed at fifty yards); and (b) because we're humans, a lot of visual art uses the figure as its primary point of departure. If you can teach yourself how to draw the figure well, you can teach yourself how to draw anything else.

Most of the ideas in this course were gotten from various teachers at the Art Students League in New York: Robert Beverly Hale in particular.

Reading Materials

There are a lot of books on drawing, most of them bad. Here are a few I think are worth studying.

Required:

Highly Recommended:

Recommended:

Suggested Materials

There are a lot of drawing materials, each with its own properties, strengths and weaknesses. In the beginning you should experiment quite a bit; you might find you settle down to one or two standard materials as you get more experienced.

My favorite drawing materials at the moment are:

Lessons

The exercises described in the following sections are meant to be done quickly and playfully.

Lesson 1: Geometric Volumes

Drawing complex forms such as people, architecture, etc. is very difficult at the beginning, because there is so much to see. One primary task in representational drawing is to see the big forms first, and then worry about the details later. This is impossible if you focus merely on copying what you see. A camera will do that better and faster than you. Instead, you must do what no camera can – you must understand the language of three-dimensional form itself. And, eventually, you will have emotional reactions about the things you see or imagine and will use the language of form to communicate them.

This language starts with simple geometric volumes, or "solids:" the cube is most important, followed by the cylinder and the sphere. You will eventually learn to see every big shape as modifications of these forms, and every complex shape (such as the human body) as a set of refinements of these shapes.

Problem 1:

Draw a transparent cube. Your basic cube has six sides and 12 edges of equal length (count them!). Now draw several dozen from different angles. You can vary the length of the sides a bit, but practice making some of them actually cubic (equal length sides).

You will see right off the bat that you have to make a small number of decisions:

  1. How big is the cube, relative to the whole page?
  2. Where is it on the page?
  3. How is it oriented in space? (Level with the eye, faces tilted in various ways, ...)
  4. Are the sides equal in length or varying? Are the edges and faces parallel or does the cube become wedge-like in various ways?

Fill at least two or three pages with simple variations on the cube. Attach some of them together in various ways. Do not worry about "perspective" at this time.

Problem 2:

Same as Problem 1 but with cylinders instead of cubes. Note that the end of a cylinder is a circle which becomes "squashed" (elliptical) when seen any way other than face-on.

Problem 3:

Draw some spheres. A sphere drawn without light/shade is just a circle on the page. However, you can add an equator to your sphere, and a few contour lines of lattitude and longitude, just like the earth. Fill a page with variations, changing the "equators" (contour lines) and making some spheres squashed in various ways.

Problem 4:

Where ever you are, take a moment to identify an object of any sort, and visualize it contained in one of our three "solids:" sphere, cylinder or cube. It could be a cup, a building, a book – pick something at hand and draw the solid which best contains or "frames" that object. If you feel adventurous, draw the original object inside of its frame. Don't worry about making the drawing perfect, just get a general idea how the big "solid" contains or describes in a simple way the object you chose.

Do this for at least 5-10 objects.

Reading:

Hale, Section 1 (13-16, plus illustrations up to p.31).

Lesson 2: Basic Perspective

Lesson 3: Shading Blocks

Lesson 4: Constructing the Head

Lesson 5: Rough Anatomy

Lesson 6: Anatomy in Perspective

Lesson 7: Working from the Model

Lesson 8: Gestural Geometry

Lesson 9: Composition

Lesson 10: Anatomy Detail - Head

Lesson 11: Anatomy Detail - Torso

Lesson 12: Anatomy Detail - Pelvis

Lesson 13: Anatomy Detail - Shoulder and Arms

Lesson 14: Anatomy Detail - Legs

Lesson 15: Anatomy Detail - Feet and Hands

Lesson 16: Drawing to Purpose

Lesson 17: Study of Master Drawings

Lesson 18: Refining Purpose

Glossary

All content © 2007 John Jacobsen unless otherwise noted.