Transcripts
1. Intro And Tools: Hi, my name is Jenna Low. I'm a watercolor landscape
artist and art teacher. This class is all
about basic shapes. Now I truly believe that
it's important to learn the fundamentals in order to create great drawings.
As a painter. I didn't really get
better at painting until I understood the
fundamentals of drawing. In this class, you
will learn how to draw four basic shapes and
then how to put them together to learn how to
measure with a basic unit. And then all about
shadows and lighting. It could guess where's
the light coming from. In this video,
understanding where the light is coming
from and why the shadow looks like that is
going to be incredibly helpful when you're drawing
almost any other subject. Also included a warm up video in the beginning of the class, because sometimes we forget
that our hand is a muscle. We need to warm up first
before getting started. So go through the warm ups
video and choose an exercise that you feel like doing before getting into
the actual drawing. Part included is an
extra study guide and more reference photos. Here's a list of the tools
that we use in this class. A marker racer, our pencils,
regular notebook sketchbook. Nothing very special
about this sketchbook. This notebook is just
for our warm ups. You can also do that in your
sketch book if you want. You don't need to do it
in an extra notebook. I have a 12 set, but in this class, we're
only using four pencils, HB 24.8 and of course, the one that is not
listed here is a sharper. Let's get started.
I'm so excited to see your basic
shapes drawings.
2. Basic Shapes Warmups: Start this class, I'm
going to show you how to do a few we ups
for these exercises. It will be good to use
a pen or a marker, whatever is available to you. The idea is to have something
that you can't erase. This will make you a bit more conscious about what type of
lines you're putting down. You can just use any
piece of paper here. I'm just using lined notebook. First I want to draw a line, then I'm going to draw the
line a little bit longer. Then I'm going to draw
the line the longest. Go over these eight
times. What does this do? This helps you to understand the movement of your arm
or your hand and wrist. As you can see, the range of my hand only extends
to about here. What am I going to do if I want to make a continuous line? Well, instead of
moving with my wrist, I need to move with my arm and just use my arm to pull
the hand across the page. Okay. The next one we can do
is short, consistent lines. That just means that the space
in between is consistent. As I get bigger, I need
to stop moving with my wrist and just
move with my arm. It's kind of a
mixture of the two. If I make a circle here, I can imagine that these are the two points that
the lines meet. Try another one. Maybe the point is here and I'm going
to do a wavy line.
3. Sphere: Okay, welcome to this
first class where we're going to learn
how to draw a sphere. Now, some people will
be nervous and think, oh, I can't draw
a perfect circle. How am I meant to draw a sphere? Well, let's break it down
here. I'm using an HB. What we're going to do is
we're going to draw a box. Here. We have our
box from the box, we're going to carve
out our circle. Try to draw as lightly as
possible so that you can erase. Okay, there we go. Now
we have our circle. All right, Now
we're going to draw the shadow on the floor. And that's really
just an eclipse. Starts from somewhere
around here. Draw through if you want. Draw through really means just drawing everything out
so that you can see it. Then when you're happy
with your outline, can erase the parts that
you don't need anymore. And that's really the reason why you need to draw lightly. Now I have a clean outline. Looking at my reference photo, I'm going to map out where
the shadows are going to be. The shadows on the
form are called the form shadow,
somewhere around here. In that form shadow, we have the darkest part. That's the core shadow on
this particular image. I don't see a very
clear highlight, but we know the light
is coming from here. Then we already drew out the
outline for the cast shadow. That's the shadow that is on the ground being
casted by our object. As you can see, there
are two shadows. That's because there
are two light sources, but they are both coming
from the same direction, that's why there is no
shadow in another direction. The most important is
the contact shadow. That is the point where
two objects meet. Where the object
meets the ground, that's where no light is. It's going to be
our darkest part. Now that we've outlined
where our shadows are, we're going to go
in and start to shade by using the first, using the two pencil. As you can see, I'm very
lightly shading it in, going around the form. The pencil is pretty
much grazing the page. I'm not pushing at all, just grazing it over the paper. But I'm also going to
fill in the cast shadow. For the cast shadow, I'm using a horizontal line, and that's because I know
that the table is flat. Now that that's done, let's
go on to the next stage. This is what I would
call a base shade. I always tell my students, put down the base shade first
and think of it as a whole. Because if you shade one spot, then you go to the next spot, it can make your drawing look
a little bit disjointed. It's important to think
of your drawing as a whole rather than parts. Now, I'm going in with the
four B doing the same thing. I'm going to go over
my core shadow. I lost my line, but that's okay. Because I can also go back and forth between the
reference photo. Okay. And then I'm also going to use the four B to fill in that second shadow
that was on the table, the cast shadow using the eight B. I'm just
going to bump up the contrast a little
bit in certain areas. The core shadow of the most important is the context shadow that is the darkest point. It's really right
here on the bottom. The final thing is I'm
going to go in with the B and just fill up this
white spot a little bit more. I think now that
I'm looking at it, I think that I can make
the core shadow just a little bit darker
using the eight now. Just make it a tiny bit darker. There's your sphere, all finished using
only four pencils.
4. time to draw: sphere: music
5. Cone: Now let's move on to a cone. Now the cone is really just a triangle and
an ellipse together. All right, using our HB, again, what we're going to do
is we're going to draw out an ellipse on the ground. There we go. Here's a nice little ellipse. Then I'm going to find the
center by drawing an X. Find the center of the ellipse, it's about right here. And I'm going to draw
a line out there. We have at the top of our cone. Okay? And then from there
I can draw the lines out back down to the bottom. Make sure that your
lines are rounded like this and they're
not going further. You don't want that? Okay. Now we're going to
draw the test shadow. The light is coming from this direction and it's also
coming from this direction. We have a shadow
coming out this way. That we have another shadow
coming out this way, making that triangle shape here. Then the lines go out. If I break this into three, it's going to look like this. 12 and now we have three. The point over here is where
our core shadow is slowly, it's going to go
from light to dark. Now let's use to be. You can see how I'm
following the form. While I'm over here, my line is pointing
more to the right. But as I move over to this part, my line is pointing more
towards the center. Always follow the form. Now I'm going to
fill in this one, but with a lighter hand because we want to see
the slow progression from light to dark. Let's leave that for now. And go on to the cast shadow. Just the same, fill up the
whole thing with the base, the base shade you need. You can make that
triangle a little bit darker just so that
you don't lose it. Now, going in with
the exactly the same, just making that core
shadow a little bit darker, the eight, sump, everything up, bump up the contrast, and then finally take the H. Just bring that in
a little bit more looking at it, I think I
can use the two and sort of make this line not
so obvious, blend it. Take the eight and just
bump it up a little bit more down here.
6. time to draw: cone: music
7. Cylinder: All right, we're slowly moving on Now let's do the cylinder. Now, when we look at
our reference photo, we can see that we are almost at eye level with the cylinder, so we can barely see the top. A cylinder is really just
two ellipses and a line. There's something
important you need to know that if this is our eye level, the ellipse would not be seen, it would just look
like a flat line. Then as we slowly go down
further and further, it slowly starts to look
more like a circle. When we're drawing our ellipse, we need to think about this. Can we see higher or lower? In this case, our eye is almost
level with the cylinder. The top ellipse is going
to be almost nothing. But as we go further down, maybe down here, then we could start to see the
ellipse a bit more. It's getting a bit larger, then we're going to connect the two lines and that is
going to be our cylinder. Okay, so now that
we understand that, let's start by drawing
the top of our cylinder. What I would do is I would
also just make a marker, that's how wide my
cylinder is going to be. Then, there we go. Now here, this one
needs to be bigger, remember, because of the
way we are looking at it. Something like that. And then I'm going to draw
the lines down. The same with the cone. Don't make the line go further. The line round this
line to the ellipse. So it looks like the line is wrapping around.
You see this? No, like this. Now, before we erase the
part that we cannot see, it's going to use this to draw the past shadow
on the ground. The light is coming
from here and it's making shadow this. This money is also going through something like
that. The same is the cone. If I break this into three, then the far right will
be the darkest part. And slowly we want to see
the light wrapping around. Okay, let's take our two B and once again just
make a base shade. Right, will be the darkest. And then as I get to this part, I just want to make
it all the more, a little bit lighter. It shouldn't be a
perfect triangle on the ground because the
top part is not a point, but it almost looks like it. Just make that part a tiny
bit darker so you can see it. You don't lose it
with your base shade. I'm just going to start
bumping up a shadows and then don't forget the
context shadow on the ground. And then of course, using the B, which is pushing that
contrast even further with the lightest part. Very lightly, we're going
to leave the top white.
8. time to draw: cylinder: music
9. Cube: Okay, we're moving
on to the cube now. Now this is where people kind of get a little
bit tripped up because it is the
easiest to shade, but it's one of the more
difficult ones to draw, and that's mainly
because of the angles. I'm going to use
our pencil to check the angles and I'm going to show you a few tricks to make
sure that you get it right. Okay, so let's start by
drawing the largest face. Another thing to note
about this reference photo is that it is not
a perfect cute. The sides are a
little bit uneven. That's going to show
when we are drawing, so don't worry too
much about that. Now let's start with the top
side, something like this. What you can also
do is you can check the edge of the page
and then think about how much is it angled in relationship to
the edge of the page, which is perfectly horizontal. And then usually
you have to think about how much is it
pointed up or down. Just check with your
reference photo. Is it pointed up too much or
is it pointed down too much? Just check that. Okay, and then let's
draw the next two lines. These ones, I'm going to just draw them straight
down. Stick that. And then which side is longer? Is it this side or this side? If I'm looking at
my ripens photo, I can see that this side
comes down a bit more. And this side, so I'm going
to make this line a tiny bit longer then I'm going to just
draw a line to close it. Okay, So now we have
our first side. And then what I'm going
to do is I'm going to measure the next side in
relationship to this side. I would say it's
about two thirds. So I'm just going to sort pick a spot where
I think it should be. And then looking at
my reference photo, I noticed that it's not
perfectly vertical. It's a little bit
slanted like this. It's pointing a little
bit to the right. I notice that this point
is higher than this point, but not too high. I don't want it to go
all the way up here. That's way too high, maybe just a little
bit like that. And then the same
with the bottom. It's a little bit higher then I know that it needs to
be a pointed to the right, not perfectly straight,
something like that. Looking good so far.
Now the top side of the cube is where
people mess up a lot. Oftentimes we see them drawing
too high on either side, and then this part
sticks up too much. What we want to do is
really draw it more down. Okay, so now I'm going to check. If I look at my reference photo, I can see how far
these points are from each other. I can. That seems about right. Okay. So try to draw
your lines a bit more horizontal and a
little bit less vertical. The biggest issue
is that most people draw their lines to angled. Something I'm noticing
is that it looked like this is too high. So I'm actually going to
point it just a tiny bit. Now, we're going to draw the
light is coming from here. To draw one shadow
coming out this way, imagining that here is the
other side that we can't see. This line is going to
come out from here. Using our two, let's
make a base shade. And then fill in
the cast shadow on the ground because the light
is coming from behind. This face is the darkest. Now sometimes when you end
up doing a base shade, you forget where your line is. If you need to make
that line a little bit darker, go for it. I'm using that I go in and shade everything
a little bit darker and then also going
to make the shadow on the ground cast shadow a
little bit darker as well. Here, just down here
is the context shadow, so when you make that darker
now using the eight B, this is really just where
we do the touch ups, bump up anything
that needs to be. We think this whole face is way. Let's go over the whole
thing with an eight B and the context shadow. Then a little bit of the cast shadow in the reference photo. You almost can't see this edge here. You can't really see it. But we'll just put
it into a tiny bit just to show then of take your B and fill in very lightly. Again, we lose this edge here
with the eight very subtly. Just draw in a little bit and
we can see that edge again.
10. time to draw: cube: music
11. Basic Unit (2 Shapes): We learned how to draw our
basic shapes on their own. Now we're going to look at
how to draw them together. Another great tool that's
going to come in handy is going to be our eraser. Once again, let's
draw out our sphere. And I'm going to draw
a little bit down here because of space. Now I'm going to use
this as my basic unit. What a basic unit means
is that it's going to be the unit that I use to
measure all the other objects. Now I'm going to look at my reference photo
and use my pencil to see where the
bottom of the cone is. Go like this, I can see
comes out about this. Now I'm going to figure
out how wide it is. What I'm going to do is
I'm going to measure, I'm going to use my sphere. I'm going to measure the
cone is about here to here. That is a little bit
less than the sphere. Maybe about like this much. I'm going to get it right here. Then my markers. Okay, so that's how
wide it needs to be. I'm going to do the
exact same thing. I'm going to draw the ellipse. Now, this is where I've
already made a mistake. You see how this
is my marker here. This is supposed to
be where it stops. And I'm already drawing
under it, so that's wrong. I'm going to make
my markers higher. Okay, So there's our lips
and once again I'm going to draw out in the middle. And then I'm going to measure
using my pencil again, I'm going to see how much of this cone can I see
coming out of the sphere? I would say it's a little
bit, not that much. Maybe like this much. Then drawing a line out, now we can see that the sphere is casting a shadow not only on floor table but on the cone because they
are touching each other. First I'm going
to use my eraser. Now I'm going to draw
the cast shadow from the sphere going on the floor, but then it's also going
around on the cone. And then we have
our form shadow. Okay? And I'm going to do
the same for the cone. Now that we have those shadows, we can erase using our two B. Now, going in with the four B, let's get that core shadow. Okay, And I'm going to
go back with the H B and do a light shade. I forgot the got
the core shadow. Then now it's time to bump up all of those shadows
using the eight B. Take the four B. Two, I'm here with the eight B. Just make that core
a little bit darker. Then I'll take the
two shade around it. Now, this is where our
eraser is going to come in. Have you noticed that there's the light spot that's coming
all the way around here? What is it that is
called the reflection? Because these two objects
are so close together, the white from the cone is reflecting back
onto the sphere. And it's creating the
white light spot here. What I'm going to do is
I'm going to take the side of the eraser and just erase out a little bit so that
I can get that reflection. Then I'm also going to
erase here just a tiny bit just to make it a
little bit lighter. Let's just do some touch ups. This is the closer
shadow, then this one, I can see it coming
out here super lightly to add it using the H B.
12. time to draw: 2 shapes: music
13. Put It Together (3 Shapes): Final drawing to
wrap up this lesson. Okay, so once again, I'm going to start
with the sphere, and it's going to
be our basic unit. As you can see, the angle
has changed a little bit. Instead of looking
at it directly, we're now looking at it a
little bit more from above. And that is going to change
the perspective a little bit, but not too much. Let's start again by
drawing our basic unit, which is the sphere. We need to make sure that I have enough room for everything. I'm going to draw
just a tiny bit smaller. Here's our sphere. And now I'm going to use it
to measure everything else. From here, I'm going
to draw the cube. First thing I want to
do is I want to check the width of the front
face that we can see here. Okay, it's a little bit smaller. Then another thing
I want to look at is the distance between the two. How much face is there
in between them? Also, I will check where
this point is on the sphere. It's a little bit over
a half right here. Okay? And now I know that this side
is higher than this side. And I'm going to take my
pencil to check the angle. Said something like this.
And I need to measure. Okay, Now let's check the
angle of the other sides. This line is pointing a tiny
bit over here to the right. For now, I'm just going
to draw a line like this. I'm not worried about
how tall it is, if it's the right size. I'm just trying to
get the angle right. As for this one,
it's pointed tiny, tiny bit to the left. And then I'm going
to check the height, so it's the same height. Should be the same, will be about here for this line. I'll just try to match it a little bit with
the other line. Let's say it's
something like that. Now let's move on
to our next slide. Because we cannot see
so much of it and it's at an angle so much it
really will trick our eye. What I'm going to
do is I'm going to use this point as
the pivot point. I'm just going to turn my pencil and see how much it's angled in relationship
to this line. I would say it's
something like that. I turn my pencil, but like this, maybe I'll just put
a line up here for the next point. Something like that. Now that I have these two lines, I need to figure out
how big this face is. Instead of using the sphere, now I'm just going
to use the face of the cube that we already
have and try to measure it. I think it's about
half of this side, maybe a little bit
more out there. Then let's check the
angle of this line. Okay, now we have our two sides, but I can see something
looks a little bit strange. I think this line is actually pointing in a little
bit too much. I'm going to pull it
out just a little bit. This is where it gets
tricky because the cone is actually hiding this point
and we can't see it. I'm just going to make it up, but using the rule, I want to face the line more horizontal rather
than at an angle. Because once again,
we're going to get that accidental point
that's too high. I think this point should
be a bit more over. It looks a bit too. Looks a little bit strange. Okay, so now we have our cube. Let's go on to our first thing I want to do is figure
out how wide it is. Using our basic unit, I would say it's almost
the same size as the cone. Then I want to figure out
where it is coming out. I would say it's
about right here. Make my marker, and I would say it's covering
about this much. That's the bottom of
my ellipse. All right. Now let's draw out how tall is it? I know that it's a sphere. And a little bit, maybe up here. Okay. Immediately as
I draw out my cone, I notice a big mistake. That is, that I think
it's coming out too much. Because for some reason, I can still see this point. Let's try it again. Maybe we need to move
it over a little bit. Yeah, so if I put
a line down here, I can see that it's almost
half of the sphere. But when I look at my reference
photo, it's about here. So I need to need
to move it over. Okay, so now if I draw out
it touches the corner, now it could be that this
corner is a little bit wrong. So I'm going to just move
it over a little bit, rather than drawing out
the whole thing again. I'm just going to move that
corner over a little bit. Okay, I think our shapes
are looking good. Let's start to draw
out the shadows. We have the form shadow and
then draw our cast shadow. The cone is casting a shadow, but it's pretty far out here. Go to draw the form
shadow using our two B, So that's our face shade. And now let's go
into the four B, make everything a
little bit darker. Okay, now using our H B, we're going to go in and
do all the lighter parts. I'll take the eight B. And
just to bump everything up, we have a little bit of a
reflection going on down here. I'm going to blend
this out a little bit. Now I'm going to take the eraser and erase a bit out here. Erase a bit out here
where that reflection is. Clean it up a little bit. Then there's this one point here where it's so
bright I can't even see the line between
the cone and cube. I'm going to draw that out. One last thing I notice
is that the shadow for the cube on the ground is actually darker
than the cube itself. I'm just going to go in, make that shadow a little bit. D.
14. time to draw: 3 shapes: music
Jenna Lo, Watercolor + Sketching + Nature
