Drawing for Expression: Make Your Lines Work!

1. Introduction: When we think about line, we usually think about outline, but this is only the beginning. So much information can be conveyed in a simple line. Line can express form and depth through value and shading. It can suggest different types of materials with texture. It can even add movement and dynamism to your work. Line is very versatile and it can have many roles in a drawing. Hi, I'm [inaudible] a graphic designer, an artist, and an illustrator living in the beautiful province of Quebec. I've worked in the creative field for a little over 10 years, but I originally fell in love with drawing at a very young age. I still get excited when buying pencils, and I'd rather spend an evening drawing than partying. I consider myself a lifelong learner. In all of my years as a visual artist, I've jumped from drawing to painting, to photography, to graphic design. But much like I ran into a magnet, I always do come back to my first love; drawing. Many of us see sketching and drawing as the first step to something greater. I, on the other hand, have always been fascinated by drawing as an art in itself. I can look for hours into the great masters sketches, analyzing and observing. But why? Because drawing, while still simple as a medium, is so much more complex than it appears. This class is all about harnessing the power of line work in order to draw more expressively. That is to say, not necessarily drawing exactly what is in front of you, but how to add depth, emotion, and texture through the intentional use of line. This class is perfect for beginners or anyone who came to level up their line game. Together we're going to work on a sketchbook and play with various exercises. Through these exercises, you will learn how to use line to add value, shading, texture, movement, and mood to your drawings. You'll gain confidence in your line work, improve your drawing skills along the way, and take steps towards developing your very own graphic language. At the end of this class, not only will you have a pretty cool sketchbook to show around, you will also be able to translate what you see in the expressive way that is your own. Hopefully, you will have jumped out of your comfort zone and try new ways to draw exploring all kinds of lines while giving your drawing a renewed strength. Drawing expressively is in fact, drawing your own version of the world. If you're ready, grab a sketchbook and your graphite pencils and we'll embark on your own journey to become more expressive. 2. Class Project: All right, let's take a look at the class project, which is very simple. Through this class, we are going to be working on a sketchbook containing all of your exercises. Plus at the end, a bit of a putting-it-all-together challenge. After a brief introduction concerning line, we are going to start with a line brainstorm. Next, we'll differentiate outline and contour. Once this is done, we'll explore a line through volume, shading, texture, movement, and mood. Lastly, we are going to put it all together with a challenge. All you need for this class are a few household items, a sketchbook or loose sheets, and graphite pencils. I strongly suggest that you use soft graphite pencils such as 5 or 6B, so you can get darker tones if you want to. Note that I do recommend that you do more than is suggested in the class. Why? First, because it's a lot of fun. You'll see how liberating the exercises are when we get there. But mostly because drawing, like everything in life, takes time. The more you do, the more you'll get out of it. If you're ready, grab your sketchbook and we'll start with line. See you in the next lesson. 3. What Is A Line? On Line Quality!: I think we all know what line is. But line as an artistic element has specific characteristics. Let's look at a few pointers to see line from an artist's perspective. Line is one of the seven elements of art, along with shape, form, volume, space, texture, and color. You can think of line as a moving dot. What I mean is when you touch your pencil to a piece of paper, if you lift it right away, there will be a dot. If instead of lifting the pencil right away, you decide to move it along the paper. Now you have a line. I guess we could say that line is the most basic visual element. But at the same time, line can be a lot. Lines can be organic or geometric. Their most obvious use is the outline of a subject. But line in itself can be a little boring, and since this class is about developing expressivity, let's introduce line quality. What I mean is what characterizes lines. When speaking about line quality, we usually mean line weight or the thickness of a line. But lines can be more than that. They can be controlled, they can be forceful, they can be fluid, and so on. Quality gives a descriptive aspect and according to it, lines can express, form a try dimensionality, light, depth, texture. It can guide viewers eyes, and this is why I said that line can be a lot. To draw more expressively. Keeping line quality in mind is essential. As you can see, line is a powerful tool. This class is about learning to harness this power and start your journey into drawing more expressively. Follow along in the exercises as we discover ways to use line for expression. The next lesson is going to be about activating our brains and our pencils with a line brainstorm. See you there. 4. Brainstorming Lines: [MUSIC] Let's loosen up a bit with a fun and stress-free exercise. In this lesson, we are going to brainstorm all lines. Grab your sketchpad or your paper and a pencil, I'll throw some objectives at you and your job is to draw a line you think matches the objectives. Ready? Let's go. Smooth, random, curly, and angled. I would love to see what you came up with so if you feel up to it, please upload your lines in the projects gallery. Note that everybody's lines are bound to look different, this is normal and way more interesting than everybody being the same. Now that I've put you on the spot, let's have a more in depth brainstorm. Please take a few moments to name and draw all of the lines that you can think of. I invite you to pause here and then I will share my own brainstorm. [MUSIC] As promised, here's my own brainstorm of many lines that could be used in drawing. The first one I came up with this repetitive and I have these little sketches next to them. Then there is steady, continuous. There's no real drawing next to it so let's go for it. This is when you don't ever break your line. Random, it could be continuous or not when you are going random. Smooth, let's go for curvy and controlled. Jagged, curvy. There are many kinds of curvy. Angled, orderly. Here we are. There's hatching and crosshatching, the classics. You could go for pale, very pale. You could also go for bold and strong. The movement of your hand also makes for some objectives. Could go with varying pressure. It's this one here. We don't see it much but bolder and paler in the same line, you vary. Curvy and wavy, weird, which is the same as random when you think about it and curly. Once again, I invite you to share your brainstorm in the project gallery. This will be quite interesting. In the next lesson we are going to have fun with contour drawing. See you there. [MUSIC] 5. Drawing Objects: Outline vs. Contour : Earlier, I mentioned that the most obvious use of lines is to outline subjects. This is where we are going to start our journey. But we won't stop there, because outlines, well, obvious are not as interesting as contours which are even more relevant to drawing more expressively. An outline is the outer shape of an object or figure, or the limits of this object or figure if you like. It does not model form, meaning it is not three-dimensional, only two-dimensional, and it's not very expressive in itself. Now that we understand what outline is, let's take a look at contours. The main difference is that contour does give a sense of tridimensionality, but there is more to it when we speak of contour drawing. In terms of art practice, contour drawing is a very basic and useful drawing exercise. It was popularized by Kimon Nicolaides in his 1941 book, The Natural Way to Draw. There are many variations including Dr. Betty Edwards' version. Contour drawing looks at the whole without too much detail. It is mostly done without looking at your drawing, but you can pick a little depending on the variation. It is a great way to improve hand/eye coordination. In this lesson, we will remix Nicolaides' version of contour drawing. It will help you figure out the difference between outline and contour, and it will be the starting point on which we will build our sketchbook. Nicolaides says that in order to draw contour, you must focus on the point on your subject and you start drawing only when you are convinced that your pencil is resting on that point while in fact you're drawing on your paper and looking at your subject. Our remixed version will be different. We're going to outline objects that are laying flat on the paper and then we're going to add contour. I will show you what I mean and then you can go on your own. Choose 5-10 small objects from your everyday life. Try to choose objects that don't look anything alike, some with strained lines and others more complex. Start with one simple object and lay it flat in your sketchbook. With your pencil, draw the outline of your object. Great. Now, we know what outline is. Move your object a little to the side of your drawing. Now, we complete the contours. Contours will go inside the object; they give a sense of tridimensionality. They can be stickers, outlines of different shapes, and so on. Do this with all objects. Later on, once we have explored ways to make your lines more expressive, we'll draw live objects instead of outlining them flat. [MUSIC] I know this will seem odd, but we will end this exercise here. I promise we'll come back to it later. In the next lesson, we are going to explore line as value. See you there. [MUSIC] 6. Line As Value: [MUSIC] In this lesson, we're going to use line as value. In other words, how to create value using lines only, with the goal of drawing more expressively. But first things first, what is value? Value is one of the seven basic elements of art, along with line, shape, form, space, texture, and color. Value basically conveys the lightness or darkness of a color. In drawing or painting, we use value to create the illusion of light. To know how important that is, you have to understand that to see is to decode the light in our surroundings. If there is no light, there is no seeing. If there is no illusion of light, well, there's nothing to see in your painting or drawing. Value also creates contrast according to the range of tonal values used. To achieve low contrast, we use a higher range of tonal values with less difference between them. To achieve high contrast, we use fewer tonal values between hues with bigger steps between them. To understand this better and to develop ways of using lines as value, we are going to work on our own value scales using lines only. However, at this point, you must be asking yourself, how am I ever going to achieve this? I have to tell you it's quite simple. I'm going to teach you two techniques to use line as value. First, you can create different values using the space between the lines. For darker values, your lines have to be closer together with less paper showing through. On the contrary, for lighter values, your lines need to be drawn further apart with more paper visible. The second way of achieving different values is using pressure. When applying more pressure, you get darker value, and you guessed it. When applying less pressure, you get lighter values. You can also combine the two techniques. Let's take a look at a few reference images to see this. In this image of surgical instruments, there is a good example of how value can be created with the space between the lines. Here and here. You can see that the lines are drawn closer together and the drawing seems to be darker than in this part here, where the lines are further together. Also, a great example of this is this very graphic drawing of a building. This is a clear example of how lines drawn closer together give a darker value to your drawing. In fact, this whole drawing uses only that principle to create value. In this drawing of Mary sister of Martha, you can see that even though lines have pretty much the same space in-between them, pressure is used to get darker tones, especially in the ear and the hair sections. The same happens in this scary drawing of two beasts, where we clearly see that the pressure was used in the eyes and mouth areas to get darker values. Now we get to the fun part. Let's do our value scales. I'll show you how I do mine and then you can go ahead and do your own. To start our two value skills, we will first draw a template for the skills. I'll show you how I do it. But you can do the size that you wish. It doesn't really matter. I like to work with five squares. Here's what it's going to look like. [MUSIC] Now we can set the ruler aside. The principle of the value scale is that it's going to go from darkest to lightest, or the other way around. Whether you go from light to dark or dark to light does not matter. But you have to choose one of those two so you can see how to go from one to another. I'm going to go from dark to light. In the first one, I'm going to do space between the lines, and in the second one, I'm going to do pressure. What I like to do when I'm working on scales is I'm going to do the darkest, and then the lightest. Then I'm going to work my way in-between. Let's start with this space between the lines. Let's do the darkest one. I forgot to mention that I'm working with a 5B pencil. It's quite soft so I can have dark values, but this one just broke. I'm going to take another one. [NOISE] Here we go, a 5B. This is not ideal. I should've kept the same pencil, but we'll make do. For the lighter one, I'm going to leave a lot of space between my lines. Here we go. We can already see the difference and I'm going to work my way in-between. I'll start with the center and then I'll do the last ones. [MUSIC] There you go. It's not perfect, but you can see that the closer the lines are, the darker the value, and the further apart they are, the lighter the value. I'm going to do the same but with pressure now. Let's start with the darkest. I'm going to apply a lot of pressure. [MUSIC] There we go. Simple as that. Now you know how with using only lines, you can go from darkest to lightest. I invite you to share your process in the project gallery. I would love to see your value scales. In the next lesson we are going to explore line as shading. See you there. [MUSIC] 7. Line As Shading: Now that we have learned how to use a line as value, let's dig into line as shading. What is shading really? Shading is the act of adding value to create the illusion of form, space, and light in a drawing. Shading is also exercising control over the value produced, meaning that it is the technical side of things. It is also physically communicating the light source with a range of values. To sum it up. While value is the amount of black and white there as in a drawing. Shading is the act of putting it down to paper. There are many, many shading techniques. But since this class is about line and expression, we will be more focused. To explore shading the line we are going to draw two objects. One more curvy, more streamlined, and the other one with flat sides. It would help you to have a contrasted lighting setup. Note that for this step, you can find reference images in the resources if you don't want to start from scratch and just want to try the shading part. However, I strongly encourage you to try and draw the objects from observation. But how does one shade with lines only you must be asking yourself? Let's take a look. You're shading technique will probably depend on the texture of the object. But let's not get ahead of ourselves since we are covering this in the next lesson. The first shading technique we'll explore is frequency of line. The second technique we'll explore for shading is with pressure only. Haven't we heard this before? Yes, we have. Remember that shading is the physical aspect of applying value. Some concepts will cross both. Lastly, we'll use both frequency and pressure combined with random lines. Let's dive into the exercise. But first I will give myself some parameters. My first object will be flat-sided and irregular. [NOISE] I'll be using this, a simple box. My second object will be curvy, but still regular. To make things easier for myself. I'm ready to draw my objects and shade them. Here's a shot of what I see. You can look at my setup. Look at the difference between the sides. They are quite clearly different in terms of lighting. Let's start crosshatching. Remember that we are interested in expressivity and not as much in realism. It doesn't really matter if your object is not as realistic as you would like. I could even add this little bit of color here. As you can see with simple frequency of line, I can get the shading that I want. It's quite rough and that's what we want for now. Now for the curvy object, I will have to work in a more fluid way, meaning that there is no definition between the different values, contrary to the flat object. This is why we will be using pressure instead of frequency of line. It will be easier to go from dark to light in a more organic way. Let's start with a simple contours. [MUSIC] As you can see, I've been playing with pressure for this one, adding more in these areas here and there. Then trying to go smoothly from dark to light, adding less pressure. It's still pretty rough as a drawing. I kept it very simple, but we can already see how expressive it is. [MUSIC] Now for the third one, I'll be using the curvy object again. But with random lines. I could go on forever with this. I could add more detail, but I really don't have to. I think we get this sense of how it works. Now it's your turn to go and have fun. [MUSIC] Feel free to share your drawings in the project gallery. I would love to see what you're working on. In the next lesson, we are going to explore line as texture. See you there. 8. Line As Texture: Now that we have explored line as shading, we are going to look at line as texture. Texture has a place amongst the seven elements of art. In drawing we use visual texture, which is the illusion of physical texture. We will be creating a 2D illusion of the way an object or a surface must feel to the touch. There are many, many adjectives to describe texture. The most obvious being smooth and rough in my opinion. Texture is created with the use of value and shading. Once again, we are going to go back to our flat objects and add texture to them. I will be adding texture directly to the objects, but if you're in the original and you want to try something else, go ahead, that's great. First, since we are interested in drawing expressively in this class and not about representing reality closely, let's implied texture by inventing it. What I mean is the texture you decide to represent will be invented and it doesn't have to be a perfect representation of reality. Remember shading with pressure and frequency of line earlier. This will come in handy. Going back to the flat objects, we are going to add texture. Choose one of your objects and imply a rough texture. For your second object, create a smooth texture. As you can see for the rough texture I've been using more frequency of line and for the smooth texture, I've used more pressure than anything else. I won't go into more detail than that since I'd like you to come up with these yourself. Now it's your turn. Please share your work in the Project Gallery. It would be fun to see what you're working on. In the next lesson, we are going to explore line as movement. See you there. 9. Line As Movement: [MUSIC] The next lessons will be more on the abstract side of things. This means that there is no right or wrong answer, as it usually is an art. In the next minutes, we'll explore line as movement. There are many ways to implement movement in artworks. But once again, for this class, we will be more focused. We'll be focusing on creating the impression of action, and then also on what makes your eyes move through a drawing. These are some of the elements that will help us become more expressive in our drawings. But tell me this, how can we create some movement with lines only? It will help us to think of line as a moving that implies the artist's hands movement. Its starting and ending points can give direction to the movement. Think of 90 degrees angles as stable and diagonal lines as dynamic. Generally, curves imply movement. Also you can create rhythm with a motif. Irregular motif will give an impression of stability while an irregular motif will give the impression of being more dynamic. I'll try three kinds of movements and work with my flat objects. You can try these parameters yourself or you can try something else. First. I'll try and get the impression of a circular motion in the background. Then I'll go first, simulating random nervous movement, and last, I'll try and give an impression of stability, so no impression of movement or less movement. The first one is going to be giving an impression of a circular motion in the background. Now, this is a fun one. There is no right or wrong, but it's intuitive what you have to do to get some movement in. I think that having your lines crossover from each other gives even more of an impression of movement compared to say, if you had a line start and end, and then just starting another one. If you have them crossover, you have even more movement because it gives them a direction. I'm quite satisfied of this one. Let's go to the second one. We will try to simulate random nervous movement. See how when your lines are so energetic and don't have an overall direction, your eye doesn't really know where to rest. It gives this nervous, erratic feeling. I really like this. There is no resting. Lastly, we will try to give an impression of stability. Keep in mind that 90 degrees angles are stable. I haven't really thought this through, but by giving more value here, it also gives the object something to rest on. It gives even more stability to the drawing. It was done really fast, but I like the effort [MUSIC]. Feel free to share in the project gallery. I would love to see your drawings, especially if you did something different than I did. I would love to see that. In the next lesson, we're going to use lines to create a certain mood in our drawing. See you there. [MUSIC] 10. Line As Mood: [MUSIC] The next concept of this class is exploring line as mood. What is mood? The mood of an art piece is the overall feeling you get when you look at it. It can be many things. It can be calm, nervous, dramatic, positive, luminous, epic, peaceful, stable, and so on. Many elements can alter the mood of an art piece, color, lighting contrasts et cetera. Since we're drawing with graphite in this class, we'll have to be more focused. In drawing, the mood will be controlled by all of the previous elements we've been working with, value, shading, texture, and movement. Surprise. They will all come together to create a certain mood. But how does that work when working with line? For example, tranquility. You can use a wide range of values to have less contrast, soft shading, so with pressure only. You can use smooth textures and stable lines. All these elements together, will create a mood of tranquility. For more drama, you may use contrasted values, you may also use hard shading, or frequency of line, rough textures, nervous, dramatic movement, so you get the idea. Everything comes together to create the mood of the piece. The last exercise is starting to put everything together. Starting from two of our flat objects, let's work on two different moods. The first one would be tranquil or peaceful, and the second one, nervous or dramatic. Starting from the contour drawing, you already have to make decisions about line quality to get a certain mood. These decisions will also influence all of the other elements, value, texture, shading and movement. Let me show you how I do it, and then you can try it out. I did not think about this when I was drawing it, but now that I see it, I can already decide that this is going to be more tranquil and this is going to be more nervous, because see the lines, how they are a bit erratic, and they are darker, and a bit more awkward, and these are smoother, and with more curves, and they're more fluids. This is why I chose one and the other. The contour drawing will already set the tone, and then you add the rest of the elements, value shading, texture, and movement. [MUSIC] Now let's go for the nervous and dramatic mood. [MUSIC] The only thing I don't really like is that there is no real definition between the negative spaces and the object itself in this one, but I really like how the nervous and dramatic mood is seen through. This could be reworked, we are learning, this is experimentation, so overall, I'm quite happy about this. It's a great sketch book overall, and now it's your turn to try. [MUSIC] In the next lesson, let's put everything together and draw live objects. [MUSIC] 11. Live Drawing: Use Those Lines!: The work you've done will come together all by itself in the end. But let's push this a bit further with a challenge. Choose a model and make a few contour drawings. Take your time, there's no rush. If you are completely either lost, I invite you to use the flat objects technique. But I really encourage you to start from scratch and get out of your comfort zone. Remember, we're not focusing on realism, but on expression. When you have loosened up a bit from your contour drawings, go for the big one. Start with the contour, but take your time to decide what the mood of the drawing will be. This should help you decide what kinds of lines you will use to add a certain range of values, the way you will shade, the kind of texture, and if you wish to depict movement or not. Think of the negative spaces around your object. The way you activate them or not, will affect the overall mood and the expressivity of your drawing. When you're satisfied, do share your drawings in the projects gallery along with the whole process. I strongly encourage you to do many drawings in the end. The more you practice, the easier it will get, let loose, and use lines for expression. Up next, a conclusion. See you there. 12. Conclusion: I hope you enjoyed working on your lines as much as I did and that you picked up a few tricks along the way. To come back to these exercises whenever you feel stuck or lack inspiration, or even if you're just bored, the more you do, the more you get out of your drawings. I strongly suggest that you make this sketchbook a part of your regular practice. Please don't hesitate to ask any question about this class or the exercises that we did together. I will of course answer to the best of my ability, and it would be my pleasure to connect with you all. Thanks again for taking the time to watch this class and I will see you very soon. Bye.