Learn To Draw (From Life!) : 3 Approaches to Measuring + Proportion

1. Welcome!: There are a range of techniques for working with measuring and proportion depending on the type of reference you're working from. Being able to understand and use these is the key to being able to make that tricky transition from drawing from your imagination to drawing from reference photos through to drawing from one or a small collection of real objects in front of you. Once you can do that the world really is your oyster in drawing terms. I'm really excited to share these skills with you. [MUSIC] Hi, I'm Mel and I'm an illustrator, artist, and a qualified teacher with over 15 years experience in teaching others how to draw. Learning about measuring and proportion is without doubt the skill which will have the biggest impact on your drawing. If you are a complete beginner, this class will give you a great foundation in all things, measuring and proportion. If you have a little drawing experience or you're pretty comfortable with drawing from reference photos but find it difficult to transition to drawing from life, this class will give you some real tools to help you do that. Or it may be that you're pretty comfortable with drawing but you'd like a refresher on some of the basics. I think this class will be a great fit for you too. We will begin by going over the fundamentals and theory of what measuring and proportion in drawing is and why it's important. Next, we will use the grid technique to work from a reference photo to produce a drawing with accurate proportions. Then we will progress to working from a single object using the viewfinder technique to help us draw this accurately. Finally, we will move on to tackling a simple still life using a variety of citing techniques to help us achieve realistic proportions. Along the way, I'll be giving you a ton of practical tips like how to construct a still life and also how to check and correct your drawing when something isn't quite right. So by the end of this class, you'll have so many new drawing skills. You will be able to draw better than before you started watching it. If that all sounds good, let's get started. [MUSIC] 2. Class Project + Overview: [MUSIC] In this class we are going to work through three different approaches to using measuring and proportion, which are best suited to three different reference types. This class is divided into three mini-projects. In the first project, we will work from a reference photo and use the grid technique to construct our drawing. Because our subject won't move, this is a great opportunity to really delve into the fundamentals of measuring and proportion, and practice all those theoretical massive related things which can feel a bit overwhelming when we're working from life. In our second project, we are going to work from one single object and use a viewfinder to help us make the transition from the reference photo. This allows us to transfer some of what we've just practiced in the grid technique, but make the transition to real objects. Don't worry I'll answer all those questions that you might have like, what should you choose to draw? How are you going to stop your viewfinder from moving? Our third project tackles a simple still life. In this project, we'll be using a range of citing techniques to help us put the drawing together. Don't worry if you haven't heard of this technique before, I'll be explaining everything along the way. But once you understand citing, you can pretty much draw anything anywhere. This is what we're working towards. The three projects build on each other in terms of skills and complexity, so I would recommend that you watch through them in order so that you don't miss out on something fundamental which is covered earlier on. Each project is divided into two videos. In the first video, we will cover the theory and I'll explain the technique and go through any preparations you need to make, and in the second video, I'll demonstrate the technique in a demo video. I've structured the class with these three separate projects around each technique because I often see one one these techniques taught really well but it's often in isolation. Learning sighting techniques is great, but if you haven't had the foundation of working with grids, it can seem like a really huge leap and it's quite easy to feel overwhelmed. Conversely using the grid technique is great, but it doesn't really help you if you want to work from life. My hope is that in learning these three approaches, you will have a range of tools to draw on whatever type of reference you're working with, and I also hope it just gives you the confidence to start drawing from life too. This class is suited to complete beginners, it's helpful if you're reasonably comfy with drawing basic straight and curved lines and simple geometric shapes. If you don't quite feel there yet then I'd recommend checking out my class, learn to draw a beginner's guide to sketching anything, which will give you those foundational sketching skills to help you feel more confident coming into this class. For your class project, you're very welcome to share 1, 2, or all 3 projects. It would be great to see your reference alongside your drawings. Don't forget to take a photo of those to include too, particularly if you would like some constructive feedback on your drawings, in which case, it will be really important that I can see what you were working from. When you're ready to upload your class project, head over to the projects and resources tab and hit the "Create Project" button. Here, you can add the contents of your project, adding images, which could be photos or scans of your drawings, as well as your references and some text to reflect on the process. Once you've added content there, you can also give your project a title and cover photo to polish it all off beautifully. Don't forget to hit "Publish" once you're done and you can come back anytime to edit or add to your project. I know that it can be really scary putting your work out into the world, particularly when you're just starting out with drawing. But I would encourage you to be bold and share, sharing your work and getting feedback from others is a great way to accelerate your progress. When you post your class project, if you would like constructive feedback on how to improve your drawing, please indicate that in your projects and make sure that you have included photos of your references too, so that I'm able to provide that type of feedback. Alternatively, it may be that you prefer to share your work more as a celebration of what you've achieved, and if that's the case, fantastic I'll be right there high-fiving you. I highly encourage you to take a look around the project gallery and just drop a few likes and comments on some other student projects too. An encouraging comment has the power to absolutely make someone's day, so don't miss that opportunity to spread a little bit of joy. In the next video, we're going to go through the tools and materials you'll need for this class, so when you're ready join me there. 3. Tools + Materials: [MUSIC] Here are the materials you'll need to complete all three projects in this class. You need a pencil. We're not going to be working with tone and shading so any color and hardness of pencil will be fine. But it's helpful if it's erasable so that you can adjust your drawings as we go through the class. I'm going to be using an HB. We'll be using your pencil in Project 3 as our guide for the sighting techniques so it's helpful if your pencil isn't too short. If it is, you might want to bring along another straight-edged object like a paintbrush, a knitting needle, or even a stick. You'll also need some paper. It doesn't need to be anything special. cheap printer paper is just fine. In the second project, when we come to make viewfinders, it's helpful to have a slightly heavier weight of paper or card to make your viewfinder from. Just so it isn't too floppy, but sticking a couple of sheets of thinner paper together can also do the trick. You'll also need an eraser and a ruler. You'll need a pair of scissors or a scalpel and cutting mat to make your viewfinder whole. When we make our viewfinders, it's also helpful to have some thread and sticky tape. If you don't have any thread, dental floss would be a great substitute. Basically anything thread-like. Grab your supplies and join me in the next video where we'll cover some of the theory and fundamentals of measuring and proportion. See you there. 4. About Measuring + Proportion: [MUSIC] Proportion refers to the size relationships between different parts of your reference and measuring is the method by which we can work out what those relationships are. For example, the bottom of the spout of this jug falls at the halfway point of its height. Knowing this will allow us to create a drawing of it which is in proportion. One of the key things to understand about proportion is that it is about size relationships, not just size so you can make a drawing which is tiny or huge from the same reference, but the proportions would be the same. Learning to measure will enable you to achieve more accurate proportions in your drawings to make your drawing more closely resemble your reference. It is an incredibly important skill, and I would say it is the skill which will have the biggest impact on the quality of your drawings. Of course, not everyone wants to draw realistically and in proportion to the reference and you can make some incredible art by breaking all the rules of drawing in proportion. But I strongly believe that it is a skill you need to understand and master in order to be able to push it and work with more stylized or exaggerated proportions successfully. Like Picasso said, learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist. In order to understand proportion, we need to understand ratios and simple fractions. If you're panicking at the mention of those words, please don't worry, we're going to go through it step by step. First, let's explore what I mean by ratios. This is a square. The width and the height of the square are the same measurement, so we would say that this has a proportional ratio of 1:1. Now, I'm going to create a rectangle made from three squares stacked on top of each other. This would have a proportional ratio of 1:3. Note the width is first, followed by the height, second. A rectangle which is only one square high but four square's in width would therefore have a proportional ratio of 4:1. When we come to drawing, it is highly unlikely that our proportions will fall so neatly into these square units. It's far more likely you might encounter something like this. Say a rectangle which is one square wide by two and a half squares in height. The proportional ratio here would be 1:2.5 even this is probably not exactly how neatly things will end up and we'll need to use our judgment to make some approximate measurements and use some very simple fractions. Let's have a look at an example and revisit our jug. Say we are trying to find the height of the jug relative to its width. First, we need to measure the width at its widest point and see how many times that measurement fits into the height. We can see that the jug is not quite as tall as double the width. How tall is it? This is where it's helpful to use very simple fractions. I like to use quarters because I think they're pretty easy to work with if we divide our unit of measurement in half and in half again. You can just do this by eyes so you don't need to use a ruler. We can see that the height of the jug is somewhere pretty close to one and three-quarters the width. Knowing this will be enough to give us a pretty good shot at drawing this jug in proportion. You can use smaller fractions, such as 1/10 if that's something you feel comfy doing to get a more accurate measurement if you want to. But I tend to find personally that working with quarters is something that my brain can handle. I feel happy to estimate them by eye and they give me a result close enough to make a drawing which is in proportion. Now that we know our proportional ratio of this subject is one to one and three-quarters, we can transfer those proportions onto paper to begin our drawing. Whether we're drawing in a pocket size sketchbook or a huge piece of paper, those proportions will be the same because they are relative to each other, not relative to the paper that you're drawing on. Now that you understand those basic principles of proportional ratios and fractions, we're almost ready to dive into our first project. Before we do that, I just want to mention that no one measuring strategy is perfect and they will all have faults. Which is why I think it's so important to learn a range of measuring strategies so that you can draw upon the techniques which best suit your reference and there may be some techniques that you prefer over others. Just like any other drawing skill, it does take a lot of practice and patients to master measuring and drawing in proportion, so don't be disheartened if you find it difficult or if it just doesn't quite seem to fall into place at the first attempt. This is normal, so please don't give up. We'll be looking at some different methods and more examples through the class so you'll get a lot more comfy with it as we go. Let's dive into Project 1, drawing from a reference photo using the grid technique. Join me in the next video when you're ready. 5. Project 1: Drawing From a Reference Photo Using a Grid: When you're starting out learning to draw, using a reference photograph is a great way to get comfy with some of the basics of measuring and proportion before you progress to working from life because your reference won't move or change. For the first project in this class, I'd like us to work from a reference photo. If you have a still-life already set up that you'd like to draw, then you can, of course, take a photo of that. I've provided some examples in the class resource you're welcome to use too. Your image could contain one object if it's fairly complex, or more than one object, but I wouldn't use more than three so there's enough going on to give us some measurements to work with. But it's not so complicated that it becomes overwhelming. Also try to use a reference photo with very little or ideally nothing in the background so that you can clearly see your objects. Another benefit of using a photo as a reference is that we can draw on the photo to help us translate what we can see to our drawing. We can practice particular curves or angles, for example. So if you're able to printing out your reference, it's preferable to working from it digitally. I would always encourage you to take your own photos to draw from. They don't need to be anything fancy and you probably already have something suitable you could work with. Alternatively, if you need to find a reference photo from elsewhere, take a look at those I've provided in the class resource, or try some royalty-free image-sharing sites like Unsplash. That way, you won't find yourself in an awkward situation if you draw from another image you find online, which you don't have permission to use. The first step of this process is to draw out our grid onto our reference photo. We first need to measure our photo. I tend to find that using inches works pretty well to give us pretty decent size grid squares. If we're working with an A4 or roughly eight by 11 inch printed image. This should work pretty well, but you can make your grid really using any unit of measurement you feel comfy with. It's really important for this technique to work well, that your grid squares are actually square, so they have a proportional ratio of one-to-one. It's not impossible to work with rectangles with the grid method, but it does make it really quite easy to make a very tiny mistake, which can be quite difficult to fix later if your proportions are just a little bit out. I recommend sticking with squares only. We want to round our image to the nearest grid square to make things a little easier. We don't want to be drawing, say a third of a grid square. Hopefully, your image will have enough background to be able to lose a little bit without it affecting the image. Alternatively, you can always add one grid square if you need to do that to keep all your image in the frame. Now you can use your ruler and pencil to carefully mark out your grid squares, making sure any bits that you're cutting off don't affect the image. Using a set square or just the corner of another piece of paper is a great way to make sure that you get a nice 90-degree angle to make sure your grid is nice and even and not skewed or wonky. If you don't have a printer to be able to physically draw on your photo, you can draw your grid digitally. In the class resources, I've provided a PNG file grid, which you can save and import into whatever digital program you use. Or you may have your own method of making a grid. Just remember to make sure that your grid squares are square. I've also provided a couple of examples in the class resource, which already have a grid drawn on top of them just in case you don't have a printer or the means to add your own grid digitally. I would encourage you to draw your own grid though if that's at all possible for you. Just so that you get the practice in applying these skills. Once we've got a grid on our reference image, we can then draw out a grid of the same proportions onto our paper. The grid on your drawing paper does not have to be the same size as the grid on your reference photo. It just needs to have the same proportions. That is, it should be the same number of squares wide and high as your reference. But those squares could be bigger or smaller. This is the beauty of the grid technique. It's a great method to enable us to plan at a size we're comfy drawing in for end results which could be much larger like a mural, for example. Once you have decided what size your drawing is going to be, measure the height of your drawing paper and divide that by the height of your grid. That will give you the maximum proportional scale you can work with. For example say my drawing paper is 25 inches high and my grid is 10 inches high. I know that I can make my grid up to 2.5 times larger on the drawing paper. Do the same with the width of the drawing paper and the grid just to make sure that proportionately your paper will fit the grid. Then I tend to round down to the nearest whole number to make things nice and easy. Say my height gives me a proportional ratio of 2.5, but the width of my paper is a little different so that gives me a proportional ratio of 2.3. I would go with a ratio of two. Which means I know that the height and width will fit onto my paper if I make my grid squares double the size. If this feels a little bit complicated, the easiest option would be to draw your grid at exactly the same scale as your reference. You could use the same sized paper as the photo is printed onto. But these techniques are really helpful to come back to later if you want to scale your drawings up or down. Once you have a grid on your reference image and a grid of the same proportions on your drawing paper, the rest is pretty straightforward. We can use our reference like a map, identifying where specific points of our reference are located. This is how we can create a more accurate drawing of our reference with more accurate and realistic proportions than we would achieve by eye alone. There are a couple of different ways you can go about the grid technique. You can either go grid square by grid square, or you can use the grid to find the main landmarks to help us sketch in the whole thing. We can use those principles we discussed in the previous video of looking for the fractions in each square to determine exactly where on each line our subject sits. If a particular grid square has a lot going on in it, you can divide that grid square up further to help you locate the various markers. Now it's your turn. What I'd like you to do now is to choose your photo reference and decide how large your drawing paper is going to be t0o, and bring those along to the demo video coming up next. I'll be using this reference image, which is included in the class resource if you'd like to follow along with me. When you're ready, join me there. 6. Project 1: DEMO: [MUSIC] In this video, we're going to use the grid technique to make a proportionate drawing from our reference photo. This video will be sped up in places to make it easier to watch. Please pause it whenever you need to if you're drawing along with me. First I need to measure the height and width of my reference. I'm going to round that to the nearest whole number. You want to take it at its widest point. Of course, make sure you can fit it in. It looks like it will be seven inches in width by say nine inches in height. That's going to allow me to create a grid over my object without cutting anything off. If you're not sure how to start, I generally start with the height. It's going to be nine inches high. Try and center your measurement. Then I'm going to take it over to this edge first because it's closest to this edge and I don't want it to get cut off. I'm going to try and keep that ruler as parallel to the edge of the paper as I can to make sure that it's a nice fairly, and straight grid. We're going for nine inches, so I'm going to put marks at each of the inch points. That's going to form where my grid squares are going to go. You can see it's slightly wonky to the edge of the paper. It doesn't matter if it's a little bit out. What you don't want is a very slanted grid because you can end up getting slightly skewed squares. As long as I keep these at 90 degrees, it won't matter. Can use a set square if you have one, to get a really nice 90-degree angle. If you don't have a set square you can use a spare piece of paper which hasn't been cut by hand. If it comes out of a pack, then you can be sure that it's going to have a nice 90-degree angle. I'm going to use that piece of paper, line it up with the line I've already drawn. Then I'm going to use that. I know that that line is now a nice 90-degree angle from the first line that I drew. Now I can use that top line and put my markers on there every inch. That's going to be seven inches wide. I can do the same thing again to make sure that this angle is a nice 90-degree angle. It's going to look slightly not straight to the edge of the paper, remember, because the first line that I drew was not totally square to the edge of the paper, but as long as your grid is square, that is the most important thing. Hopefully, if I've done all my angles correctly, this should measure exactly seven inches across, but just to give myself the best charts I will use the edge of that piece of paper again to try it and make sure that angle is a nice 90-degree angle. You can see I'm lining up the long edge against the pencil line I've already drawn. Now, all we need to do is connect these measurements so that it creates our grid. I'm pressing quite hard with my pencil to create my grid lines really so that it shows up well enough for you to see on camera. But you can make your grid quite light. Now I'm going to draw out my grid on my drawing paper. I'm going to draw my grid at the same size as my reference because that is usually the size that I draw it. But if you want to go bigger or smaller, remember to keep the grid the same proportions. The same number of grid squares high and wide. Keeping those grid squares perfectly square to make sure you don't get any distortion in your grid. Something that I quite like to do so that I don't get confused about how many squares I've got and which one I'm using, is I do quite like to number my grid. Again, I'm going to be pressing quite hard with my pencil to make my grid quite dark so that it shows up well enough for you to see it on camera. But when you are doing this yourself, I would recommend that you draw the grid as lightly as you can so you can still see it, but then it's nice and subtle so that your drawing is the thing that's going to be standing out not the grid. I've drawn my grid out on my drawing paper. Before you actually start transferring the drawing, it's a good idea to double-check before you begin that you have actually got exactly the same number of grid squares wide and high as you've started with in your reference. I also quite like to number my grid squares, because I think it can be quite helpful when you're looking for something in the middle to help you reference getting the right one. Now I'm ready to start transferring my image. It doesn't really matter where you start. I feel as though I want to start with this big shape because it's quite dominant on the image. I'm going to start with this bit up here, which is in a Grid Square 3 and 1 here. This is why it's great to have a printed out image if you can because you can put a rough marker halfway point of that grid square to give me a sense of where to put it. I'll do it again here. That's maybe quarters on the next line. It's a little bit more than that. That can help to putting those markers on the lines and knowing where they hit each line. It can really give you enough information to have a really good shot at drawing this in proportion. The next one is going a bit in. I'm putting these marks in really lightly because these are what I call anchor points or reference points, a bit like marks on a map. Once I've got an idea of the whole shape then I'll go over it again with a more fluid line. I'm starting out by almost transferring where these things are. This grid square, I've actually got quite a lot going on in there. I'm going to actually divide it up in half to [NOISE] make four grid squares. You can do that if you find that helpful. You can do it by eye, you don't need to measure each time. It's going to help us to locate. [NOISE] As you're using your grid squares to locate the points, you might feel as though your drawing doesn't quite flow yet. That's quite normal with this technique because it's almost like we're creating a dot to dot of our drawing. Then once we've got enough information, we can use more fluid lines and strokes to make the drawing look a bit more natural. Don't worry if it's looking a little bit disjointed. It often does at this stage when you've got lots of location points in because we got lots of little points in our drawing and not really much flow at the moment. I think breaking these more complex objects down into grid squares is a very helpful way of cutting down the overwhelms when you look at the whole picture, you can think, gosh, I don't know where to start, but having it broken down into grid squares, it makes everything feel a little bit more achievable because we don't have to think about the whole thing at once, all we have to think about is one grid square at a time. If you want to, you can break that grid square down into more grid squares as well if there's a lot going on. It can be a really great way of training your eye in observation as well because very often we think we know what the object looks like, but actually, when you start really looking and comparing and measuring, it's not actually very often exactly as we thought it was. There's quite a lot going on here through this spout area, so I'm going to divide up my grid squares a bit more to try and locate these parts. You can choose to use this grid technique as much or as little as you want to. It might be that you want to use it to work out roughly how big the largest shapes are in your drawing. That might be enough, and then you might want to freehand drawing the rest in. Or it might be that you would prefer to construct the whole drawing by locating how all the different parts are proportionate to each other and measuring them and each way can be fantastic. It depends what appeals to you most. Lots of ways of using the grid technique depending on how confident you feel and how you like to use the measuring. Now I've used my grid to map out the proportions of my kettle, so I know where everything is. I've tried to use it to measure most things, but not absolutely everything, so I want to leave a little bit of room to sketch myself and use my own artistic license if you like. Everything is looking a little bit sketchy and a bit disjointed. I'm going to go back in with my pencil and I'm paying less attention to the grid this time. I'm looking more at the overall shapes and forms. I'm going to try and complete the drawing, so It feels a bit more natural by joining together some of those shapes where I've put several points on a particular shape. [MUSIC] Now it's your turn to complete your sketch using the grid as your guide. Keep checking back on your reference to check your marks against it and see if they're in the right spot. Keep reworking your sketch and erasing any incorrect lines as you go to eventually end up with a final light sketch. If there is anything that you would like me to check or if you would like me to give you feedback on ways to improve this drawing, it's helpful to keep the grid on your drawing. Don't forget to include a copy of your reference photo with the grid on it, in the class Project 2, so that I can see what you were working from, which will enable me to give you that feedback. If you're happy with your drawing or you don't necessarily want that type of feedback, then feel free to erase your grid. Congratulations, you've completed an accurate drawing from a reference photo using the grid technique. In the next video, we'll move on to explore how to use a viewfinder to draw an object from life. When you're ready, join me there. 7. Project 2: Drawing an Object From Life Using a Viewfinder: [MUSIC] Drawing from life can feel like a big step when you're learning to draw if you've been used to drawing from reference photos or from your imagination. The way we are going to approach this next drawing is to use a viewfinder to draw a single object or a simple collection of objects from life. A viewfinder is just a piece of paper or card with a hole cut in the middle of it, and it's a fantastic way to bridge the gap between working from a grid with a reference photo and using sighting techniques to work from life, which we'll be doing later because it uses elements of both these processes. This is a great transitional method. Viewfinders can be as simple as a piece of card with a hole cut in it through to pre-made sets of transparent or adjustable grids which you can purchase. I'd recommend experimenting with making your own viewfinders before making purchases to see if you like the technique. Viewfinders can help us to see our subject more clearly, removing the distractions of what is happening in the background. We can also use our viewfinder to help us frame interesting compositions. You can even create viewfinders in different shapes to make really unique drawings. Once you've mastered the principles, there is a lot you can do with them as a tool. Before we make our viewfinder, it's helpful to think about our drawing paper. For example, if you tend to draw on rectangular paper or maybe you love working in a square format, then create a viewfinder of those proportions. I tend to work on international paper sizes, mostly A4 or roughly 8 by 11 inches like the paper I used in the first project. So I'll make my viewfinder suit those proportions. I have a piece of thicker paper, which is the size of my drawing paper. If you don't have thick paper or card, try gluing two sheets of thinner paper together. This is helpful so that the viewfinder is rigid enough to keep its shape once it has a hole cut in it. I'm going to make my aperture or the hole in my card half the size of my drawing paper. This is mainly so that the structure will be strong enough so it helps to have a decent border around the edge. But you don't need the aperture to be as large as the drawing because you can move the viewfinder closer to you or further away to adjust the framing and relative size of your subject. The easiest method to do this is to fold a spare piece of paper of the same size in half and draw around it on your viewfinder. In the same way, as we round it down to the nearest grid square for our grid method in the first project, we also want to round down to make a nice even number of grid squares with our viewfinder too. I'm going to measure my aperture box and adjust it so that it's a little smaller. I'm using inches again, so I'll round down to the nearest inch, marking points at one inch intervals around all four edges. Before I cut out my aperture, I'm going to draw some grid lines over the aperture that I'm going to cut out. This is going to help me locate those grid lines once I've cut this hole out. I'm now going to cut the aperture out. You could do this with a scalpel in cutting that or with scissors. You don't need to keep the bit that you're going to cut out, so it doesn't matter if you need to cut into it with your scissors. Use some length of thread across the aperture attached to the sides with tape. I would just recommend doing one piece of thread at a time. You try and stick them all down at once. It can get a bit tricky with the tape. It just allows you to really accurately line up those pieces of thread with the marks that you've made on the edge of your viewfinder. If you don't have any thread, anything string-like would work perfectly well, so dental floss or string, anything really. This is why it's so helpful to have those marks on the edges of your viewfinder holes so that you can line your thread up with them really well. I've got my long pieces in, and now I will do my shorter pieces. [MUSIC] You can see now why it's important that our paper or card that we're making our viewfinder from is reasonably thick. If this was very thin, it would be really hard for the viewfinder to keep its shape and for those pieces of thread to stay totter. Hopefully, it's worked out okay with what you have at home. Another method for making a viewfinder, which if you don't have these materials to hand, you might have some clear plastic, and you can draw out a grid on some clear plastic with a permanent marker. That's another great way of making a viewfinder. Now you have a viewfinder made. You can draw out a grid of the same proportions on your drawing paper. Remember you can make it larger, smaller, or the same size as your viewfinder grid so long as the proportions stay the same. Make sure you have the same number of squares wide and high as your viewfinder. The principle of using a viewfinder is very much like the grid technique we have already practiced, but the grid exists in space and is in front of a real object. Of course, the first step of the process is choosing our subject to draw. Ideally, you want to choose an object which has a reasonable amount of complexity. It's quite interesting to draw, and you can easily identify the main shapes too. For example, a simple plant, a shoe works well after the cup or glass with a couple of pens or pair of scissors in it, which are probably objects you can pretty easily get your hands on at home. Next, we need to set up our subjects and our viewfinder so that we get a good composition when we're looking through it, and this can be the trickiest part of this technique. We want the object to take up most of the grid squares. If it's too far away and it's tiny in the corner, it's not going to be very easy at all. Think about adjusting the distance between your object and your viewfinder to make it fill more of those squares. In an ideal world, you don't really want to be holding your viewfinder as you draw, just because it's very likely that you'll move during the process of drawing and this is what can make things so tricky. You might need to use a few piles of books, some mugs, to lean your viewfinder against, and maybe even some sticky tape to keep it in place. What we're aiming for is that you can sit in a comfy position for drawing and can see through the viewfinder to the subject without needing to move at all. You want to be able to keep your body as absolutely still as possible so you're just moving your eyes to switch between looking at your drawing and looking at your subject. As soon as you start moving your head or your body, you'll run into some issues because your view of the objects through the viewfinder will change, which will make things tricky when it comes to start drawing. It can take some time to work out the best setup for this, but it is absolutely worth spending the time to get it right, because if your setup isn't right, it can really knock out everything else later. Once we get to actually drawing, the process is very much like those skills we have already practiced within the grid technique, although there are a couple of additional tips I'll walk you through during the demo. Now it's your turn. Make your viewfinder based on the proportions of the paper you are drawing on. Don't forget to scale down to the nearest grid square and draw a grid out on some drawing paper too. Choose a subject and then spend some time trying to get your setup right to minimize any movement at all in your body or head. Pause the video here until you've got all those things ready, and then join me in the next video, where I'll walk you through the viewfinder method in a demo video. See you there. 8. Project 2: DEMO: [MUSIC] In this video, we're going to use a viewfinder to draw an object with accurate proportions. I have made my viewfinder proportionate to the rectangular paper that I usually draw on and I've drawn out a grid exactly the same size as my viewfinder on my drawing paper. I've spent quite a long time working on my setup to make sure that my object is filling most of my grid squares, and I don't need to move at all in order to switch between looking at my drawing and looking through my viewfinder at my object. Before we start, I'm just going to show you exactly what I can see from my eye view. You can see that I have set up my viewfinder so that my objects, which is this fairly simple plant, is actually filling most of the grid squares. There are a few grid squares around the edge where the object is not touching them, but it's filling the whole thing. I set it up on this lamp. It's actually really handy because that's enabled me to keep the viewfinder still and get it to the right height. If you look down here, I can actually look at my drawing paper without actually having to move my body at all if I'm angled between my viewfinder and my drawing paper. That's how I've set everything up. Before we begin, just notice how you're sitting or standing to draw so that if you move as you're drawing, you can find your way back to this position. Just notice if you're sitting up straight or leaning back into the chair, if you're sitting in a chair, or maybe you're leaning onto a table in front of you a little, just try to make a mental note of where your nose is in space as you are setting up to draw. For me, my nose is pretty much in line with the very edge of my table. That's going to help me relocate back to the same position if I move. The other thing that you should do before you start to draw is just take a quick photo from your eye view on your phone. This can be helpful if you need to adjust your setup if you find yourself moving, but it's also really helpful to be able to add this into your class project alongside your drawing particularly if you would like me to give you any constructive feedback on how to improve your drawing. I'm just getting lined up to take a photo from my eye view. Just notice as you take your phone camera closer to your grid, notice how the object looks like it shrinks, and as you bring it further away, it fills the grid squares more. Try to take a photo from as close to your eyes as you can because that's how it will look to you. [NOISE] Now, we are set up. We can pretty much approach this drawing exactly as we did with the grid technique although one tip I would have for starting out is to just choose which eye you're going to close. Now, if you look through your viewfinder at your object, you will notice that depending on which eye you're looking through, it will look slightly in a different position. If you close one of your eyes, make sure that that is the eye that you're going to close all the way through as you check from your reference. I'm going to keep my right eye closed. First I'm going to try and very quickly locate the main shapes in my object within the grid just to help me reset my position if I move. I'm trying not to move my head very much at all just only to switch between looking at my object and looking at my paper and I can see very quickly that I can get the position of the pot just really loosely. Not accurate at all. I'm not worried about the shapes because I'm going to refine those later and that is going to be enough for me to relocate my head if I start to move. Now I can start to sketch in a little bit more detail. I'm doing this really lightly so that I can draw over these guidelines with more detail and accuracy as I go, but these first lines are just really helpful in helping me to relocate my position as I start drawing and inevitably start moving as well. Because the leaves are quite complex in my subject, the key landmarks I'm working on sketching in and locating first are the stem and the pot. For example, the right edge of the pot is just falling into that right-hand column of grid squares. If I look and see that the edge of the pot has moved into the second column of grid squares here, I know that I need to slightly adjust my position to bring it back again. I find it helps to work quite quickly because the longer you spend on the drawing, the more you might move your position. Working quickly just minimizes that amount of movement. I pretty quickly sketched in my main shapes. I'm just going and refining now. I'm referring to my viewfinder in the grid a bit, but less so for positioning things and more ready for making sure that I'm getting the right shapes because it's quite hard to do everything through the viewfinder from start to finish for the whole drawing. It's a great method to just lay down everything to make sure you've got things in proportion, but there comes a point where you get tired of closing one eye and you really want to just refine how things look so far. That's where I've got to now. You'll probably find that the longer you spend on your drawing, the more when you look back through the viewfinder, it will feel like it's not in the same position or it's moved more. That's just because the longer you spend on your drawing, you'll probably be moving more and twisting your body. You won't even be aware of it, but you just can't help it. When that happens, my advice would be don't erase everything and start again because you could keep doing that endlessly. Just really try to relocate what you first put down on your grid squares into the same place. Closing one eye remember to keep closing the same throughout. Just try and relocate it back to roughly where it was, but just trust those first marks that you put down because although we're checking and correcting in terms of location, you will have got it right the first time and it's quite easy to feel like you need to keep starting again if you find that everything has moved, but just really trust those first marks that you put down. [MUSIC] Once you have got to a point where you've got a sketch of your object you're happy with in terms of the outline and proportions, you can finish it off as we did before using a more defined line drawing. Again, whether you want to erase your grid lines may depend on the type of feedback you want. Leave those grid lines in if you would like me to review your drawing looking for areas to improve not forgetting to submit the photograph as well in your class projects that you took from your eye view. Well done. You've just completed an accurate drawing from real life using the viewfinder technique. In the next video, we'll move on to explore one last approach to measuring and proportion. When you're ready, join me there. 9. Project 3: Drawing a Still Life Using Sighting Techniques: [MUSIC] Welcome back. For our next project, we're going to be working from a simple still life, which is a collection of more than one object and we're going to be using sighting techniques. Sighting techniques are ways of using our sight to measure the proportions and angles of our subject and translate them onto our paper. We're leaving the grid behind and we'll be relying on our eye, our straight sided objects such as your pencil and our thumb to do the measuring for us this time. For the still life itself, I'd recommend finding three or more objects from around your home of medium complexity again. We're just working with line drawing in this class, so won't be introducing shading or texture. Really think about the complexity of the overall forms, for example three oranges together is not going to present us with enough complexity to be a good subject for working with proportion. But you wouldn't want three very intricate objects together either because that could feel very overwhelming, so aim somewhere in the middle. It can be a nice exercise to gather together lots of objects from around your home, which you feel have interesting forms and then try just arranging them together in different ways in which you feel that's going to make a nice and interesting drawing. Here's some tips which can help to make successful still-life compositions. Odd numbers of objects tend to look more natural together and are easier to arrange than even numbers. Try three or five objects together. Use a variety of heights and sizes of objects to keep your composition interesting. When arranging them, think about trying to create an overall shape with your group of objects. Triangles or L shapes can work particularly well. You're looking for a natural flow of the eye. Sometimes it can help to have a stack of books to help you achieve this. Certain objects could be placed higher in the composition than others. Creating a still life is an art form in its own right, and it can be a great opportunity to try things out before you commit to drawing them. Take your time and have fun with it. The key thing with using sighting techniques is your setup. We need to reduce any movement at all in our body to ensure that what we're seeing is not changing, we need to sit or stand in a very grounded and comfortable position. If you're seated, you want to have your weight evenly distributed, sitting as squarely as possible. We need to keep our torso still and our arm completely straight with your elbow locked? Twisting our torso or bending our elbow can drastically change any measuring that we do. You will also want to be using just one eye, all the while we're using sighting techniques, it doesn't matter which one, as long as you keep using the same one throughout. Ideally, it's also helpful to elevate your drawing surface a little using a board or piece of card and some books, or a spare chair, so that you can easily see your subject and your drawing at the same time without moving. Ideally, we want our drawing surface to be perpendicular to our line of sight. This is because if our drawing is on a flat surface in front of us, it can tend to become a little distorted. When we were using the grid in project one or the viewfinder with a grid in it for project two, that grid helped us stop any distortion that might happen. But now that we don't have that grid, it's much more important that we don't get that distortion from having our paper going away from us on a flat surface. There are three different sighting techniques that I'll show you, which are proportional measuring, angles sighting and plumb lines. Depending on what you are drawing, one sighting technique might be more suitable than the others or you can use all three of them together when you come to construct your drawing. I'll be showing you how I use them in more detail in the demo video. But here's an overview of how to use each technique. Remember the example of the joke we looked at right at the start of the class, and we worked out It's proportional ratio by comparing its width to its height. This is the fundamental principle of proportional measuring, and we'll be using our pencil and thumb to measure those distances. We'll start with a smaller measurement first, so the width in this example, to find the width, hold your arm out straight. Being careful not to move your body. Close one eye and position the tip of your pencil in line with one edge of the object. Don't forget to do this at its widest points, and then slide your thumb to the spot on your pencil which is in line with the other side of your object. Without moving your body at all, now rotate your pencil to see how many times that width measurement fits into the height. This is exactly how we worked out our proportional ratio earlier. Once you know this, you can plot out the width and height of your objects on your drawing paper. You can then use the same technique to work out other relative measurements too, such as the length or width of the spout relative to the width of the whole object and so on. Don't worry if this sounds a little daunting, we'll go through it together in the demo video. Angle sighting is a method of determining angles in your drawing. These might be angles of particular surfaces of your objects, like the slope of the edge of a kettle for example or we can use angle sighting to determine the angle between two different points in your composition. The method of determining the angle is to use your straight edge tool, such as your pencil, and one eye, remembering to keep your body still and arms straight as we did before. This time, instead of using your pencil to measure, you can hold your pencil out in front of you, tracing the angle of whatever it is you're trying to measure, such as the slope of this kettle. Once you have that, there are a couple of ways you can transfer this to your page. If your setup allows you to move your arm freely and you can hold that pencil still, you can just carefully move your pencil to your drawing paper without changing that angle. You can see exactly how that angle should look on your drawing, if that's not possible or you find it quite difficult to move your pencil without the angle changing, then you can imagine a clock face and determine which number your pencil would be pointing to if it was a hand on your clock. This can take a bit of practice to get used to, but can be an incredibly useful technique to use. Particularly if you're drawing something with lots of straight lines and angles like a pile of books for example. Traditionally plumb lines were a piece of thread with a weight attached to the bottom and these could be used to determine true vertical lines when drawing, we can use plumb lines without the need for thread and weights just by using your pencil, gripping it very lightly from one end should allow it to hang vertically. Why is this helpful? Taking a vertical line through the middle of your subject, it's helpful to see exactly what hits that plumb line and at roughly what points, which we can then check against your drawing. I also like to use the plumb line a little bit like a scanner sweeping it from one side of the composition to the other. It can help to check that the plumb line is hitting certain points of our composition in the order we think they are on our drawing, and we can notice where two or more parts of the composition are aligned to each other vertically. We can also use our pencil in this way, horizontally too. It's a great way to check the relationships of where things are located vertically and horizontally in relation to each other. Now it's your turn. Have a play around with your setup and where to place yourself and your still life, so that you can see it easily, and your drawing paper with minimum movements. Remember to try to raise up your drawing surface so that it's perpendicular to your line of sight. We are going to be needing to extend your arm out straight towards your still life. Make sure it's far enough away from you to accommodate that. Once you're set up and still-life are ready to go, join me in the next video, where I'll demonstrate how to use these sighting techniques to work from a still-life for our third project. See you there. 10. Project 3: DEMO PART 1: [MUSIC] Welcome back. Just a recap, as we begin this lesson, you should have a still life arranged and be sitting or standing comfortably in such a way that you don't need to move very much, if at all, to switch between looking at your still-life and looking at your drawing paper. Ideally your drawing paper should be at roughly 90 degrees to your sight line. If you imagine some lines coming out of your eyeballs, ideally you want to raise that drawing surface up so that it's at 90 degrees or there and thereabouts. You should also have enough space to stretch your arm out straight with your elbow locked. If you haven't done that yet, pause the video and get yourself setup and ready to draw. Before you begin, I would recommend again, just taking a quick snap on your phone of your eye view of your still life for two purposes. Firstly, so that you can realign yourself if you find that you have moved a little bit through the process of drawing. Also it's very helpful to add in your class project alongside your drawing, particularly if you would like constructive feedback. Please try not to draw from your photo as it really defeats the techniques and skills that we're working towards. Just keep that photo for those purposes. There are a few different sighting techniques that we're going to try out with this project. But it's important to understand that these techniques can be mixed and matched, and you don't have to use all of them. Some people like to use these techniques having already drawn out a rough sketch in order to check and correct their drawing, whereas others like to use them to plan out the drawing before they begin. It's not a one-size-fits-all approach, but hopefully some useful techniques that you can experiment with yourself to see what works for you. The first and most important thing that we'll establish is the proportion or ratio of the whole still life. How high it is compared to how wide it is. Don't forget, we'll be measuring this at its widest and tallest points. We're going to draw a box of exactly those correct proportions on our paper first. I'm just having a quick check of my still life, first of all, to work out if it's wider than it is tall or taller than it is wide. This is going to affect the orientation of how I'm going to arrange my paper to draw on. If your still life is taller than it is wide, you want your orientation to be portrait, but if it's wider than it is tall, then you want your orientation landscape. It sounds really obvious to check this and most people would just do it automatically, but it's surprising sometimes that you can think that a still life is a particular proportion. If you end up trying to draw it on the wrong orientation of paper, it can inadvertently makes you squash things to fit them on the paper, so it's something that's really good to check. My still life is taller than it is wide, so I'm going to stick my paper portrait on my board. Bear in mind that when citing the proportions of your drawing paper now have nothing to do with our drawing. The box that we're about to draw, in effect, acts as the edges of our drawing paper. You could think of it as your drawing paper instead if that's helpful. There are two ways that you can approach finding the ratio of your still life. What you're looking at now is my eye view. I am going to use my pencil to find the proportional ratio of my composition. I've got the tip of my pencil. The widest point of my composition is the heel sticking out. I'm not going to use this block that the boot is resting on. I'm just going to draw the three objects basically. That's the widest point on the left, I'm going to slide my thumb to the right. Now, I think actually if we have a look, the paintbrush is actually the widest point. I need to just adjust where my thumb is a little bit. That's the width of my composition. Now without bending my elbow or moving very much, I'm just going to rotate my pencil from the very bottom of my composition, which is the toe of the boot going up. We can see that that one unit pretty much in line with the base of the plant, the pot edge, which is quite a handy thing to know. I'm going to move the pencil up again to line up my thumb with that spot. We can see that the whole composition is just over one-and-a-half pencils high to one wide. The proportional ratio is 1-1.5. It's unlikely that your proportional ratio is going to be a convenient full number, so we do need to think about fractions. Usually quarters is enough. For example, your still life might be one unit wide by one and three-quarter units high. You might need to practice this a few times, and it's not a 100 percent accurate way of measuring, which will get you a perfect scale, but it should get you pretty close to having the right proportions once you can do this whilst keeping everything still. The other approach to finding the height to width ratio is to find a slightly smaller unit of measurement within your composition. For example, I could use the width of the white plant pot. We can then use that and repeat it to see how many times that fits into both the height and width. Again, you may need to use fractions as we did with the other technique, but the overall effect should be the same. The drawback of this method is that there's a bit more error likely because you will have to move your sighting stick more to find the measurements. But some people like to do it this way. I'm showing you my eye view again and I'm going to show you how I would find the height to width using that second method. Using that plant pot as our unit of measurement. I've got my pencil lining up with the left side of it and my thumb has slid on my pencil to the right-hand side. Let's see how many times that unit of measurement fits across the width. We've got 1, 2, I'd say that is between two and a quarter and two-and-a-half wide. I'm going to write this down. Just because it's quite easy to forget. Let's do the height. I'm going to just reset my unit of measurement again, which is my plant pot. Let's just double-check that again, so 1, 2. That's looking closer to two-and-a-half. Now to me, I might have moved slightly. Let's just move and see how many times that fits into the height. We can go from the toe, 1, 2, 3, 4. Say that is about four and a quarter high. Once you know the ratio of your height to width, we can draw that box out onto our paper, which your drawing is then going to fit inside. Bearing that in mind, try and draw it reasonably large on the paper. I'm just going to double-check my measurements again just because I've turned round to talk to you. I think it was around one. It's pretty much the width of the pencil actually, 1, 2. One-and-a-half. I'm just going to have a look at how my pencil's working on there. In actual fact, you can use the length of your pencil if that's something that feels helpful. I can see that I can fit one pencil in width easily and one-and-a-half pencils in height, but I still have a little bit more space. I'm actually going to make it a little bit bigger than my pencil is. I'm going to put a halfway point there. That's going to give me my quarter measures, which might be helpful later. Let's see, that's a half measure to there. You can see that that is pretty much as big as I can fit my proportional box on my page. It doesn't matter if you have gone a bit small or you might find it easier to use your pencil as your actual ruler, if you like, to get those measurements on. But this now gives me, this is one unit wide by one-and-a-half high. I can now draw a box. My still life should fit within this box. 11. Project 3: DEMO PART 2: It can be helpful to think of this process a bit like sculpting from a block of wood or stone. This rectangle that we've just drawn is the size of the block we start with, and now we need to take a few more measurements to identify where to cut some chunks away so the shapes can begin to appear. Next we'll be looking at measuring the large main shapes in our still life and the details will come last. When I took my first measurements, I found that the proportional ratio of one-to-one with exactly where the bottom of my plant pot is touching. I know if I put a line in my composition about here, that's where that plant pot is going to be. I'm going to put just a very loose shape there. It may not actually be at the right spot, but it's good to map in roughly where things are going to go to start with. What I want to do first before I start sketching in lots of things is actually think about where our center line would be. I'm going to use a plumb line to think about which objects fall on one side of that and which fall on the other. I'm going to find the width of my composition, again, and I'm going to find where half of that is. I'm just doing this by eye, not actually measuring it as such. I'm just estimating roughly where the halfway point is and see exactly what is on one side of that and what's on the other. Now, very helpfully, the plant stem is just to the right of that plumb line. If I draw a line in my composition down the middle, I know that my plant's stem is just to the right of that line. What else can I identify from that line? Well, actually, this area here, this part of the boot where the laces are is pretty much dead center and that's also quite a helpful thing to know. I'm going to just sketch that in, might not be in the right position yet, but it's just a case of trying to map out where things are. I think that's pretty much mostly what I can see from that center line. One other thing is that I can see that it's not the lowest point of my composition. I can see from my center line that actually the toe of the boot is going a bit to the right of that. I know there's going to be a shape that shoe is going to be coming down, something like that. That's enabled me to start mapping a few things in. I can also use a horizontal plumb line. It's not technically a plumb line when it's horizontal, but it does the same thing. Thinking about that first marker that l found, which is where the top of the plant pot stops, it'll be quite useful for me to see if I'm looking at half that measurement, what's actually hitting that half line? It's a little bit than using the grid technique in a way because we are almost creating a grid in a way in space. I can see that the base of the plant pot sits just above that. I'm going to put a mark here just to suggest that. That's quite handy, that the heel of the boot starts on that line, that's sitting somewhere there and I can see that it's going through the paintbrush pot as well. The paintbrush pot is somewhere around there. It's helpful to use quota units of measurement as a smaller measurement to start mapping out some of the smaller items in our composition. For example, if you get your width, again and you measure by eye l'm finding half of that, then I'm going to find half again to find the quarter measurement. I'm just going to see if there's anything which actually is exactly one-quarter because it'll be quite helpful to know that information. From where I'm looking at, the width of the heel of the boot is exactly a quarter. I haven't done it quite big enough, so I know that I can make that a bit bigger. It's helpful to know that information because then when I go back to my composition and I start measuring again, I can use that heel of the boot as a unit of measurement for some of the smaller items rather than trying to go from the large unit again and go in half and half again. Once you've found something that works as your quarter unit, you can then use that to plot in some of the smaller items. Just a tip, when you're doing angle citing, if you are using your pencil to transfer that measurement, it's helpful to have a spare one actually. I'm going to transfer the angle of the white plant pot to my drawings. I'm very carefully trying to not move it. Then you see the thing is if you have a spare pencil, you can then just trace that rather than have to take your pencil off the paper and try and remember the angle by eye. Angle citing is really helpful for me at the moment for determining the angle of these paint brushes. At the moment, I'm just putting in a line which tells me what angle they are resting at before I actually draw them in. One of the things that I'm finding really helpful that I'll keep going back to is knowing where that center plumb line is because actually there's a few other things that I've just used it for. For example, l can see that the detail on the shoe is helpful to know exactly where that's lining up with the center line. Once you found those central lines, you can keep returning to them again when you want to check another object. When you're at this stage, I would recommend keep everything very, very light because you won't get it right first time, and it's a process of drawing and checking and correcting, which we need to keep going back to again and again and gradually the correct drawing will start to emerge. But it does take quite a few go's, even if you're very experienced and you draw a lot, it's just not normal to get it right first time. Just don't be disappointed if you feel like it's not looking very good at this stage, that's quite natural. It should look a bit rough, and really just like an outline of where things are going, gradually the drawing will start to emerge. 12. Project 3: DEMO PART 3: I've sketched in a few parts of my drawing, I've got that feeling that something is not right about it. There's definitely something that's not in proportion. This could happen to you during this process, or it might be that you're just drawing something in a more natural way and you just feel like there's something off. We can actually use those sighting techniques to do some checks to help us identify what parts of our drawing isn't in proportion. I'm going to show you how I would go about that. I'm going to use my camera to give you my eye view. Here's what I can see. You can see this is the view of my still life, then if I just twist here, here's my drawing and there's definitely something glaringly wrong with my drawing. I'm pretty sure that I have a clue as to what it is, but I'm going to show you how I would check. I'm fairly confident that the overall proportions of the whole thing are right, the height and the width. I'm pretty confident that this white plant pot is in the right place, in the right proportions too, because I measured it first off. One of the things I'm going to try is this technique, where using plumb lines, which could be vertical or horizontal, I'm just going to do a bit of scanning to see what is hitting my pencil and when. We've got plant, plant, plant, which I haven't actually drawn in yet. When it gets to the top of this white ceramic pot, actually seeing here that the label on the back of that boot is pretty much in line with the top of the white ceramic pot. If I twist around my drawing, we can see that that is the huge problem. The boot, I've definitely not drawn it tall enough. This is a great exercise in working out what needs correcting. That's something that I can correct. As you keep scanning down, again, you can see that the very end of that paintbrush, the tallest paintbrush is pretty much in line with the white part. Again, I haven't actually drawn it in yet, I've just done a suggested line, but I know that it is going to need to be a bit taller than I've drawn that line. Scanning down, down, down, down, and I can see here the corner of the boot where the laces start is pretty much in line with where that paint brush is. It almost looks like it's leaning on it. You can see that I need to resolve how that is here. Again, I haven't drawn that in yet, but I can see that it's going to need a little bit of correcting that's going to need to come up higher, which will make sense as I've drawn it too low anyway. You can see how just using your pencil to scan almost see what is in line with what, it really does help to work out, what part of your drawing needs reworking? You can do that horizontally and vertically as well. It's a really helpful tool and it's a really easy way of just checking with what you've already got, what it is that actually needs adjusting. You can keep using this process throughout and don't feel disheartened. If like me, you've used those measuring techniques to plot things in and then find that something is very much out proportion like that boot was very out of proportion because that is what the process is all about, it won't all match up perfectly the first time. I think with the other techniques, with the grid and the viewfinder technique, it's much more likely that it will be pretty accurate first time because you have that grid system to work to. Whereas with sighting techniques and working from life, you have to work everything out and as you go and things will be out of proportion and they will be wrong until you work on correcting them. It's just something to bear in mind because it's quite easy to find something that's very wrong in your drawing and get very disappointed and disheartened and want to give up, but it's completely natural. The important thing is to try and identify what is this, not working and try and correct it. [MUSIC] I'm going to stop this drawing there. I feel as though there are still some areas that could do with more refining that aren't quite perfectly in proportion, but I'm happy that it's in proportion enough. Congratulations, you now have a sketch of a still life having practiced a range of sighting techniques. This is a huge step, particularly if you are new to drawing. Don't be hard on yourself. Remember that it will take some practice to get used to using these techniques, so try not to be too judgmental of your drawing and really celebrate this huge step you've just taken. Join me in the next video where we will discuss what next steps you might take to continue your drawing journey. 13. Next Steps: [MUSIC] Now that you have the skills and knowledge to practice measuring and proportion in your drawing, I would highly encourage you to keep practicing. Practice often. As with any drawing technique, the more you practice, the better you will get. There are no shortcuts to gaining these skills. They can only be strengthened through practice. Gradually, you'll find that you need to use them less as your observation skills will become sharper, or you might find that you use them more to check your drawings rather than construct them. Remember to be kind to yourself as you're learning to draw. You will 100 percent make some terrible drawings, I can guarantee it, but those terrible drawings make the best learning opportunities. Try to objectively analyze your drawing to determine what aspect of it isn't working so that you can learn from it for next time. There are tons of ways that you might like to progress your drawing skills from here. You might like to learn about perspective, which is a great skill for introducing more depth into your drawing. You might enjoy delving into mark-making to add texture or shading to add tonal value to your drawings, which can make your drawings look more rich and three-dimensional. Learning about composition is a great skill to add to your toolkit as it can make your drawings feel more dynamic and exciting. Of course, then there is the wonderful world of color, which can give you endless directions in which to develop your drawing practice. This is such an exciting journey and I can't wait to see where you take it next. 14. Thank You!: [MUSIC] Thank you so much for spending time drawing with me. I hope you now feel able to create a drawing with more accurate proportions. These methods help to give you the confidence to make the transition to drawing from life. To recap, getting to grids with proportional ratios and simple fractions are the two key theories to understanding all three approaches to measuring and proportion. Using a grid is a great technique to use if you are working from a reference photograph. Creating a viewfinder can be a great transitional method to create more accurate drawings if you'd like using the grid method of measuring that you working from life. Sighting techniques will allow you to progress to drawing any subjects anywhere from life. Remember that those three different sighting methods can be mixed and matched to suit you and your subject. If there's one thing that you take away from this class, I hope it's the confidence to try drawing from life. It's a huge and important step in your learning to draw journey. I can't wait to see where it leads you next. I would be thrilled to see your class projects and hear about your experiences with the different approaches. If you feel comfy sharing, please do post to class project with us over in the Projects and Resources tab. Remember you're most welcome to share 1, 2 or all 3 projects. If you'd like constructive feedback on your drawings, please indicate that in your project and remember to include photos of your references as well as your drawings so that I can give you that type of feedback. If you'd like to hear about my new classes, competitions, and giveaways, then make sure you're following me here on Skillshare. If you'd like to hear a little more about projects I'm working on, behind the scenes, freebies, and other fun things, then you might enjoy my quarterly newsletter. If you share any of the work that you've created from my classes on social media, I would love to see them. Please use the hashtag, MELRYESKILLSHARE, and don't forget to tag me. I'd love to connect there too. Thank you so much for being here. I hope that I'll see you in another of my classes soon. Bye for now. [MUSIC]