Learn to Draw Natural Forms: LINE

1. 1 TRAILER: Drawing Natural Forms NEW: My name is Tim and I'm going to be your instructor on this course, Drawing Natural Forms. This course features a host of animation, lots of different film styles, supporting assignments, and comprehensive downloadable worksheets. This course is for of complete beginners and there's no need to have any experience of drawing at all. My freelance career started as a cartoonist with a Guardian newspaper. And now I'm the author of several art and design education books. Drawing has always fascinated me, and I've learned from some of the best teachers in person, online, and from books from Renaissance artists to character creators behind some of the big blockbuster films. I'm always ready to soak up new ideas. The art and design books I've written include The Field Guide to Drawing and Sketching Animals, which was ranked one of the top 20 best nature drawing books of all time by Book Authority Watercolor, The Natural World, and my latest book, Drawing the Natural World, in which I share many of my practical tips and techniques. My work has featured in the Artists and Illustrators Magazine, been reviewed by BBC Wildlife. I'm also on a judging panel for the Royal Society of Biology for the Nancy Rothwell Award, where we look at children's investigations into all sorts of plants and animals. I've chosen to focus my creative outlet on teaching because this is where I feel I'm at. My best experience of writing and teaching. Drawing internationally has led me to the conclusion that what the majority of people look for in a course is the maximum amount of accessible and fun information in one place. That's going to help me speed up their ability to draw from observation. I have endeavored to ensure that every lesson in this course is full of vital information. It's also led me to reflect on, actually what do I do when I draw. For me, mastering the art of drawing consists of overcoming a number of difficulties, such as the still life, the landscape drawing, architecture, figure drawing, and so forth. I see a clear difference between the skill set required to sketch animals and people that are in motion compared with static scenes and subjects. I have decided to focus on drawing still natural forms and subjects that surround us and should be accessible to anyone watching this film. This means you'll be able to set up a similar arrangement to the projects I am demonstrating or visit similar locations so that you can draw from firsthand observation, although I'm also going to include photographs in the resources section. If you struggle to find a suitable comparable subject, you can easily work from those. I mix and match ideas I picked up throughout my career and included a few new ones of my own training. The iron hand takes time and practice, but it can be sped up if you follow the exercises in this course. 2. The Class Project: Hi everybody and welcome to the class project. Or in the case of this course, the class projects. The aim of the projects is to give you new drawing skills. Please check the resources for the following handouts. They will provide comprehensive guidance on what to submit to the project gallery where you can share your drawings, the skillshare community, and I can give you feedback. I've tried to ensure that all the projects have an ease of initiation and that they promote independent and creative thinking. Try to make the projects your own, and don't feel you need to make an exact copy of what I'm doing. Simply follow the approach step by step from the handouts and change the media to something that you have at hand. Really embrace the projects. I find that students that do all the exercises are the ones that make the best progress. It can be a little daunting at first to share work, particularly with drawing. So try not to worry about this. The more drawings and pictures and things that you will submit to the project gallery, the more comfortable you will come over time with sharing your work. I used to do pavement drawing. Up until I did pavement drawing, I was always so shy about sharing my drawings. And it was that thing of people looking over me eventually got me out of that feeling. Let's go through the class projects one by one so you know what to photograph and upload to the project gallery. We're going to call these deliverables. On each of the sheets, you're going to find these little boxes. I've called it an activity box, which has a little box that you can tick to ensure you completed all the tasks. But don't worry, you don't have to print them out. If you don't want to. It's better for the environment just to read it on the screen. First up, the first project is going to be lines, arcs, and ellipses. Please don't waste expensive sketchbook paper on this one. It can be just cheap photocopy paper, recycled paper, newsprint. In fact, actually the cheaper the paper, the less inhibited you're going to be with doing these exercises with your own physical geometries as it were. Next up, we're going to have a blind contour drawing. Really try to embrace this process and do it without looking at the paper. There's also going to be a landscape doodle where I'm going to encourage you to create the illusion of depth and space on a piece of paper, not with linear perspective, but just overlapping lines. That's an interesting activity. Next up we have descriptive line drawing of a sea shell. You might not have a dip pen and ink for this one, but bill means carry it out in a pencil or a fine liner. It doesn't have to be a conc, sea shell. You might have to find another sea shell or any shell that you can want to work from. Then finally, the one I'm seeing as what I call the final major project for this course is an insect study sheet. Study sheets are a way of recording and finding out about your subject. They're one of the best ways of improving hand and eye coordination. A study sheet can include really quick gestural drawings and then move on to more detailed work. It could be about anything. You can do a study sheet about a rock planted animal. It's a general inquiry into the personality of your subject. It include written notes, color swatches, investigations into parts of the anatomy, such as a detailed close up of a leg or what the head of a grasshopper looks front on. I usually do them over a double page spread of a sketchbook. I'm encouraging you to use an three sketchbook for the entirety of these courses. You've got the two, You're not worried about squeezing things in, you've just got enough space. I'm going to let you do what you want. Have a go and just enjoy. I've used coloring pencil here. I've got this one by Peter Han, who's a pretty amazing drawer. You can find him on the Internet and he's used watercolor on there. On a grasshopper. Yeah, I really look forward to seeing what you do. Just be creative, clue, little notes, bits of anatomy, how you section it off, anything you like. And post it in the project gallery where I'll be there to give you some feedback. 3. 2 Introdcution: Drawing Natural Forms NEW: Hi, and welcome to this comprehensive Beginner's Guide to Drawing Natural Forms. This course aims to inspire you to embrace sketching as an integral part of your daily life. Also, encouraging you to venture outside with a sketch book. For me, drawing plays a pivotal role in developing any creative individual. Heightening your perception of the world around you through keen observation. Thus also fostering imaginative thinking, the ability to establish meaningful connections. You can also use drawings to invent and explain and show other people how you might think something might work. In engineering, for example, for me, drawing is the foundation for all visual art disciplines. Providing a fundamental framework for expressing both ideas but also emotions. Beyond that, it holds a special place in my heart. As I have drawn before I could talk, or at least that's what my mother says. This course allows me to share my passion for drawing and also that of nature. Being able to delve into the bonds that bind them and show how drawing can help us unravel what we're looking at. Really, don't worry if your drawings look nothing like the examples that I'm creating on this course. Yeah, As long as you spend your time trying, you will get more out of drawing and get a developed sense of success or speeding up your ability to get things down on the paper with the amount of effort you put in. Really don't be afraid of making mistakes. Heads will typically be too large at the beginning of your drawing journey. This is something that we all need to check on at all stages of proficiency. At the beginning of each exercise, there will be a list of materials required for the activity. But don't use this as gospel because you might not have the materials I'm using. My approach to teaching drawing emphasizes mastering the basic principles. These are proportion, outlined, movement, weight, and form. Before moving on to the surface qualities such as color, detail, pattern, and texture. My goal is for you to feel confident about the projects and find them approachable with clear step by step instructions and helpful tips provided throughout. This is why I have structured this course on the seven elements of art. The chapters are going to include line, shape, tone, form, space, color and pattern and texture. Drawing is a lot like building a house. The entire structure will fall. If you just start with the fancy details, you would need to lay a solid foundation. First, creating a solid foundation of a building from the initial wire frame scaffolding to the walls, doors and windows. Before adding the little bits of shading and detail and texture and pattern and hairs on top. It's important to understand these principles of drawing before adding the final details. I'm focusing this course on drawing stationary or still natural forms and capturing subjects that are all around us. Hopefully, you'll be able to set up similar arrangements at home to the one I'm demonstrating. Meaning you can work from firsthand observation if you have any trouble finding a similar subject. I will also include the photos in the resources section. To participate in this course, I recommend keeping a sketchbook and dedicating a double page spread to each assignment. This way you can track your progress and experience that satisfying feeling of filling up a sketchbook. Conversely, to just draw what you see approach, I believe there's a wide range of ideas and exercise you can practice that will generally improve your ability to get that animal, that plant that rock down on paper. I mix and match ideas I've picked up throughout my career. The best teachers, you'll also find some new ideas in here that I've invented myself along the way. Training the iron hand takes time and practice that can be sped up. If you follow the exercises in this course. This way you will hopefully get a feeling of progress rather than that of frustration. Let's talk a little bit about what makes a good drawing. We clarify what we're attempting to do on this course. Drawing refers to the act of creating marks on a surface, primarily of paper, often in the context of this course. It is the pictorial representation. Animal, plant, rock, or even a landscape which we will be looking at in the space section. However, drawing can also depict something that doesn't yet exist, such as an invention where it might never exist in a physical form, such as an abstract expression. Representational drawing is still at its heart accumulation of a set of abstract marks that, when brought together, create the impression of something everyone can draw. While the biased measure of an artist's skill might be towards whether the subject is technically or photographically accurate, there may be other qualities that we also need to consider. Some drawings stand out, which is not necessarily for their precise accuracy. There are a wide range of reasons for artistic success. These could be a sense of movement, a drawing done with an economy of marks. It could be a feeling of weight and mass. It could be the spatial or even expressive qualities. These are amongst many other abstract attributes. When a subject is close to the heart of the artist, say for example, if the artist loves horses, there might be a degree of integrity in the drawing. Be enthusiastic about the subjects you select to start to draw. Don't start with a heavy heart emphasis on what makes drawing appealing. Changes like fashion over time. However, we can draw valuable lessons from the whole of the history of art. As often, valuable lessons are forgotten. My favorite drawings tend to be from the whole of history of art that you're going to discover, but the ones I picked are full of life. 4. 3 LINE: Materials for the course NEW: Hi guys. In this little film, we're going to be learning about the different types of materials that we're going to be using on this course. Drawing is the art of applying various types of media to a surface. This simple act has a fascinating history. It traces back to the Paleolithic Era, where early humans depicted their experience on walls painted in the flickering fire light. A lot of these drawings of at the time were of their prey animals. In these ancient times, the artists used a crud dish mixture of ferric rich umbers, ochres and charcoal from the fire, combined with the binding agents of spit and animal fat. With this, they created their drawings. The materials were applied to the walls, staining the porous rocks a little bit reminiscent of an Italian fresco. In places like Laski, archaeologists have discovered socket holes indicating the possible use of scaffolding systems similar to Michelangelo's method for painting the Sistine Chapel. Now there is a dazzling array of media on offer to the artist. Some of the ones I use in my daily life. I've selected these because of their qualities and also because of their speed of use. In our very busy lives, I haven't included anything like oil paint or even acrylic. This is really so that you can just pick your kit up on an afternoon and go and make a sketch or drawing watercolor. I think it's important to remember the learning lesson from those cavemen that even the most highest quality materials and media can't outstrip an intention. First of all, let's talk about a sketch book. A sketchbook holds a very special place for artists as a secret playground for their creativity, experimentation, and exploring ideas without the fear that anyone is looking. In the context of this course, the sketchbook is emphasized as a fundamental tool for learning. It also serves as a mobile art studio and will provide a source of inspiration. I love looking through other people's sketchbooks and you can learn a lot and share a lot with like minded people who can give you, I did it that way and that's really cool. That share a lot of your work. The beauty of a sketchbook lies in its highly personal nature. It's almost like a diary. Artists can freely experiment with new techniques called ideas, make notes about their subjects in a safe and private place. Every artist's sketchbook is unique and offers a glimpse into their creative process, like a window into their soul. Traditionally, sketch books have been seen as a stepping stone where artists develop rough ideas that they might later use in the studio, and the sketchbook becomes an aid for the larger studio painting. However, in this course, we're going to take a different approach. We're going to present the sketchbook as a final art gallery piece of work, as a work of art worthy of appreciation in its own merit. To ensure the best practice, I recommend avoiding spiral bound books because the pages are bound in a loose way. What happens is this causes the pages to rub together and smudge the artwork. Instead, I prefer the binding, which is like a piece of fabric which holds the pages tighter. My favorite sketchbook is an three portrait cartridge sketchbook, which can open up into an, A two size piece of paper. They're providing ample working space without the fear of coming up to the boundary of an edge when you can't fit a tail on or a foot on and things like that. An essential aspect of the sketchbook experience is not to be overly fixated about using expensive or precious sketchbooks. The focus should be on your creative process. Allowing yourself to feel free and have fun with ideas without inhibition. If you're using one of these really expensive sketchbooks with a leather, but it might be a bit too conservative and inhibit your flow rather than just taking all your art materials. When you go out sketching, I think it's important to plan ahead and think about going light. Last thing you want to be doing is making yourself a beast of burden, carrying lots of heavy things around like a donkey. Just select what you're going to be using for the day. Maybe get yourself a nice bag and put things in it, and it's already to take with you to take part in this course. I recommend you gather together following materials. This doesn't need to be done at the beginning as I will go through the materials I will be using at the beginning of each of the projects, you'll be able to mix and match and use what you have and substitute one media for another depending on what you have at hand. First of all, the course sketchbook, I highly recommend getting a course sketchbook to document your progress throughout the entirety of this program. When choosing a sketchbook, consider the size that suits your personal needs. A larger sketchbook offers more space for the drawing and an unrestricted way, but a smaller one is more portable. Don't buy an overly expensive sketchbook to get started, just something you feel comfortable with. You can also do a lot of these exercises, particularly the warm ups on cheap copy paper or even newsprint. Okay, let's start with things that I have in my kit. Okay, initially, just because it's at hand here, a putty rubber, a needle putty rubber can erase graphite pencil by absorbing color rather than wearing it away. They're soft and less abrasive than the standard razors. They won't damage the surface of the paper. They also do a better job of making the lines disappear. Okay. Next up, sharpener. Okay, is the sharpener. I use a pencil sharpener with a container, collects the pencil shavings. This type of pencil sharpener is declined to minimize mess, make it easy to dispose of the shavings and also keep you popular in museums and botanical gardens or anywhere else you might leave a pile of pencil shavings. Okay. We're also going to be drawing a lot in coloring. Pencil on this course is partly to maybe break away with some possible negative associations people might have had drawing and graphite. There will still be graphite drawing exercises. At least a set of 12 coloring pencils. We're going to look at 12:12 12 coloring pencils. These pencils are known for their superior quality, pigment intensity, and smooth application. When selecting a set of at least 12 coloring pencils, it's important to look for pencils which have a strong lead, which is resistant to breakage, and allows for precise detailed work. These should also have a smooth, creamy texture, which makes them easy to b***d and achieve new colors. I use fast pencils and I've never had a broken lead, that's why I use them. And they mix really well, and they're slightly oily and really good for color mixing. Personally, I do that. If you are going to get a favor castel box, I recommend getting this type of box rather than the long tin which always opens in your bag on some of the drawings. We're also going to be extending our selves beyond the sketchbook. If we're going to draw on a cartridge, primarily draw on a thick quality, high quality cartridge for larger drawings, cartridge comes in at weights 150-300 GSM. The latter 300 is almost, it's highly versatile and relatively tough. I use it with a slight tooth that can support a high level of detail. I've got a preference about 200 GSM. This one here is about 110, perfectly fine. Also, there is one exercise in this course which is midtone paper, or it doesn't need to be met, but this is my preferred choice. Has a fine grain on one side which is really pleasing for drawing. On The other side has a slight honeycomb texture which might be more suitable for experimental drawing. Or feels, of course, like a canvas. That's great, and you can dive down into the dark tones and build up into the lights. Okay. Okay. Next up is the dip pen and ink. Okay, I do really recommend you getting hold of a holder and a selection of nibs. Dip pen and ink can create lively work full of expression. I recommend a medium elastic drawing Nib such as a Francois Illo 33 Nib or slightly more expensive, a Leonard EF principal Nib. And a quality engine in like this one. I use black magic, which is lovely. These nibs can create a fine hair like. Line to medium thick line depending on the amount of pressure based upon it. When you get your dip pen nibs, could you get selection? Get four or five because they don't always last that long. Instead of the dip pen, you could also use a fine liner. Fine liners are suitable for both precise detailed work and a loose scribbling line. They're also available with waterproof ink so that they don't bleed. The most versatile markers are brush markers. The point can be just used as an ordinary paint brush and also the side can cover large areas of shading. These are alcohol based media that dry quickly, exciting to use. But do be aware they stay in the other side of the paper. Charcoal crumbly sticks of charcoal leave microscopic particles on the paper. We are going to be doing a charcoal drawing later that you're only going to need a few sticks. I also mix mine with a black fabric, polychromoencilor. Any black colored pencil will do to get more detail. Various brushes are available. It's really worthwhile you're experimenting and comparing and contrast them. Don't go out and buy really expensive watercolor brushes. That's not the thing we're doing on this course. There are a few different types that we will be using. A mop brush is the big of the round brushes. It can hold a significant amount of water. This enables you to do easy coverage. We also have things like a fan brush that you could use for creating texture on fur. You can also use the brush and splay it out this way to make a fan brush. There's also a brush called a rigo, which is a long, thin drawing brush. I really love it is not in the pot, but I shall put a picture up here. The only brushes that you're going to need on this course really are the round brushes. Round brushes are the most versatile and indispensable of my brushes. With the ability to adjust the pressure, they can provide medium coverage and they bounce back into their original shape when lifted, enabling fine detail. Their adaptability allows you to draw with the brush, leaving dynamic and fluid brushwork. Just to mention, one of my favorite pieces of equipment is this tripods. I created it by drilling a hole in the center of a board and then gluing that to the camera plate underneath at the bottom of the board. One of the significant advantages with the tripod easel is that you can sketch at an angle and then lay it flat for watercolor. Also, when you're using a tripod easel, both your hands are free. Normally, you're holding one with the sketchbook, so it gives you that additional bit of freedom. One last thing to mention that is quite good, I always take with me, I think most sketching is the sketching stool. I always take a lightweight sketching stool with me. Sometimes there's no convenient place to rest. Sometimes the thing that you want to draw the most, there's lots of people around it or something like that, or there's nowhere to sit and do your drawing. Just a very cheap, secondhand, lightweight sketching stool, camping stool. You find them for a few pounds. 5. 4 Line Introduction NEW: Hi everybody and welcome to the first section of this course. The focus of this section is going to be all things to do with line. I think of the seven elements of drawing. Line is the element that's dominated what I do the most from doing satirical cartoons at the Guardian, from using it to illustrate children's books. This is a drawing come out in rich part. Do you can probably hear the parrots in the background be one of the exercises in this section of the course. I hope you enjoy the projects. Do remember at the end of the assignments when you've done your drawing, to scan it and post in the chat so I can give you some feedback. All I shall look forward to seeing your drawings. Let's get started. Hi guys, and welcome to a line. Paul Clay famously once said that a line is a dot that went for a walk for me, line plays a crucial role in drawing and convey a vast amount of information. Line can range from being highly descriptive in the detail to being spontaneous, Creating lively gesture drawings to thick, bold expressionistic marks. In this section of the course, I want to explore a wide range of linear possibilities. We will learn about construction lines, line weights, dynamic lines, creating contour lines. After you have selected a subject, ask yourself, what is the best media I could do this in? For example, a soft, waxy pencil might be suitable to sketching a moving animal where its simplicity of use is vital to get the best down on the paper. There are a variety of visual conventions that mark making can imply artists can create lines. For many reasons, we often think of delineating an edge as the primary reason for creating a line. But they also can be used for creating a pattern or texture or to even model form. The seven formal elements of art merge into each other and are not strictly individual disciplines. Line, for example, might be used to create tone by cross hatching. Lines can be sharp, expressive, broken, whimsical, impressionistic, and even playful. They might wrap around an object like wire, be soft or curly created with pencil, dip, pen marker or brush. My approach is to always draw even with a brush rather than fill in the shape. 6. 5 LINE: Lines, Arcs and Ellipses NEW: Having a good physical control of your drawing medium is critical. These exercises might seem simple, but don't shy away from them at the start by wanting to leap to the more complex drawing lessons. These exercises are really good at building up physical confidence with both pen and pencil on these warm up exercises. Don't waste expensive paper, I'm just using cheap newsprint. It actually works better on cheap paper As you feel less inhibited. Our first exercise is simply to draw straight lines. This might seem like child's play, but when we are drawing, we tend to look at our subject and then flick our eyes between the subject and back to the paper. Some people try and draw at the same time as looking at the subject, which creates this sort of feathery line approach, which I sort of call fudging lines, which are just average equiva***ts to what you're looking at. It's the point of this is to try and learn to look and then commit. Drawing straight lines in art is important for precision, perspective, and developing technical skills. Rather than drawing them with a ruler which can create a lifeless line. Mastering freehand straight lines is key to be able to draw them when you encounter them, frequently when you're drawing the world around you. This exercise, your task is to draw eight straight lines. I recommend you repeat this exercise multiple times to improve your technique to create straight, consistent, and a confident line. It's almost best to draw. Imagining your arm is locked into a straight position. You will be able to feel the straightness through your body physically almost as if a dance As much as by looking, draw these lines horizontally, although look at the negative space between the lines and try and create them equidistantly equally apart. Draw with a steady pace and as you become more comfortable, try to increase your speed arcs. This exercise is about creating smooth arcs, almost using the radial geometry of your wrist and the elbow joints to begin with, create eight arcs By focusing on the radial motion of your wrist and then bigger ones from your elbow. Concentrate on the fluid feeling within your own body's movement. Smaller arcs are created by the wrist. Larger arcs can be created from the elbow. Arcs are fantastic for creating the feeling of tension in the back leg of an animal, for example, ellipses. By far the hardest warm up exercise of the bunch is ellipses. They are always a fundamental element of drawing in both architecture and biological forms. For this exercise, imagined a cylinder, such as a mug, turning away from you, so that the circle of the opening gradually gets narrower. Start from the narrowest ellipse and then work to widening the ring. To eventually you draw a circle. You can go through the motion and first air draw before your pencil touches the paper. Then you become more confident. You can then feel the smoothness and symmetry of the oval again in your body. Sketch the first line lightly and then true up the ellipse, making sure the shapes have round corners and are not spiky. The width of an ellipse is called the degree. This is the angle of the circle relative to the viewer. At 90% the circle is perpendicular to the viewer. A whole circle can be seen at 0% The circle is parallel to the viewer and turns into a line. In this exercise, I want you to draw a series of ellipses. 7. 6 LINE Blind Contour Drawing Final NEW: The first few lines, the human brain has no problem in deducing form from a simplistic outline. When we pick up a piece of paper, it is indeed flat. Turn it around, and of course, there's nothing behind it. One of the skill sets that every artist needs to acquire is the ability to create the illusion of depth on this piece of paper, that it doesn't appear flat but a window onto the world. There are a few tricks that we can do to help us create these illusions. We're going to start by creating a landscape doodle. When drawing with overlapping lines, the lines that are closer to the viewer will overlap the lines that are further away, creating the illusion of depth and form. This is because overlapping lines suggest that one object is in front of the others. And our brains interpret this has three dimensional space 0. So now we're going to start by doing a blind conto drawing. I see this exercise as similar to tuning a guitar before you can play. I appreciate these are just warm up exercises to get us going, but I still quite like you to do them in your sketchbook because I know a lot of people when they want to learn to draw, want to dive in and just make it look really photographic. But I'm trying to explore all those other avenues as well. This is a good place to start. The hand and eye must be trained to create accurate reproductions of the world around us. One of the most effective techniques, which I really enjoy, is contour drawing, which involves outlining the form and gradually adding inner contours and details. The primary goal in this exercise is to connect the hand and eye so they move in synchrony and capture the character of the form. Don't be afraid to try new things and take risks with your drawing. Please avoid the temptation to look at the page in this exercise. Blind contour drawing is where an artist focuses on the contours without looking at the paper. This exercise helps the ability to observe and perceive forms more accurately. And improve capturing the character of form by creating lines that bite into the edge. The attempt is to explore every nook, and cranny, and curve corner. And an honest, unguarded study drawings created in this style will be out of proportion. Lines might overlap in an alarming manner and things that your conscious self would not never permit. You're going to walk a line around the outside shapes of the form. If you do this with sincerity, your lines will have a sweetness of mark. What I want you to do is find any natural form that you think has got nice shapes to it. I recommend placing your subject, whatever you picked on a white piece of paper to avoid any visual background noise. Then sit really close to the subject and have the object just next to you so you can glance over at it. Then imagine the tip of your pencil, rather than touching the paper is touching your subject. Let your eye follow along the form. As you move your hand in coordination, follow your form around round shapes, straight lines. When you get to a point where you feel that your pencil tip is biting into the character of form, you need to just look at the subject and not your paper. When you come to the end of an edge of form and you need a new starting point, just guess it. I often think of this as a little bug or Lady bird bug that's walking around. The form. Your pencil should move continuously, only occasionally lifting it off. As you follow the shapes as closely as possible, you need to imagine your pencil tip is touching the form instead of the paper. And you're going to follow the forms with your eye as you move your hand. In co ordination, take your time and avoid rushing. If you come to the edge of the form, I need to find a new starting point. Do so without looking at the paper. Use your imagination to just guide you where you think you should begin. And I look forward to seeing your drawings, your noodles in the chat. 8. 7 LINE: Descriptive Line Drawing NEW V2: Hey guys, in this exercise we are going to create a descriptive line drawing. When we create contour drawings, the outer boundary of the form is delineated just like a silhouette with the initial line that we create. From there, we can then go on and explore the interior and create internal lines. These will then suggest the objects structure. Accomplishing a proficient contour drawing requires attentive observation and confidence with the drawing medium that you create. Lines that really capture the character of the form. A descriptive line sketch provides additional details about the subject. It might also express a bit about the light and shade, even the texture. It will give the shape a three dimension and a little bit more of a realistic appearance. The emphasis in this assignment is the quality of your line and your ability to create texture. The sweetness of your lines really depends on the honesty of your observation. Really don't rush. Look regularly and flick your eyes between the subject and the paper. This really helps if you sit close to your subject. Pen and ink creates both thick and thin lines that are expressive and quite exciting at times they can be a little tricky to use at first. I find it really helps to draw with a high quality Indian ink. I like the black magic ink which has a shallow well, this means that ink doesn't go into the handle and create those really annoying blobs on your paper. Before you draw, do some warm up scribbles. To get confident with a nib, maybe try writing your name or something like that. In this drawing exercise, I recommend using a dependent ink. You can use a pencil if you haven't got one of those at hand. I'm using a Francois yellow 33 nib. In this drawing exercise, you can do this exercise straight in your sketchbook. I'm doing mine also on two cartridge. Before you begin, let's create some curly, thick and thin lines by varying the pressure on your nib. The initial line we talked about separates the shape from its surroundings. If we then create a line of delineating the shell in front to the one behind, the one behind that overlapping lines create the illusion that one shell is in front of the other. Finally, the inner contours wrap around the shell, creating the impression of three dimensions. A large con shell is ideal for creating a bug line drawing. Exploring the terrain of your subject. I can almost imagine the side of the sea shell as if it's a landscape, a rocky mountain or something like that. I could even imagine after taking the bug for a walk around the outside contour, you can almost imagine it skiing down the side of the shell, creating little trail marks that actually model the form. Initially, I held the sea shell in my hand, exploring its bumps and indentations and feeling the intricate hard features. Following that, I positioned myself close to the sea shell and took some deep breaths and created an initial under drawing in a dark blue coloring pencil. This was there to guide the dip pen and ink line had a bit of structure to work from from an area I had understood. I then moved on to new terrain, imagining that the tip of the nib of the dip pen is actually touching the sea shell. Like an insect or a little mini bug walking around the silhouette before exploring the interior. Um, when I put the dip pen ink line on, I don't just trace the blue initial under drawing look and then relook and then draw again with fresh eyes. And just have that blue scaffold beneath to suggest where I should roughly put the line. 9. 8 LINE Insect Anatomy NEW: The diversity of insects is vast. In the world, some 950,000 different kinds of insects are known. They inhabit every single continent, from the sweltering heat of deserts to the frozen plains of Antarctica. If back boned animals disappeared overnight, the natural world would continue to survive. However, it would be a completely different story is disappeared. So crucial is their role in providing the foundations on which ecosystems depend. Insects act as pollinators. They pollinate flowers to bring us nutritious fruit and vegetables. Our industrious insects work tirelessly behind the scenes, even when we sleep. They provide food for birds and bats and small mammals. Importantly, they rep***ish the soils, enabling plants to grow and keep pest numbers in check. Scavenger insects clean up and protect us from disease, such as the dung beetle, a waste disposer. In all the continents of the world, insects have found a place and created a marvelous array of different appearances. Their quick reproductive lifespan means that their adaptations happen more quickly. Some of these are beyond the imagination, such as the dead leaf butterfly that has adapted fantastic camouflage to create the appearance of a falling leaf to hide from predators. Scientists have discovered that insects evolved simultaneously as the earliest plants on land some 480 million years ago. And they believe they took to the air some 80 million years later. By looking at fossil records, they were one of the first animals on land calling up as arthropods. The word arthropod means jointed leg. On the land, early plants such as horsetails and ferns had created a habitat for the insects to be able to dwell within. In 18, 49, Richard Owen published a book called On the Nature of Limbs, where he noticed the archetype of vertebrate limbs. There he saw that they were the same bones in the same order that pointed to the fundamental relatedness of all creatures with the backbone. We can find a similar example in the entomological world of insects, all insects follow a similar body plan. The archetype of the simple units joined together can be applied to all insects. The character of these body segments is going to range very dramatically. One of the secrets of the success of insects is their exoskeleton. The exoskeleton is made of a strong substance called chitin, which is mostly rigid In some parts it becomes a little bit more flexible as in the mouth to allow for eating movement. The exoskeleton can be thought of as a suit of armor, a bit like a samurai warrior that protects the softer inner workings of the insects and also prevents water loss. Animals that also share an exoskeleton are the arthropods. They also have to shed old exoskeleton. You'll notice on some of the subjects that you'll be drawing that the exoskeleton can even be pitted, giving it extra strength. Anatomy lab, nose to tail. On the head of the insects, you will see antenna or feelers. They are always in pairs attaching to the head and are created by jointed segments. You can look for these jointed segments while you draw them. Antennae come in all shapes and sizes and are particularly good at picking up smells. I try to think of antenna as a combination of your fingers and your nose. So you can touch and you can smell. On the front of the insect are their mandibles on an ant. Their function is to grasp, crush, or cut the insects food, or even defend themselves against predators or rivals. The shape of the mandibles widely vary in different species. A mosquito has a syringe, like a needle for a mouth to punch you the skin and draw up blood. A butterfly has a long probssus to allow for an entirely liquid diet, sucking up nectar from flowers or sweet liquid from fruit. The compound eye. Most insects have around two large compound eyes, Although this does vary with some other species. And some four or five. Think of the compound eye as a dome, on which there are lots of LED light detecting receptors, giving a great all round vision so that particularly, they can spot predators even approaching from behind. Some species also have a head horn and battering ram at the front. Next up, we have the thorax. The thorax is full of muscles and is the central machine for both walking and flight. Both wings and legs attached to the thorax. Even the Electra, which we look at the back of the beetle, we see these protective wing cases. They also attach here as well. Sometimes the legs look like they're attached to the abdomen. It's just that the thorax is longer underneath the abdomen. We can think of the abdomen as going back to the earliest worm like ancestors and having those segmented divisions. Here we're going to have all the heart, reproductive organs, and digestive organs. Interestingly, insects breathe through tiny holes along the side of their thorax and abdomen called spiracles legs. All insects have six legs, while butterflies in the nymphal de family may appear to have four. They do in fact have two tiny legs tucked up, so you can't see them. The leg attaches to the thorax via the Coxa with a bald and socket joint called the Raca equiva***t to the bald and hip socket in your hips. Then from there we go onto the Fema, the tibia and tarsus, which I always count the tarsus because it varies in number. And then finally, the two little claws on a bullish shaped foot. Usually the proportions and shape of these elements will vary widely. 10. 9 LINE: Top-down Beetle Sketch NEW: I've come to the Angela Marmot Center for U. K Biodiversity to draw some insects and learn about construction lines. Fortunately, in this collection, they've got some African beetles which are bigger than the UK species, which means it's easier for us to look and identify the different body parts, which can help us sketch and draw them and get everything in the right place. Let's go see some insects and see how we get on construction lines. The underlying blueprints. Construction lines are temporary lines that will eventually be replaced by a darker, more confident mark. Yet they remain an intrinsic part of the final drawing. And they are an integral part of creating a drawing, which is concerned with construction and structure. I use construction lines in most of the drawings I create. They are like an architect's blueprint before the details are added. Later on, I draw construction lines lightly. Sometimes I even do these in a lighter or different color, particularly a light blue in all my drawings, I always leave my construction line drawing in. I never rub them out. They get superseded by the darker lines that they are providing guidance for. The more you practice construction line drawing techniques, the better you'll become at deconstructing the objects and the scenes that you draw. Construction lines help you unravel what you're looking at and help you make sense of its proportions and shapes as you start to get acquainted with your subject at the heart. Construction lines are about breaking your subject down into its most basic shapes and forms. And creating a scaffolding on which you can hang the rest of your drawing tentative light lines that will help you build up confidence on where to place your darker delineations as your knowledge deepens of the subject through your drawing inquiry. There are a few different types of construction lines that I do. What I want to talk about now is a skeleton. Skeleton lines. Think of skeleton lines like the skeleton in your body. Skeleton lines are the internal spine of the form. I would start drawing with this technique, particularly if the subject has thin appendages, just as in an insect legs, or even the tentacles of a brittle starfish or a bird with a long neck. They are good for establishing the direction of travel and building confidence of the angle and positioning and underlying shape.