Learning to See: A Beginner's Guide to Drawing Realism

1. Learning to See Intro: Hi, I'm Jesse, an artist and art educator working out of New Berlin, Wisconsin. I am so excited to bring my new class to you learning to see a beginner's guide to drawing realism. Have you ever wanted to sit down in front of objects, draw them and have it look real on the page. Well, this class is for you. I have been teaching beginners how to draw for over 20 years. In high school art program. I have worked with several different art teachers collaborating to come up with lots of strategies and lessons that can help anybody improve their drawing a promise. So follow me through step-by-step, all of the small little exercises that will lead you up to your final project. That will be a still life of three to five objects. You're going to set them up, draw them, and they will look real. We'll talk about a lot of different drawing topics as well as we go. You'll be really adept at vocabulary and feel confident and sketching just about anything. So follow along with me. I'm so excited you came and let's get started. 2. Supplies for Class: Let's talk about the supplies you'll need for this course. First things first, my advice would be to get yourself a sketchbook. Now, you could use just regular drawing paper. That would be fine if you don't have like a sketchbook or actual drawing paper, I mean, you could use just good old typing paper, whatever you have. But I'm going to really argue that sketchbook and some actual drawing paper, something else, a little heavier weight and a little bit of tooth or texture is just such a great pleasure to draw on that. I would really advise that I would grab yourself just a plain old number two pencil that's going to help for the light sketching. You could also use a mechanical pencil there. I'd like you to have something called an Ebony pencil. And there are two different brands that I'm aware of. There are generals and Sanford. We'll talk about what an Ebony pencil can do later, but that would be really handy. Not mandatory, but again, really handy. You probably want an eraser because most beginners might need to erase the pencil sharpener. You're going to want to keep a nice sharp tip on that pencil as you work. Okay, Now another important thing is fun stuff to draw, because I'm going to ask you to draw a lot of different things. And having a variety is going to just make your drawing experience a lot more interesting. One thing though I do want to advise is that you do draw natural objects. So things like plants, flowers. Here. I even went out to my garden and looked at some tomatoes growing on the vine. The reason is you can kinda see like I did a quickie little sketch of this tomato. Natural objects are somewhat forgiving for beginner. If I draw that little tomato and one of the little leaves is a bit off, nobody's going to know. However, if I have something that's extremely angular and really precise and whatever, when the angles are off, it's really clear, right? And so that's not so encouraging for somebody starting off. Next thing is optional. If you have a printer, there are a couple of worksheets that I'm going to provide you. And so being able to print those and work right on the print is a great option. Although if you do not have a printer, that's okay. I am going to be showing you a way to get around that. Finally, when you're learning to draw, getting in a quiet and meditative mindset is really helpful. So if you could find a quiet place where you can really dedicate the time, set aside 20 minutes, 30 minutes, where it's dedicated to you pursuing this skill. That is going to be one of the best things that I can advise to you. And it's time to improve yourself. So it's really worth it. Okay, Those are all of the things we need to gather that up and let's get started. 3. Lesson 1a: Understanding Symbols: Welcome to Lesson one of learning to see. In this lesson we're going to cover some of the essential basics. But before we do that, I'd like to give you your first writing assignment. This is a pre instructional drawing. And what that means is that I am not going to instruct you in any way. So I would like you to draw your hand. And the reason I'm not instructing you at all is we want to see you where you are right now. You could take your non-dominant hand for me. I'm right handed, so I am going to lay my left hand on the table. I would like you to make a pose where the palm is face up. You do not want to have your fingers straight out. Obviously bad drawing there, but you get the idea. You want your fingers curled, you want some complexity there. I'd like you to keep that hand still as best you can. While you draw with the other hand. Draw this in as much time as you need. Add as many details as you would like, and just make it the best drawing you can make it. Please pause the video right now and complete your drawing and then come on back to us. Hey, and welcome back. So what are the things I want to discuss is the idea of symbols. Now, symbols are really important to visual communication. If I am driving, I don't even need to read that sign just based on the shape. I know that that means stop. Just like this symbolizes the concept of love. This represents being a superstar which you will be by the end of this course. And of course, these represent people that are happy or sad. However, this does not look like a real heart. That's a weird arrow. This does not look like a real person. These are symbols. They represent a concept. And it's important to understand symbols when we're learning how to draw, because we're actually going to avoid them moving forward. But first, let's do another little exercise. If you could flip to a fresh paper, I would like you to draw me a little picture. Kinda think about like if you were in kindergarten and you're going to draw me a picture with a house, a tree, a son, a cloud, a bird, and a path. Pause the video now. You can just use regular old pencils so no need to shade or do any kind of color, but give me a line drawing, include those six things. Pause the video and then do your drawing and come on back. All right, welcome back. So I'm going to make some guesses. We're gonna kinda complete a little bit of magic here. I am going to guess your house has something like this for the shape. Might even have a little smokestack. You probably have a front door. And it's very likely you have the little criss-cross window. My guess is that your path goes something like this. And that your tree is probably next to the house and does something like this. Some people do like a little branch. I made kind of skinny, but you might have the little hole in there where a little squirrel or something speaking out. Now your son could take some different forms, but a lot of us will do a circle. And then of course, these rays coming off. Some people may do the sun like this. Some of us may give it sunglasses and a smile. The other popular one is the corner sun. So this kind of thing. Alright, so you probably have one of those types of sons would be my guess. What else was on my list now I'm forgetting. Did I tell you to draw a bird? Birds. We're going to often see this kind of thing for our birds. Maybe you did something a little more detailed. I don't know that kind of thing. Possibly. My point is, these are symbols. This is not what a real bird looks like. This is not what a real house looks like. These are made up, they are drawn quickly in order to communicate an idea. And it's important that we have symbols like that in order to go about our daily lives and to communicate. However, when we're learning how to draw, we really don't want to draw symbols because then we're making things up and we're not drawing realism. I'd like you to complete the following exercise, and we call this the vase face exercise. Now, there's two different worksheets. If you are able to print, then you're gonna notice that one worksheet says lefties and one says righties. Print. If you are right-handed, print the righty. If you're left-handed, print the left ear. Here's what you're gonna do on your worksheet. We'll pretend this is split in half. I'm a righty, So I'm gonna do the right side. What I want you to do is to draw a face that is directly mirroring the face that you see here. I want it to be as close to the same face as you can make it. Now I will tell you, I've been practicing this a very long time. That was even a little hard for me to do while talking. So you want to get yourself in a quiet place. Really focus on this. I want it to be as accurate as you can make it like where the nose is really line up and the mouths really line up. And so to the chins, they call this vase face because of course then if I were to connect these, it also kinda looks like a flower vase now. So I can see it two ways. If you're a lefty, of course, the handout is made so that you can draw from the other side. Now, let's imagine you do not have the ability to print. Here's what I'd like you to do. You're just going to grab a sheet of paper. Now, if you're a righty, you are going to be drawing on the left side of the paper. And I just want you to draw out of your head the best profile you can make. A person has a big forehead, but whatever, it's just going to make it up, you're going to draw it on the left side of the page. And now you're just going to try to copy this on the right. So you're essentially just making your own worksheet. We'll see I was talking and I got distracted, so I messed up there. You can also do we at school do like a monster face. Sometimes. You can draw anything and then attempt to mirror it. And again, it's kinda hard to do while I'm talking. You don't really messed up but not too bad. My point being you can draw just about anything and try to make it a mirror so you don't have to have the worksheet. Alright, what I'd like you to do then is to please pause the video, either print one of the worksheets or make your own. And try this, and you can try this multiple times. I, it's also fine if you have to erase, but give it your best shot, try to get it as accurate as you possibly can. Please pause and do that drawing now. 4. Lesson 1b: R Mode: Welcome back. One of the reasons I had you do the vase face exercise is because I want you to get into what we think of as our mode. Our mode is this wonderful mode of drawing. It's this way of thinking, and it's based on brain theory. So a lot of my lessons are based on betty Edwards groundbreaking book drawing on the right side of the brain. And it is based on the theory and the concept that we have like two halves of our brain. The left side controls things like logic, reason, math, language, things that are orderly. And the right side is in charge of other things like dreams, music, art, dance, creativity in general. The right-side would do things that are more intuitive. Now, we always think with both sides of our brain. However, when we are drawing, we want to activate what we would call our mode. And our mode is this idea that I want to let the right side of my brain be dominant. The right side is going to help me to see things differently. I want to temporarily forget about logic and reason. I also want to drop language. So I'm going to tell you not to talk while you're drawing. That's kind of important. I want you to forget what it's supposed to be because here's the thing. This left side of your brain loves. Symbols. All heart. Because symbols are communication, they make sense, they're easy. They help us understand things, and the left brain loves that. But the right brain is going to be more capable of seeing things in a fresh way and not making assumptions. Okay, so symbols are not gonna be what we want. This is another kind of world-famous exercise. This is from Betty Edwards book. And what she asks students to do is an upside down drawing. And this is kind of like classic assignment is this drawing by Pablo Picasso. Here I'll flip it so you can kinda see, whoops. Here's what it would look like right-side-up. It's a bit of a quirky drawing anyway, however, it's a nice line drawing that has a lot of complexity to it. And that's really what we want to find. Why turn it upside down ultimately, here's what you're doing. So I should actually explain before I tell you why we flip it upside down. I want you, if you are able to print that image, that drawing. So you're going to print this Picasso. Now, if you can't print it, I'm going to show you in a moment what you could do. Instead. You're going to print it and you're going to turn it upside down. I then want you to just grab another sheet of paper. If you had black construction paper, that would be ideal. And if you don't, that's okay. Whatever other paper you have, you're going to cover almost the entire thing. But then you are going to draw only what you see there. So now my left side of the brain knows this is the top of a man's head and the top of some glasses. But if I really look at that, it doesn't look like anything. It just looks like I don't know what kind of a mess of lines. So if I were to draw this, let me make my pen a little thicker. I'm going to try to get kinda quiet. Now. I'm going to talk, which is definitely going to make this lose some accuracy. But I want to talk you through things. I'm gonna take my time and I'm going to draw whatever I see here the whole time. Just forget what I think it is. So I'm going to forget, like I'm not going to identify things as I draw. I'm just going to say, okay, there's a line there. There's lines there. A few lines here. So you're not naming stuff. It's like part like a curved shape. There's another curve. There's another curve. This one goes inside of that one. There's a couple marks here. Okay. Then I would move this paper up. I just drew on the wrong layer. So my little drawing here is moving with my black paper, but you get the idea. Alright, I'm gonna continue now. So drawing, what is there, what I can see. Okay. And again, I'm trying to forget what it is. Feel free to erase if you think you need to. I'm not going to do this whole drawing while you watch because obviously that's a little boring for you. You're going to want to just go ahead and try it. Now if you google this, you're going to find a ton of examples of people who have done the upside down drawing of Igor Stravinsky. And that might be fun for you to just see the results. You will be shocked at how really accurate these can be. So if you want to, that would be a fun thing to do. Once again, you know what's coming next, right? Go ahead and pause the video. And I would like you to try this exercise. Now this is going to take awhile if you draw that entire thing. I mean, you're probably talking like an hour. I mean, maybe 30 to 45 minutes, I guess it just kinda depends on how quick or slow you are. But give it your time and attention. This is like boot camp training. And it really is a little tedious, but I promise you there's great learning happening, merit. Okay, So please go ahead and pause the video and then try this drawing. 5. Lesson 2a: Blind Contour: Welcome back. How was the upside down drawing for you? Even if it doesn't look just like Igor Stravinsky when you flip it right side up. It doesn't matter because you just did some wonderful training in how to see how to observe all of those little shapes and edges and to get into that our mode, that matters a lot. What I wanna do next is introduce a concept known as contours. Contours are the edges that either separate the forms of an object. So you can see here the stem has edges that separated from the rest of the pepper. But also contours could be things like this. Like maybe I'm going to draw the highlight contours. It's just kinda up to you. Again, when you draw, you get to have all the decision-making. You get to edit. What do you want to include? What are you choosing to leave out? That's part of the beauty of drawing. So I just traced the contours of this green pepper. You're not going to be tracing. We want you to be able to start studying this thing and drawing what you see. So to do this next exercise, I would like you to get set up in the following manner. I want you to set up your tablet device, whatever you are watching this on. And I want you to put it on one side of the table. I then want your sketch book on several feet apart. The goal here, you're gonna be doing a drawing where you're gonna be watching me and I'm going to be drawing over here. I'm going to do a way better job than that. You're going to be following everything I draw. You're going to be drawing over here. But you may not look at the paper while you do this. I'm going to ask you to basically copy my pacing and to copy what I draw. Its think of it as like a draw along. Whatever I draw you're going to draw. I'm going to go back to the larger picture. If you can get yourself setup like this, try to turn your body so you cannot see the paper. Okay, get yourself setup. And then we will get started. I'm going to switch to black. Alright, so hopefully you have your device setup. Again. Try not to peak at the paper. I want you to draw everything that I draw and try to keep the same pace as me and just follow along. Okay, ready? Here we go. We're going to start right here. Now, when you find contour edges, you have decisions to make. Are you going up? Are you going down? Now? You're doing a continuous line drawing because you're not looking at the paper, right? So you just kinda made this little circle. So I'm going to just try to circle back. Keep out of your mind. I don't care if this looks like a green pepper when we're done. Okay, You're following me. Good. Now we have to make a decision. We're going to go this way. We have another decision to make. So let's go this way. Okay, We're going to backtrack. Don't look at your paper. Don't worry about if you actually backtracked. I'm tracing. You're not. What I want you to see though is the nice slow pace. So can your eye andrew, hand coordinate? And can your eyes start to follow these contours? Okay, we have a decision to make. We're gonna go up. I'm going to follow this kind of shadow where the quiet, calm, meditative part of drawing really comes in. Now on an area that's kind of a straight line like this, your brain might be tempted, your left brain might say like I just quickly draw a straight line. But you know better. We're drawing what we really see. So we're going to take our time. It might not just be a straight line. We're going to backtrack. Okay? And you may lift the pencil off the paper, and you may look at what you've drawn. Now there's a good possibility. It looks nothing like a green pepper. We don't care, right? First of all, this is the no judgment zone. Right? We are learning how to study. So we don't care yet about the visual result, which sounds funny, but it's the truth. We care about the study, about the careful close observation about not assuming like it's a green pepper, it must look like this, right? I don't even know what That's horrible green pepper. You get my idea. We're not just making assumptions were borrowing what's really there. Okay, good. You went with me on this kind of unusual journey, but I'm asking you for something even stranger. Okay. We're going to head into what's known as a blind contour drawing. Blind contour is essentially what you just did. You followed me and you were not allowed to look at your paper. So you're going to have to do the same thing, but this time you're not going to follow me. You are the ones studying the object, finding the contour edges. So here's what I want you to do. I'd like you to do five blind contours. And if you're not sure, well, what does she mean by blind? I'm going to challenge you even more because no longer are you just going to be on the honor system to not look at the paper. You're actually going to create a blinder. You'll see really commonly in schools they'll use something like a paper plate. We can just use a sheet of paper and you're essentially going to stick your pencil through it and draw what that paper on top of your hand. So you cannot see what's under there. You are going to be asked to draw with that blinder on. Again, I would suggest that you pick some organic objects. So here we're a couple tomatoes that I found in my pantry. But you can look for leaves, flowers, things such as that. You actually want some complexity so that you've got plenty of contours to study. Here's how you're going to set it up, the basics. And then there is a video where I'd like you to just watch me do it at least once so you feel confident. And then you're going to launch right in. First thing, you're going to look only at the object, not at the paper ever. So no cheating. You're going to study it so carefully, just like you saw me do on the green pepper, You're gonna take your time. You're going to go around. You're going to, and you hit an edge, you have to make a decision. Do you go up, down, sideways? Sometimes you have to backtrack, right? So you're not going to stare at that for study that paper at all. You are studying the object only. You're going to go slow. I can't emphasize enough. Drawing slowly. You want to get your eye and hand paste together, and your eye needs to look slowly. Don't make the assumption that a tomato must look like this. Okay, that's a cute little symbol. That's not this tomato. I would like you to complete five of these. So please watch the video next where you're going to see me do the whole setup. And then I want you to give it your best shot. For the sake of just cleaning up this video, I am going to just summarize the whole goal of this and then have you watched the video and do it? So a summary of these first couple of lessons. First of all, symbols. Symbols are important in daily life, but they are not observed and we want to learn how to observe. To do that, we must slowly study the contours of objects as we draw. We want our hand and I working together to do that. And we want to capture tiny details. We want to see all the things that make that object special and unique. So please watch the next video on blind contour drawing. And then I want you to draw five objects in blind contour. Okay, cool. See you back here in a minute. 6. Lesson 2b: Blind Contour Watch Me Draw: All right, We are about to do a blind contour drawing. Here's how to get yourself all set up. You are going to need a sheet of paper and you're going to poke a hole in it with your pencil. You need a pencil to draw with and you need an object. My advice would be something natural or this is a fake flower, but something like a leaf, a flower or something along that line, you wanted to have some complexity, but natural objects, organic objects give you quite a lot of freedom and flexibility as well. Alright, so how this works, I want you to 100% look at the object. Okay? So that means you are not allowed to look at the paper when you're drawing. Here we go. Going to stick the pencil through my paper. You can see that I'm going to hold the pencil with the paper on top. And as I draw, the paper might be moving around, but the goal is that I cannot cheat. I can't see through this paper. So I cannot see what I'm drawing down here. How I want you to do this is you're going to start your eye somewhere on one of the edges and you're gonna do a continuous line, meaning you're not going to pick up your pencil. So I'm going to get started here. Now my perspective is a little different than what you're seeing on the camera. So like for example, I can see a little more into the flower. Then I think you can. Now, again, I should really be doing this without talking. I'm coaching you through it. So I should be drawing very slowly. My I and my hand should be coordinated where I'm trying to draw the same speed as my eye is studying. Sometimes I'm going to draw something and then realize I have to backtrack over it. Just don't pick the pencil up. We don't really, honestly care if this looks like a flower in the end, we care that you are practicing, learning that skill. And I'm not going to finish this drawing because I just want to, for the sake of time, have you see, okay, that's a great example. Let me zoom in. You might be thinking that looks nothing like this. Okay, true. But here's what I do see as a teacher. What I'm seeing is observation. I am seeing this person studying all the bumps and crevices and edges and lines. And sure they don't line up correctly with each other. But that is not the goal right now. So this actually would be considered a perfect blind contour drawing. I want you to give that a try and you can't practice too much. So grab your paper with the hole in the middle and give this a shot. 7. Lesson 3a: Modified Contour: In this next lesson, we are going to be taking things to the next step and we're gonna be learning something known as modified contour. But first, a quick review. Give yourself a little critique if you could lay out all of the drawings you have done so far. In particular the blind contours. Let's do a little review and decide where you're at right now. In summary, we have learned that symbols are not observed. I want you to look through your drawings. Is there anywhere in your drawing? You can kinda tell it was made up. You know, you're rushed it a little bit. We know that we want to slowly study contours as we draw. Give yourself just kind of an idea of how you're doing there. Do you know you could slow down a little bit more or do you feel like you're doing really solid with that? How are you doing with your hand and I coordinating? Are you looking slowly and drawing slowly? Finally, are you capturing all the tiny details, those things that make each object really unique and special, and that make it completely opposite of a symbol. You can have so much fun with doing blind contour. Doing self portraits is hilarious. Here's one that I did. It took 20 minutes and my nose is floating over on the side of the page. That's just how blind contours are. Great way though to loosen you up and come up with some really fun exercises. Alright, blind contours. We've kind of talked about this to death, but you can't ever make enough of these. The more blind contours you draw, the better you're gonna be at observing. Let's take this next subject. So here's a rose laying on the table top. I did to blind contours. So here's the first and here's the second. Which one is a better drawing? Take a second and decide. If you said number one, I would agree with you. Here's why. It's not that number two is so bad. But there are some things that are pretty rushed in number to the leaves here, seemed rushed and fake. Same here. This perfect little swirly thing going on too, is not a terrible drawing, but I can tell it is more rushed. One, yes, it looks less like a rose, but there is a ton of slow, careful observation there. If I was giving this a grade, number one would be my a level drawing. Now, modified contour. You know what a contour is. You know, those are the edges of the object. But when we modify the contour, so we've done blind contour now that meant you could not look at the paper. When we do modified contour. Now you can look at the paper, but you're still doing the object 80% of the time. I'm focusing all my energy here and only about 20% at the paper. So here's the difference. I just undid my layer. There we go. Blind contour drawing versus modified. In the modified, I can now pick up my pencil. So I no longer have to do that continuous line all throughout and make decisions as I go. I'm still making decisions, but now I can pick the pencil up and I can look at the paper so I know that things are lining up correctly. Now, before I have you try a modified contour, It's important to point something out. And that is point of view. When we are learning to draw something. Alright, these are four photographs that I shot of the same object. I never moved the object. Here is my original view. That's the view I intend to draw. But if I lean to my left, it looks like this. That's very different. I can see way more inside that flower now, if I lean to the right, it looks like this. If I just sit up taller now I can see down on the object much more. My point is, it's pretty crucial that you set the object down and you kinda get your body comfortable and then you don't move. Because you can move your point of view so much that you could potentially draw the head of the rows in this position. And then if you move your body, you could be drawing these leaves from this position and the stem from that position. And all of a sudden things don't quite make sense. So place your object, get comfortable and then try not to move too much. I would like you to try a modified contour of a natural object. You know, I'm a big fan of our plants, flowers, vegetables, fruits. But let's look at this illustration. Here's a lime. Let's look at the contours of the lime. Okay, let's look at the contours of the onion. Within 0.2 seconds, you can already tell that onion is going to be way more complex. We want complexity, right? Because complexity is what the right brain is going to thrive on. When you have a lot of things to draw. The right brain is going to kinda kick in the left brain. It doesn't make so much sense to the left brain to have so many complexities. Left-brain would love to draw that lime. There's nothing wrong with a line, right? It's beautiful little lime. It's just that when we're trying to learn how to draw, complexity is actually better for us. So don't pick something that easy. Pick something that's got a lot of crinkles and edges and fun stuff to look at. Alright, so choose your object. I want you to set it up and then don't move the object and don't move yourself. I want you to draw, I'm going to star this one very slowly and with detail. You're going to study all of these. But now you can look at the paper and the object, but you're still spending most of your time on the object. Still important to silence that inner critic. Now that you can look at the paper, you're gonna be feeling a little more anxiety because all of a sudden with a blind contour was great if it looks like a big mess. All of a sudden, no, it's not going to look so messy. Tell your critic to be quiet. You are going to work on this. And even if you don't draw the most perfect onion I've ever seen, no big deal. You're going to work in a very silent meditative mode and really focus on what you're about to do. Here's an example of what your final result might look like. It's just a line drawing, no shading or anything like that. I want you to capture lots of details. Now, if I look at this onion, I mean, look at all of this, right? There's woops. There are so many little details there. I mean, so you again, are the editor. You can draw this if you want to, but you really do not have to get all in there. If you look at my drawing, I cut a lot of that out. Okay. I'd like you to pick three objects and draw them using modified contour. So three natural objects, give it your best shot. This drawing probably took me ten minutes. However, depending on what it is and just how you work, maybe a drawing could take you 20. Maybe a drawing tastes your 30. Maybe it takes you five. I don't know, but give it at least three practices and then come on back to me. 8. Lesson 3b: Modified Contour Watch Me Draw: Alright, let's talk about modified contour. In a modified contour, we are talking about looking at the object still 80% and the paper 20%. Okay? So I'm gonna do a quick little demo drawing this onion. At some point, I'll talk some points, I won't. I'm also going to time-lapse this. Just know that when you see me drawing quickly, that doesn't mean I'm really drawing quickly. This is a slow process, so drawing this will probably take me ten minutes, I would guess. So here we go. Alright. Reminder that the goal here is for your eye to start following the contour of the object and your hand to follow along with it. So I think I'm going to start the bottom here. And you're always making decisions as you go. Now, I'm still going to draw with primarily a continuous line. I actually find that a little easier. I will pick up my pencil, but I don't need to often. Okay, now as I'm starting to get into here, There's a lot of complexity. So I'm going to use some of that continuous line almost like blind contour. But I'm making decisions right now. I don't necessarily want to draw every little thing I see because there's really not necessarily a need for that. My goal is to describe the object to somebody who can't see it. If I can do that with less lines, there is nothing wrong with that. Okay. One other thing I just want to address briefly before I keep going and then I am going to time-lapse this when I've got something pointing at me in space like this little piece right here is coming straight at me. This is going to be one of those things where your left brain kicks in and says, Well that doesn't make logical sense. Let me just make something up. This is where I want you to use your right brain. One quick little strategy is if you can close one eye, that's going to give you a much clearer view of this thing. So let me just kinda get that in. Let me get the onion skin there. Okay, so now I'm at this part where it's popping towards me. My view might be a little slight bit different than what you see on camera, but here's all I'm seeing. That piece that's popping towards me does that. It's real skinny. And I just draw what I see and then it can't be wrong. I'm going to stop talking now so I can really get into drawing. I'm going to time-lapse this so you can see the rest of the drawing. One last thing I'm going to mention again is all these little details. I'm going to make decisions on what to include and what not to. 9. Lesson 4: Line Quality: Let's take things the next step. So at this point, you have completed some modified contour drawings. Hopefully you were able to get into that slow, careful observed our mode. But now we want to take things to the next level and talk about line quality. But first, let's just discuss your art supplies a little bit. Pencils. If you have never researched pencil grades. There's some basics behind it. You're going to notice that drawing pencils have different numbers and letters. So B stands for blackness, and H stands for hardness. So a nine H pencil is going to be very hard. And that will make it kinda light just because it's not going to produce as dark of a mark because the lead is so hard. Whereas a nine B pencil, so blackest, is going to produce a very dark line or mark. And you can kinda see that indicated here as well. We are going to be using something known as an Ebony pencil. Ebony pencils are very dark and very soft. So there may be more akin to that nine. But ebony, it's just able to produce a beautiful deep black line. Now there are kinda like two main companies that I'm familiar with that produces ebony pencils. And those are Sanford and generals. Either one of them is going to work just great for what we're about to do. Alright, flipped to a fresh page in your sketchbook, and I want you to grab your ebony pencil. Here's what I want you to practice. You're gonna do some fun doodling for me. I want you to go back to your continuous line, meaning you're not going to pick up the pencil. But I want you to see what is the thinnest, most delicate line your ebony can make. Then what is the thickest and darkest line it can make? And can you control your pressure to switch back and forth and transition smoothly in-between. It's mesmerizing. See what you can accomplish. I want delicate and thin, that fades into thick and heavy and dark. Fill up a page with that kind of stuff. Pause the video for a moment. Have a little fun with this. This is a great practice to just if you're on the phone or whatever. Alright, make some fun doodles and then come on back to me. Alright? What you're essentially practicing when you practice that pressure is you are practicing something we called sensitive line. You may also see it called a weighted line. Okay? There are some uses. Well, there's a lot of uses for a sensitive or weighted line. But when we're drawing, you can almost indicate where light hits an object, where shadows are, where things are stark and harsh, versus where things are delicate and soft. Here's an example. Light pressure. When you are drawing, when should you push? Nice and softly. Okay, Number one, wherever the light is hitting the surface. So I see light hitting my object here. That would ask me for a more delicate light line. Same thing here. Other times when I'm describing a texture. These kind of things in this area or this very delicate kind of papery wrinkly stuff. Because if I make that really big, fat hard lines, it ends up looking like a tattoo or something on the surface of my object. This is delicate, so that would ask for more delicate line. Anytime there's subtlety, things that are in your estimation. I don't know. Again, just kinda delicate like the little roots under here, that kind of place where I want to use hard pressure. So that's going to produce my thick dark line. In the shadowy areas. Wherever there are very obvious contours of things. So here I've got a pretty sharp edge even though that's kind of one of the papery texture parts. But I made a choice to make that nice and sharp. I liked making this kind of a dark area. Here. I added some heaviness just because I liked the very stark difference between that onion skin and the actual onion. Also wherever several lines merge. So if you look down there. I think my point of view is a little tiny bit different than the picture you're seeing, but or kind of in here, I chose to use those real dark areas. Bottom line is awaited are sensitive line like if you compare these two drawings, I mean, this one looks flat, right? Whereas this one, it looks shaded even though there's no shading, it pops off the page. It looks three-dimensional. It feels like it's describing the object so much better than the one where the lines are all the same. So sensitive or weighted line is crucial in use starting to figure out how to draw your next assignment. I would like you to set up a little still-life and you have a choice. If you have a ribbon. One option is to tie a bow and to just lay that on the table as your still life. The other option if you don't have any ribbon is a paper curl. So you're going to cut about one inch by 12 inch strip of paper. And you can see I just use some tape to tape it down. I want you to twist it so that there are some interesting lines and forms being created there. Why these subjects, these are harder to sort of wing. They're a little harder to make up without obvious symbols. So I can draw like pretty obvious bow symbol, right? But I want to bypass that. I want to actually study it when I really look at this bow, this is not as wide open as this is just a very specific shapes. They're the paper curl. This one will really confound your left brain because it is, it doesn't look like anything in the real-world. It's just an abstract form. But the other reason this is a great assignment for learning modified contour. That's also sensitive line. Because you're gonna do that two is there should be some real obvious shadow areas because in both cases, you've got something twisting and space. And when that happens, we're going to have obvious dark areas and light areas. Alright, dark, light. All of those opportunities are there to help you practice that sensitive line. Here. Very light, delicate right here, I can start getting darker, more medium here, nice and dark, really dark. So you kinda get the drift there. These are good little practices because they're also gets you away from the natural objects, which maybe I don't know, you're getting a little tired of it this point. So here's what some final drawings might look like. Just to give you a sense, we want those sensitive lines to smoothly fade. What sometimes I'll see a beginner do is they'll say like, okay, heavy dark, light, dark, light, dark. It just looks really chunky and choppy. You want to be able to smoothly. And it's a little hard actually on an iPad. It's easier with pencil. But you want that to more smoothly fade from light to dark so it shouldn't look like fat skinny, fat, skinny. We want to see that smooth transition. Choose either of these objects. Pause the video, and then come on back, and we'll take you to the next step. 10. Lesson 5a: Negative Space: The next thing we need to learn about is a concept called negative space. Might be wondering, what is it. Negative space is used heavily by designers. When you look at common logos, you're going to see negative space is really used effectively. For example, if we look at this WWF logo, designer is leaving whitespace. That is suggestive of the fur of this bear, but your brain is really filling in the gaps there. I also really love how the NBA logo uses negative space to create the shape of the player. And of course, there's the famous FedEx arrow. If you've never noticed that before, it really silently communicates that FedEx is fast and they're on the move. Now, negative space is gonna be useful to us, but before we get there, we have to talk about something called formats. So a format is simply the shape of the paper that you are drawing on. Why this matters to us as we move forward, we're going to learn that there are different formats like landscape, where it is wide, portrait where it is tall. But you can also have formats that are squares, even circles. Format. When I referenced that, I'm really just talking about the edges of your paper. Now that you know format, we're going to discuss how to start seeing negative space. Negative space when we draw is going to be really helpful to actually draw up positive space or the shapes that we're trying to show accurately. So if you're able to print this worksheet, go ahead and do that. What you're going to see is a photograph of a ribbon and you're going to see an empty format below it. This exercise is going to be helpful. So let's first identify the negative spaces. Here's one, here's two. That's the shape of number two. Here's 34. Notice how for kind of creeps around the corner there. We're going to actually break that into a fifth shape. So I'm going to cut a little line there and make five. So I see five negative spaces in this photograph. Your goal is to attempt to draw the negative space, not the ribbon. So for example, if I want to draw a space number one, I am going to identify that shape. And then I am going to try to observe that. I'm not going to draw the ribbon itself. I'm going to try to draw that empty space inside of it. Now you know how to use your pencil as a measuring tool. So if you'd like to, you can use the edges of the format to help you place where these negative spaces should go. So I'm gonna kinda lightly figure that out. And now I'm going to start to observe the negative space. And so I'm always kind of toggling back and forth between looking at the positive and the negative. But I want you to just start to be conscious of the negative space. So not worrying about the details. We're not going to worry about line quality here. We don't care if it's sketchy. What we do care about is can we get some accuracy in those negative spaces? Okay, now let's look at this next shape. This is pretty close to the edge of the format. I want to make sure that I've got that in the right place. So we're constantly worrying about placements and worrying about proportions. So I'm going to just pay attention how far is the edge of the format I actually think that shape was. Okay, so I'm going to bring it back. And now I'm going to start to look. You see how in shape number four there I had cut it off just to make it a little easier. Now when I get around this corner, the ribbon does not touch, so therefore the negative space must continue around. And then I'm watching what it does as far as its curve. And I'm watching where it leaves the format. And then I'm going to compare to my photograph and just kinda make sure it matches shape number four. I'll now continue with shape five. Again, looking at the negative space. Where does the ribbon leave the format? I'm going to start to map that out. And then I will compare and make sure shape number five looks accurate. I would continue along until I have drawn all of those negative spaces. Again, I'm not worried about any detail in that positive shape of the ribbon. Speed up a little bit just for the sake of your time. So I might have a little bit of inaccuracy here. Okay. So if you're on a sheet of paper, you could then cut the paper in half and lay it on top and just see how accurate you were. I didn't do too badly, especially because I was in a little bit of a rush and I was talking the whole time. Now, if you do not have worksheets, I have an option for you. You're going to pull up the worksheet on your iPad, on a Chromebook screen, on a phone. And you're going to lay a piece of paper right on top. You're going to press very softly. You can trace the actual shape of those negative spaces. There's no need for you to draw any details in the ribbon. So all you really have to worry about is just tracing the negative spaces and the format of the photo. And then you're going to trace the empty format below. So you've essentially made your own worksheet and you can do exactly the same thing. You just saw me demonstrate. Just press softly so you don't ruin your device. That's pretty important. Okay, this little deer looks really incorrect because the negative spaces are wrong. So let's see if we can correct this together. I'm going to switch to a different color. Let's go shape by shape and figure out where the mistakes were made. I want you to carefully observe and again, we're not worried so much about the deer, were worried more about the negative space. Although we will kinda toggle back and forth between looking at both on a kind of fill that in. I need to get this shape a little wider and skinnier. So now let's look at shape number two. So let's figure out there's definitely some inaccuracy there. I think this is in the wrong place. And there definitely needs to be negative space on the edge of that format on the right. I'm going to correct that. It's starting to get a little visually chaotic with the drawing underneath, but I think we can handle it right. Okay, Now I'm going to continue drawing this space and making this more accurate. I think what's there is close, but it's probably a little too large. I'm going to speed this up while I correct these negative spaces. The whole goal of this demonstration is so that you really do understand negative and positive spaces are always in relationship to each other. And the more that we can identify that, the more accurate our drawing will be. The next thing I want to discuss is composition. Composition is how the layout and arrangement of elements within a format is designed by you. So that's the negative space and the positive spaces. If you want to explore this further, I do have a whole class called composition and color on Skillshare. So check it out. It goes much more into the design world of composition, but also teaches you quite a lot about color as well. A good composition. Let's talk about a few rules. I'm going to suggest for a beginner, a good composition allows objects to touch three to four sides of the format. You know what the format is now, objects must be recognizable. So here we see the objects running off the page or the format. It is possible for you to zoom in so close that the objects are not easily recognize. So this drawing on the left, if that were to be or I'm sorry, the photo on the left, if that were to be a drawing, there's so much negative space. And I don't even know what I'm looking at. It's really hard to tell what the objects are. Plus, we just talked about that rule of having objects run off the page. Here. They're running off all four sides, but I don't even know what they are. We want them to be recognizable. Alright, I'd also like to see a 5050 balance of positive and negative space. Meaning positive spaces are my objects. And they should take up about 50% of the total space. Roughly. Negative space should take up the remaining 50 so that there's a balance between the two. I also want the negative spaces to be interesting. So you've heard of or seen many times, I'm sure this composition where there's just a person in the middle of a page. And that can work for certain strategies. However, for following these rules right now, this is just one huge negative space. And it ultimately isn't that interesting. So it would not follow our rule. And we want to do that for now anyway, as we're learning. I want to give you an assignment and it's a photography assignment. I would like you to set up a flat lay still life. You're going to choose three to five objects and you're going to shoot photos. Now if you're not familiar with flat lay, it is a photography style in which someone chooses objects that relate. So maybe children's toys, maybe Autumn Harvest, wedding. And all of these things are going to be arranged in a very meaningful organization. So sometimes you'll see them be very, almost like a grid, like very orderly, very spaced, and it almost creates a repetitive pattern. I keep doing that where I hit the wrong layer. So here's that example of a very orderly flatly composition, but sometimes there's a lot of angles created. But flatly is so great for a beginner to practice composition because everything is flat. And so therefore you can really control those positive and negative spaces. I want you to shoot photos should a couple of your setup and you can also try different setups. And a little hint, you are going to be drawing the best one. 11. Lesson 5b: Negative Space Watch Me Draw: Alright, so in order to do your negative space exercise, you've chosen one of your flat lay photos that has a strong composition. So the standard for that is that are positive and negative spaces are about balanced. The negative space is just as interesting as far as shapes as your positive objects are running off three to four sides of the page. And just in general, the negative space is interesting. So with that said, you've got your picture chosen, you're going to use either your phone or your iPad. So whichever you happen to have, you could also even use a Chromebook screen or a computer screen. You're just going to do this next step very carefully and draw very lightly. You're going to create, set the photo to the size that you actually want to draw. So I'm literally going to be drawing whatever size I make this projection right now. So I'll go something like right here. And then I'm going to try not to touch the iPad screen to change that, I'm going to grab some sketchbook paper and just a plain old number two pencil. I'm going to lay this underneath. Now. I am only tracing the format, so don't be getting any ideas on tracing objects. So format only and I'm pressing really softly because I sure don't want to ruin an iPhone or an iPad or anything else. Okay, so I have just traced the format and that's it. Now, like I said, I'm not going to touch this. So now this is the same size as this. And now I can go ahead and begin drawing. One thing I do want to clue you in on is a little tip as far as using your pencil as a drawing tool. The photo I've selected, I've already drawn the negative spaces here, so I know it's a little bit challenging even for myself. Using your pencils and measuring tool can be really handy. So if I think of the tip of the pencil and my thumb here as a ruler, let's say I want to know, well, how far is this joint of the measuring tape and the little tomato to the edge of the page. So I can slide. I'm going to put the tip of the pencil where the point is I want to measure and I'm going to slide my thumb until I hit that point. So then I can transfer over to the little drawing and I'll say, okay, so it's about right there. Now let me just see how it would be on the height. It's about right there. Yeah. That's a pretty good mark for where that little intersection would be. It's not helping me do anything other than just give me a little bit of a reference for where I start this negative space. You're drawing negative spaces, so you are not worried about objects. You are worried about the shapes that you're seeing. So if I look at the little corner here, I'm going to forget that I'm drawing a measuring tape. I'm going to just try to draw like, okay, what shape do I see in that corner? And then this, I'm telling you not to look at the positive shapes, but sometimes you're going to have to, like you're going to see when I get down to these objects, they are whole. I mean, so I'm going to keep drawing around. What I'm really focusing on though is what this shape looks like. So in this case, two, don't worry about line quality. We don't care if this is sketchy, we don't care if they're sensitive lines here. I just totally rough it out. Okay, so now I'm going to just study the shape and see if that feels right. When I look at distance from here to here. Now of course I could check it. Oh, pretty good. Okay. But really what I'm doing is just looking at this overall shape. Alright, now I'm going to continue down here. Again. I am looking at the object right here. I'm paying attention to the little orange sniper doesn't quite touch the edge of the format there, so okay, now one thing that I think I'm off on already is that this object is more at an angle and I think I've drawn it to straight, so I am going to erase and I'm bouncing the table. Sorry about that with the camera. Okay. Because that does have a little more of an angle. So now I'm watching the negative space in here. This bubbles out, comes in. I can already tell though there's a problem because I don't think there's enough room for that object, right. So that objects needed to fit kinda like right in there. So this now tells me this is too far over or it's too big. So let's give that another try now that the object's there because look, this can't touch that. And so again, I'm looking at this negative space. I'm not going to worry about the object right now. I know it's off, but that feels better for the negative space. So I think that this object I had too far over and it might have been a little too big. Now let's look at the negative space here to here. Yeah, that was way too little in my first attempt. Okay. So I would keep going until I got something like this. Now, mine has some real complex teeny tiny negative spaces in here. So I did my best to place those. The seam Ripper tool and this little wax crayon, I essentially drew the object. However, I wasn't really worried about details. For now. You're not worried so much about detail as you are trying to just identify, are the negative spaces in the correct place and are they the right size? So go ahead and give this a try, but this is the level of detail I want. So the spaces are detailed, not the objects. 12. Lesson 6a: General to Specific: So let's review what we have done so far. When you started off the course, you were working in blind contour. And one of the most important skills you are practicing is no symbols. So you are bypassing that left brain and that critic. And really learning just how to study an object and to draw exactly what's truly there. We then worked into modified contour. At this point, you could study both the object and the paper, but it was still 80% object. So seeing, looking was still heavily emphasized. Once you are able to draw an object using modified contour, we then worked on line quality. You started focusing on a smooth and sensitive line. Alright, that was kinda handling individual objects. From there we started talking about negative space and how negative space can help us to draw positive space. And we also introduced the idea of composition and how artists arrange or layout things on the page. Part of this was also learning citing. Citing is when we use our pencil as a measurement tool. It's also when we do things like check for relationships in order to figure out proportion and scale and making sure everything's in the right place. Another topic discussed there was general to specific. This idea that we have to do a light rough general sketch first using are citing so that we place things correctly. And then we can put it all together. So after the general to specific, we are then able to draw close, careful observation and end up with a beautiful still life. Perfect. Alright, at this point, we've discussed all this stuff. I want to show you a video now of how I would start to look at a grouping of objects in order to really start a still-life drawing from this level and move it forward to this level. So watch this and then I want you to practice this. Let's discuss a concept known as citing. Citing is when I am going to use my pencil is a measurement tool. And there's a couple of goals in citing. The main idea is that I've got a grouping of objects and I need to figure out their relationship to each other. So where is this cherry in comparison to those two? How does it line up to the banana peel? How tall is the apple compared to the banana, et cetera? These are the kinds of things I want to figure out before I spend all my time carefully, slowly drawing each object. Because what if I put it in the wrong place and then it's got to move. This is also related to this concept of general to specific. It's the idea that I am going to loosely sketch and lightly sketch where everything goes. And I'm going to figure out its correct proportion to the other objects. Lightly sketching that first, then going back and getting more specific. So loosen general first and then come back and now actually observe and all the careful stuff that you've learned at the beginning of the course. Your final project for this lesson is to draw a still life with multiple objects. I want all of them to be in proportion to each other, properly placed in comparison, I want all the negative spaces to be the correct shape and size and placement. And I want the objects to have realism and details. So it's really summing up everything we've been learning so far. Let's talk about how I would do a rough sketch of this. First things first, talking about proportion. So this idea of, well, how big is this compared to this? I think I have my camera set up so you're seeing very close to the same as my eye sight is seeing on the still life right now. If it looks a tiny bit off, bear with me because that's part of the technology here. What I'm gonna do is extend my arm. And you want your arm extended. And another strategy is to, I'm setting my elbow down on the table to just stabilize it. But you want your arm out. And the reason is because if I keep changing distances, that is going to change my settings. So for example, my arm right now is completely extended. I'm putting the tip of the pencil at one end of the cherry. And I'm going to slide my phone nail until it hits the other end. So in my line of sight right now that's how big the cherry is. But look, if I move my arm and I start bringing it closer, that doesn't work anymore. The size is wrong now, this is why you want to create an arm position and have the same arm position the whole time you're citing. So it's just easiest if you extend your arm as long as it'll go. So my arm, my elbows not even bent right now. My arm is straight out, but I am resting on the table so that I have some stability. Okay, So here's the first thing I wanna do. I wanna pick one object to draw it first. So I like this little cherry. This is gonna be a good marker for me to get started. Okay, so I'm estimating that cherry is about this big I mean, sure. You could directly transferred to the paper and just say, well then it's going to be this big on my paper. But ultimately, I'm here to tell you it doesn't really matter. I'm going to very roughly sketch that Cherry. Now obviously there was no observation there. I'm guesstimating. I was also very sketchy about it. So I'm going to just clean that up a little bit. And I'm drawing again nice and lately, so I'm going to say that's how big that cherry is. Now, let's figure out how long should the stem B. This is where my sighting really starts to come in handy as a measurement tool. I'm going to put the tip of the pencil here and then slide my thumb to the end of the cherry. And let's see how many cherries fit into the stem. So watch. Here's the stem one, a little shorter than two. Okay, so now I'm going to come to my paper. I'm going to measure on the paper. So see how I moved my thumb here. The measurement was right here. But when I went to the paper, now, that doesn't matter anymore. I'm going to measure the cherry on the paper and I know the stem has to be a little shorter than two. But remember that the stem starts in just a little bit inside. So we measure this again. And then I'm gonna say one. There's two right here, but my stem is just a little shorter. So I can draw myself just a guesstimate on that's how long that stem is going to be. Great. Let's start looking at some other relationships. Your plum and level lines. Okay? Plum is when your pencil is straight up, representing the straight vertical edges of the paper. And level is when your pencil goes horizontal. So think of this. If you've ever hung a picture frame and you've used an actual level or the little bubble moves to show you it's perfectly straight. It's the idea that it represents the edge of the format that you're drawing on. So that's your level. This is your plumb line. Watch how helpful this is. I need to now figure out where the banana peels should go. I'm going to hold my pencil straight up. I'm going to find that plumb line. Do you notice how the edge of the cherry and the edge of that banana peel pretty perfectly line up. So that tells me now I can see there's a little negative space between them. But the edge of that banana peel has to be about right here. And then I'm just observing that it kinda comes out partially into that cherries down, so I can roughly figure that out. Okay, now I could also cite the measurement from here to here. And I'm going to do that now with a plumb line. Now this is a little hard with the video and try to get that to match. So actually I'm going to move my paper quick because I want to keep my arm fully extended. So I'm going to measure how tall the cherry is here and compare it to there. So that is almost the same height as the cherry. On my paper. I measure how tall the cherry is. And that tells me right about there. That's about right. That is where the next peel comes over. Okay, speaking of that, let's look where, like How far away is the end of the stem to the end of the next banana peel. I can kinda watch the negative space I've just created with the pencil. So there's probably about one cherries worth of negative space before that other peel. So I'm going to roughly say, okay, about right there and then the peel. So let me check that one more time. Some other way I could do it as go right here and say there's one like 1.5 that go this way. Yeah, I've got right here. So this is kinda left-brained. This is like I'm just a mapping everything and all of that like specific drawing that we first learned is not even involved right now. So okay, now I'm just going to observe that Peel and I can look at that negative space and I can determine if that looks correct. I think that's decent for now. I can always go back and fix things. Okay, so I've lightly mapped that in. Maybe I'll finish drawing the peel here. So this is doing a weird perspective thing where that kinda disappears. And the PO goes back behind here. Let me just check. Where does it disappear. See right in the middle of the cherry is where that has to disappear. So that's about right. Okay, Now let's figure out the negative space between the cherry and the apple. So let's say the height of the cherry again, I'd say it's about half a cherry. Eye lay this on my pencil. There's half of a cherry and my drawing. Then I can also just observe that and I feel like that looks really good. Okay, now I can just kinda like start to draw my apple in. Let's figure out how wide the apple should be. So I'm going to use my cherry again. There are 12, I'd say 2.5 cherries across the apple. So let's measure my cherry here, 1.52. So I'm going to estimate the apple to be about here. And let's make sure we know how tall the apple is. So, whoops, I'm going to save my cherry one. It's about 2.5 tall also. So this looks reasonable for the height of the apple. Okay, and then it's little stem is in there. Okay, so let's late in these other cherries now, the biggest help to me right now is going to be looking at this negative space. So there's a tiny bit of space between the apple and this cherry. I can also assume these cherries are about the same size as the first one. Now I want to talk about a concept called drawing through. When you are doing like a rough layout, it's helpful to sometimes pretend your objects are clear. This cherry is behind this one. And temporarily I'm going to pretend that the cherry in front is clear. So I'm just going to draw through it and place the other Cherry. Okay. Once I've determined that it's pretty much in the right spot, then I'll erase that area. And I actually think the negative space here is a little bigger. So I'm just going to scoot this down. I can also check to see where does this cherry end. So this one has to be a little higher than that one. So I'd say that's a good rough spot for it. Okay, and then their stems go over the apple a little bit. This one comes but right here, okay, Roughly. Alright, let's finish up the banana. So for the banana, I'm also going to do some drawing through. I'm going to pretend that the apple is transparent. Now I can kinda, because this is a straight line, I can kinda see like alright, that banana is cutting the apple almost in half. And I'm also looking at, is the banana behind the cherries, so it's behind the stem. But there's a negative space between here and here. So I've got to make sure that I leave this space. Okay? And now where does this end? Like does the banana? And at the same place the cherries do. It's just a touch longer. Let's see, the end comes up. Okay, and now I can't really see the top. I feel like my apple might be too short. So let's make that apple a little taller. Okay? Yeah, I feel like that's going to be better because then I have more room to fit the banana and okay, so then let's rough in the banana peel here. And then there's another banana peel, there's a negative space there. Okay. Hold this up to the camera better. So this is what we would call a very general drawing. So this is super general right now. This would be the first step. I would go back and double-check my work. This needs to be very nice and light so that it can be erased because it's natural that I would make mistakes in this phase. So this is a very general drawing I've used drawing through. I've made it general to get the proportions correct. And I've used my sightings skills of plumbing level lines and using my pencil as a measurement tool in order to get this correct. So get your drawing. I'd like you to set up a little still life, let's say three to five objects. I would suggest that they overlap somewhere at least two objects overlap. And I want you to set them up. Get yourself a very general drawing like this. I also want you to take a picture of that still life just in case things get moved. Or in my case, this banana is going to start to get really gross and I don't know how long it'll take me to draw this, so it's better if I have a photo as a reference. So go ahead and get yourself a rough drawing like this. And then in the next video we'll come back and talk about how to get to this specific part now. 13. Lesson 6b: General to Specific Continued: Hopefully you have a rough layout similar to this one. Our next step is to figure out how do we make this very general and very loose sketch look more specific and look believable. Alright, Step number one. Hopefully you have gone through and double-check your sizing and placements of things. I've done that and I'm satisfied with what I have right now. So I want to clean this drawing up. I want to get rid of sketchy lines. Maybe things that don't need to be there. If I don't know where I drew these stems, I have multiple. I'm lightening everything up because this was not drawn a big eraser. This was not really drawn, of course, with observations so much as it was measurement and left brain activity. So I'm going to lighten these lines up almost to where I can't see them. I am for the sake of a camera, however, not going to erase maybe as much as I normally would, because I want to make sure you can see what I'm doing. Okay? Hopefully you've drawn light enough though where you can do this and it's pretty much gone. Okay, so I have now lightened everything up. Um, I did that drawing with just a plain old number two pencil. You could also do a mechanical pencil for that first step. And now I think I'm going to switch to my Ebony. I'm gonna make sure I have a nice sharp point on it. Because now I'm actually going to come through and do more proper drawing. Alright, let me start with my friend here, the little cherry that helped me do all my measuring. So I'm really going to erase. I'm going to now draw this more appropriately. So taking my time, slowing down, trying to get sensitive line already think I've made a little bit of a mistake. I feel like that's a little short, so I'm actually going to erase and enlarge this. Yeah, I'm happier with that. Okay, so now I would move on to my next object. And it really doesn't matter necessarily what order these go in. Because if you're confident you've placed them correctly, you can just keep rolling. I'm going to draw a little bit more. And then I think I'll just speed up the video so that you don't have to watch me in real time just because it is so Pokey. So here we go. 14. Lesson 7a: Intro to Final & Thank You!: Congratulations, you did it. You've finished the course. You are ready for that final project drawing and I'm so excited for you. So let's talk about the requirements and then I'm going to ask you to just go ahead and get started. I'm going to post the requirements right here. Alright, first, I would like you to find three to five objects that are related. You're going to see in my sample video that follows, I did cookie baking supplies. So I thought that was kind of a fun theme. You're going to arrange these objects. I want them to overlap a little bit. Why? Because that creates interesting negative spaces. And you know, now that that's important, I want you to vary generally sketch, and constantly check proportions and citing and make sure those objects are placed next to each other correctly. You're then going to lighten those lines and go back over with close, careful, slow observation, sensitive line, all that stuff we've talked about. So if watching me do the whole process from start to finish would help you the next video, we'll do that. Otherwise, I want to thank you so, so much for joining me. This has been a treat to be able to teach this to you. Please post examples of any of the drawings you've done during this course. I would love to see them and give you some feedback. So see you next time. And thanks again. Bye. 16. Bonus: Remember the Pre-Instructional Drawing?: Hey everyone, This is your bonus footage. Do you remember this? This was your pre instructional drawing from the very, very beginning of the course. So this is obviously my sample. But have you compared your pre instructional two after instruction? One bonus, great assignment would be, draw that hand again. Can you go from this to this? I think you can, and I think you already have. So I would love to see your side-by-side examples, your pre instruction versus your post instruction. And if you want to make it even more challenging, I was holding a ribbon in my hand when I did the second one. You've got this. Thanks so much, everybody See you next time.