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| title | date | subtitle | tags | published | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drawing week 04 - Using the brain | 2017-05-09 | Drawing at the right side of the brain |
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Also read Learning yourself to draw.
As I'm slowly getting a tiny bit better at drawing things I see, I still don't have a fundamental basis to rely on. Until I've read "Drawing at the right side of the brian" from Betty Edwards. Everything I've read in there came as a complete revelation to me. She explains how you should "look" at things, what is important to look out for when realisticly drawing and how values/tones work. It's an amazing book and I'm very glad I've added it to my toread list (a few years ago, I finally got around to actually reading it.)
Can you spot the difference between the portraits below?
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Yes, I am well aware that the second portrait still looks like crap but come on, at least it shows highlights, it has a decent contour and my skull isn't "chopped off". Both drawings took me 45 minutes. I'd say that's a definitive improvement here.
Other exercises in the books concentrate on hands, interiour, chairs, ...:
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Everything is done with a pencil. My preference is starting to lean towards 2B and 4B instead of HB.
So, what did I learn this week: (these are some quick oneliners that summarize each important chapter in the book)
- Draw (shared) edges of stuff: call them contours.
- Draw spaces between stuff: call it negative space.
- Draw relationships between stuff: call them angles and proportions.
- Draw lights and shadows on stuff: call them tonal differences.
- Do not draw the appearance of stuff: call it "the gestalt".
The last point is an interesting one. It's also called "making it come together" and is usually achieved by simply focusing on the other 4 points.
Doing these exercises gave me a real boost in confidence and motivated me to draw even more. I even started enjoying the use of a pencil - soft shading is nice and not doable with a pen!