by You Can Draw In 30 Days The Fun Easy Way To Learn To Draw In One Month Or Less (pdf)
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13. Blend your shading as smooth as glass. If you haven’t had time to purchase a handful of blending Stomps, your finger will do just fine. Use controlled, careful pressure to smudge and smear the shading, blending it lighter and lighter from the darkest dark edges to the lightest brightest hot spot on each sphere. Work this for a while. The smoother you make the blended light transition from dark to light, the more “glasslike” the surface will appear.
“Smooth as glass” is a nice segue, allowing me to introduce another great term: “texture.”
Texture gives your objects a “surface feel.” You could draw curving, spiral, wood-grain lines all over these spheres and create the illusion that they are made of wood. You could scratch a ton of hair onto each sphere, and suddenly you would have a very strange looking alien family of furry blobs. Texture can add a lot of identifying character to your drawing. (More on this great principle in later lessons.) 14. Adding extras to your drawing adds another layer to your learning. I can and will teach you the specific skills you need to create technically accurate three-dimensional drawings.
However, the real learning, the real fun, the true enjoyment of drawing come from you internalizing the skills and externalizing your creative imagination.
LESSON 3: ADVANCED-LEVEL SPHERES
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I’ve been driving my four-year-old son around a lot lately, hour-long commutes to downtown Houston. As soon as we start the trips, he happily demands, “Elmo!
Elmo! Elmo!” So off with my preset NPR, and in with the Elmo CD. I’ve got the songs memorized now; I hear them in my head, my dreams, my nightmares! However, there is one song that I really like, even after 1,500 listening sessions: “It’s amazing where you can go with your imagination! The things you will see, the sounds you will hear, the things you will be!”
Who knew? Elmo is a little red furry dude of wisdom. I can teach you how to draw, easy, no problem. The fun part is how you launch from this starting point by practicing, practicing, practicing . . . all the while adding, adding, adding tons of your own brilliant creative imaginative extras.
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Try drawing a few holes in the larger spheres. Holes and windows are great practice exercises for learning how to draw thickness correctly. Here is an easy way to remember where to draw the thickness on windows, doors, holes, cracks, and openings: If the window is on the right, the thickness is on the right.
If the window is on the left, the thickness is on the left.
If the window is on the top, the thickness is on the top.
You can see I had
some fun with this
lesson. I started going
crazy and added win-
dows with boulders
launching from them.
I was about to draw a
bunch of doors,
skateboard ramps,
and hamster travel
tubes between the
spheres. I pulled my
pencil back at the last
second, not wanting
to overload you with
too many ideas, too
fast. Then again, why
not? Go for it!
LESSON 3: ADVANCED-LEVEL SPHERES
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Take a look at a few examples of how other students completed the lesson. You can begin to see unique drawing styles beginning to emerge. Each student will have his or her own unique approach to the lessons.
Student examples
By Marnie Ross
By Kimberly McMichael
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By Brenda Jean Kozik
By Tracy Powers
LESSON 3: ADVANCED-LEVEL SPHERES
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L E S S O N 4
THE CUBE
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Had enough spheres for a while? Let’s move on to the all-important, extremely versatile, always-a-crowd-pleaser cube. The cube is so versatile that you will be using it to draw boxes, houses, buildings, bridges, airplanes, vehicles, flowers, fish . . . fish? Yes, a cube will even help you draw a fine-finned fish in 3-D. Along with helping you draw faces, flowers, and, well, just about anything you can think of or see in the world around you. So let’s draw a cube.
1. Starting on a fresh new page in your sketchbook, write the lesson number and title, date, time, and your location. Then draw two dots across from each other.
2. Place your finger between the dots using the opposite hand you are drawing with. Then draw
Feel free to write journal entries,
a dot above your finger as shown.
quotes, notes, and anecdotes in your
sketchbook. The more you personalize
your sketchbook, the more you will
value it, and the more you will use it.
Look at my sketchbook pages: I write
journal entries, self-reminder notes,
grocery lists, to-do items, airline
times, and all kinds of nondrawing
stuff. My sketchbook is the first place
I look when I need to remember some-
thing I was supposed to do.
3. Look at the dots you have drawn.
Try to keep these two new dots really
close together. We are about to draw
a “foreshortened” square.
4. Shoot the first line across.
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5. Draw the next line.
6. Add the third line.
7. Complete the foreshortened square. This is a very important shape to practice. Go ahead and draw this foreshortened square a few more times. WARNING: Draw the two middle dots very close together. If these dots are drawn too far apart, you will end up with an “open” square. We are aiming for a foreshortened square.
Foreshortening means to “distort” an object to create the illusion that part of it is closer to your eye. For example, pull a coin out of your pocket. Look at the coin straight on. It is a flat circle, a 2-D circle that has length and width (two dimensions) but lacks depth. The surface is at an equal distance from your eye. Now, tilt the coin slightly. The shape has changed to a foreshortened circle, a circle that has depth.
The coin now has all three dimensions: length, width, and depth. By tilting the coin slightly, you have shifted one edge farther away from your eye; you have foreshortened the shape. You have distorted the shape.
LESSON 4: THE CUBE
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This is basically what drawing in 3-D boils down to, distorting images on a flat two-dimensional piece of paper to create the illusion of the existence of depth.
Drawing in 3-D is distorting shapes to trick the eye into seeing drawn objects near and far in your picture.
Now, back to my warning
about drawing the two middle
dots too far apart. If your dots are
too far apart, your foreshortened
square will look like this.
If your foreshortened square
looks like the open square I just
mentioned, redraw it a few more
times, placing the middle dots
closer together, until your shape looks like this.
O
kay, enough about foreshortening for now. Keep this concept in mind; it is so important that just about every lesson in this book will begin with it.
8. Draw the sides of the cube with two vertical lines. Vertical, straight-up-and-down lines will keep your drawings from “tilting.” Here’s a tip: Use the side of your sketchbook page as a visual reference. If your vertical lines match up with the sides of the page, your drawing will not tilt.
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9. Using the two side lines you have just drawn as reference lines, draw the middle line a bit longer and lower. Using lines you have already drawn to establish angles and positions for your next lines is a crucial technique in creating a 3-D picture.
10. Using the top right edge of the top foreshortened square as a reference line, draw the bottom right side of the cube. It’s a good idea to shoot this line across in a quick dashing stroke while keeping your eye on the top line. It’s perfectly okay to over-shoot the line as you can clean up your drawing later. I prefer a picture that has a lot of extra lines and scribbles that look 3-D, rather than a picture that has superclean precise lines yet looks wobbly and tilted.
11. Now draw the bottom left side of
the cube by referring to the angle of
the line above it. Reference lines!
Reference lines! Reference lines! Can
you tell that I’m strongly urging you
to practice using reference lines?
LESSON 4: THE CUBE
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12. Now on to the fun part, the shading. Establish the position of your imaginary light source. I’ll put mine in the top right position. Check this out. I’m using a reference line to correctly angle the cast shadow away from the cube. By extending the bottom right line out, I have a good reference line to match up each drawn line of the cast shadow. Looks good, right? Looks like the cube is actually sitting on the ground? This is the “POP” moment, the instant your drawing really thrusts off the flat surface.
13. Complete your first 3-D cube by shading the surface opposite your light position.
Notice that I am not blending the shading at all. I blend the shading only on curved surfaces.
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Lesson 4: Bonus Challenge
Let’s take what we learned in drawing the basic 3-D cube and add details that enhance and identify the cube as three different objects.
1. We are going to draw three cubes in a group. Start the first one with your two guide dots.
I’m going to be referring to these positioning dots as “guide dots” for the rest of the book.
2. Use your index finger to position the middle guide dots.
This is a terrific habit to establish now, early in your drawing skill development, so that by the end of Lesson 30
using them will be second nature to you.
3. Connect the foreshortened square. This is a great shape to practice in your sketchbook if you have only a minute or so to doodle. Say you are in line at the bank drive-through with four cars ahead of you. You throw your
car into park, whip out your sketchbook, and
dash out a bunch of foreshortened squares.
Don’t worry about needing to keep an eye
out for the line advancing; a chorus of car horns will politely remind you when it’s time to move forward. Always keep your drawing bag handy, as you never know when you’ll have a few spare minutes of downtime to practice a sketch.
4. Draw the vertical sides and the middle line of the cube. The middle line is always drawn longer and lower to make it look closer. Use the side of your sketch page as your reference line.
5. Complete the cube using the top
lines as reference lines.
LESSON 4: THE CUBE
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6. Go ahead and draw three cubes like I have drawn.
7. Draw guide dots in the middle of each side of the top foreshortened squares.
8. Let’s take this one cube at a time. On the first cube, let’s draw an old-fashioned gift-wrapped postal package, the kind we used to get from Grandma at Christmas: a box wrapped in brown butcher paper and tied in string.
Shoot a vertical line down from the near left guide dot; then draw it across the top to the other guide dot.
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9. Repeat this on the other side. Look at how you have forced the string to flatten across the top. The guide dots helped you draw the string inside of a foreshortened boundary. Guide dots are extremely helpful in lining angles up like this. You’ll see how often we use guide dots in the upcoming lessons (a lot!).
10. To draw string wrapping around the sides of the package, use guide dots once again to position the angles. Draw guide dots halfway down each vertical edge.
11. Draw the string by connecting the guide dots, using the line above as your reference line.
LESSON 4: THE CUBE
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12. With this basic string wrap, you can finish all three cubes into a package, a cube game, and a gift wrapped in thick ribbon.
Go ahead and have some fun: Try drawing a group of five cube games each overlapping the other, like you did with the five spheres!
By Kimberly McMichael
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Place a shoebox or a cereal box or any kind of box on the table in front of you.
Photo by Jonathan Little
Sit down and position yourself so that you can see the foreshortened top of the box, similar to the foreshortened shapes you have just drawn in this lesson.
Now, draw the box sitting in front of you.
Don’t panic! Just remember what you learned in this lesson, and let this knowledge of foreshortened squares help your hand draw what your eyes are seeing. Look, really look, at the foreshortened angles, the shading, and the cast shadow. Look at how the lettering on the box follows the foreshortened angles at the top and bottom of the box. The more you draw, the more you will really begin to see the fascinating details in the real world around you.
By Suzanne Kosloski
LESSON 4: THE CUBE
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L E S S O N 5
HOLLOW CUBES
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T o teach you how to really feel like you are gaining control over that daunting flat piece of paper, I want to explore the challenging fun of hollow boxes and cubes.
1. Go ahead and lightly sketch in the cube.
Parallel and Perpendicular Lines
Parallel lines are two lines going in the
same direction, spaced equally apart. In my
mind I picture the word “parallel” and see
the two l’s together in the word. Perpendi-
cular lines are two lines that intersect at
right angles to each other. For example,
this line of type text is perpendicular to the
2. Slant back two parallel lines.
right edge of this book page.
3. Alignment alert! Look how I have drawn
this top edge of the box lid in alignment
with all of the angled lines slanting slightly
up to the left. I’m going to refer to this
angle as direction northwest. Think of a
compass.
The four most commonly used line directions
that I will be referring to throughout this
book will be lines drawn in directions north-
west, northeast, southwest, and southeast.
Take a look at this compass.
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Now, I’ll foreshorten the compass. As you recall, foreshortening is distorting or squishing an object to create the illusion of depth, to make one edge of the object appear closer to your eye.
Notice in this foreshortened compass illustra-
tion that the four directions—NW, NE, SW, and
SE—all line up with the lines you already used to draw your cube.
I call this my “Drawing Direction Reference
Cube.” This is a wonderful tool to help you position your lines consistently in proper alignment.
Without consistency in your angles, your draw-
ings will “droop” or look askew. Dr. Seuss
achieved world acclaim for his signature style of drooping, melting, Play-Doh-ish characters,
buildings, objects, and environments. However, in his work, Dr. Seuss still maintained consistent drawing compass angles. Good examples of this
are in his book The Lorax. Turn to any page in The Lorax, and hold up the Drawing Direction Reference Cube to the illustration. You will discover that his buildings, windows, doors,
pathways, vehicles, and characters all follow
these four important positions.
4. Draw the other side of the box lid lifting up with two parallel lines.
5. Using the bottom of the box line in
direction NE, draw the top of the lid in
direction NE.
LESSON 5: HOLLOW CUBES
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