How to draw skulls revealed and uncomplicated.

Learn how to draw skulls by first thinking about the caricaturists of a human skull, it is composed of bone that forms the overall shape and because of this it is an off white color making it great for practicing your shading and providing a good subject matter to encourage you to make more use of the paper tone. Even if you use colored paper with highlights to emphasize the lightest tones, your skull drawings will still look good, giving you plenty of practice with your drawing techniques and skills. Common features to a skull are the brain cavity with a nice curved area, eye sockets, nose cavity, jaw and teeth.  All of these can be exaggerated as features to easily create the skulls of monsters or sinister creatures but still recognizable as skulls because they have strong characteristics and features that are easily recognizable.

My advice for you would be to draw a human skull a few times so as to understand what a human skull looks like and how it is drawn but I don’t expect you to have one of your own so I have provided a few examples for you to draw if you want to use them. I would advise that you trace them first so you do not have to do the outline construction this will make it easier. If you want to learn more on the subject of tracing and its benefits then you could join my ezine and down load a free report on the right hand side of this page. When you have a few outlines drawn you can decide on which one you would like to continue by doing the shading on it.

How To Draw Skulls Three Quarter View
A skull example for how to draw skulls,

This will help you to see more detail in the subject matter, informing you as to how the shapes fit together and how the shadows help to create a more three dimensional shape to your skull drawings or any drawing.

It will also be good practice for helping you to better understand how to draw skulls of all kinds’ not just human skulls because it will put accurate information into your head to start with about skull drawings .

The video below will help you by showing you how I draw; it is always good to watch how others draw.

I suggest that after doing this you should try to draw some skulls free hand from memory.

The best way to draw skulls is to start off drawing real skulls then after drawing a few you will have the information written into your brain so as to be more able to draw them from memory. The good thing about learning how to draw skulls is s is that they are not like faces and do not have to look like a particular person in fact you can be quite creative with them because of this. The best way to start off is with the main outline which depending on which angle you are looking at is a circular shape with a rectangular bottom where the jaw would be when looking from the front.

How To Draw Skulls Fron tView
How To Draw Skulls A Front View Example To Use As An Information Source To Help You.

When looking from the side it would be an oval shape lying horizontally with a rectangular shape jutting off the front where the jaw would be again.

How To Draw Skulls Side View Profile To Help And Inform You About What Your Drawing.

From this basic shape you can then start putting in the detail, if you do these out line drawings with light pencil marks they can more easily be covered up as you put more detail into your drawing building it up as you go along. My best advice would be to use photographs to get your information and you can find many of these online but just in case you’re not able find any then you can use these that’s why they are here the help you learn how to draw skulls and you will find plenty of interesting angles that can be useful if wanting to add some other adornments like hats or head dress to you skull drawings when learning how to draw skulls.

Real Dead MF

Skulls are good for drawing as they are quite easy, once you have drawn a few, you can get a buzz out of drawing them because they look good without great effort, they can be used for horror art, fantasy art, tattoos or cartoons. They can be combined with many other elements of creature and character designs, they are good for adding drama as a visual dynamic, I enjoy drawing skulls and have drawn many.

Now you should try drawing some more skulls free hand by making simple line drawings of them trying out different versions quickly, try exaggerating features like cheek bones or teeth, try having some teeth missing. You could make one into a pirate skull by giving it an eye patch and a bandanna or an Indian with a head dress or a cowboy with a Stetson, the possibilities are endless. How to draw skulls will help you to make some great skull drawings but you should at the very least start by drawing your skull drawings from the photographs of real skulls.
View Gareth Pritchard’s profile on G+

 

Easy pictures to draw everywhere honest.

You are not going to believe this but all pictures are easy pictures to draw, ha, ha. 🙂 🙂

The truth is drawing is easy when somebody tells you how easy, there are many easy pictures to draw but most people don’t realize, don’t know, don’t want to know or don’t want you to know and that’s the truth. The visual culture, visual media, commercial arts, arts industry, all make pictures the easy way and the only people who don’t are us, ordinary people like you and me.  Except I realized this by accident really because I spent 40 years learning the hard way first, the most difficult way possible really by teaching my self.

Easy pictures to draw lonely cliff castle.
Easy pictures to draw, lonely cliff castle drawn by human not machine.

Easy pictures to draw is how the industry do it.

Take a good look at the drawing, commercial arts industry, colleges, universities and you will find far less little actual drawing going on than you realise, much of it is now done on computer, by machine, yet we all try to do it the hard way by trying to draw free hand. Yes there is great self satisfaction and accomplishment in doing drawings free hand but when you are trying to draw like your favourite artist or draw your favourite picture, you will find that it usually comes from the art media industry, who don’t do it that way really when they use machines to do it and it’s quite different.

They use computers for everything nowadays, so it is questionable if it is actually drawing at all, aren’t they very easy pictures to draw when a machine does it for you?

Yes it takes some understanding and skill to use those machines but the question is are they doing the drawing or are they operating a machine that’s doing the drawing?

Of course nobody tells you this, nobody tells you when you are drawing or learning to draw that you are competing against machines and I am not sure if they or any body at all even realizes it but drawing with a machines is questionable because who’s actually doing the drawing?

Those that use these machines don’t tell you either but like I have already said I am not sure they have realized, I would love to tell you that it’s some dirty secret but I am not sure it is, they just let you form your own opinion which is what we mostly all do anyway.

Easy picture to draw the dragons flight.
The dragons flight showing easy pictures to draw without using a machine to do it.

Let me get back to the subject after my little rant, easy pictures to draw are very easy so easy even you can do them and compete against these machines, not only compete but use them so you are doing the drawing, real drawings that you can tear in half if you want to and throw away. Try doing that with a computer drawing, have you tried ripping a computer in half, don’t bother it’s a waste of time and somebody else might have the drawing on their computer so you won’t even be able to destroy it.  Just a silly joke don’t take me too serious on it please!!!

How much does a pencil cost, $2 perhaps for an expensive one, how much does a computer cost $500 for a reasonably cheap one, how much does the software cost, any thing from $50 to a $1000 plus depending on what it is. You already have access to a computer or you wouldn’t be reading this so no worries there, all you need now is a pencil and some paper.

I am sorry but I still haven’t told you how to draw easy pictures but I will if you join me and down load my free report (How To Draw Easy And Simple), please find a subscription box at the top of the page, soon it will be you finding easy pictures to draw.


Dragon Land showing easy pictures to draw in pen and ink.
Easy pictures to draw, Dragon Land, drawing in pen and ink, showing that we are not machines, we are human beings.

If you want some drawing ideas then take a look at the page at the end of this link to drawing ideas.

Easy pictures to draw will soon be everywhere you look if you read my report, I promise and I will also not be filling your email in box with spam every five minuets trying to sell you something either, once or maybe twice a month if your lucky will be sufficient but not trying to sell you stuff.

View Gareth Pritchard’s profile on G+

 

Easy drawings to draw, so easy even you can do it.

Hello there, I am not going to give you any easy drawings to draw as such because I do not really know what you like or would want to draw. The best part of this is you chose your own drawings and I am going to make it very easy for you. I am going to make it so easy anybody can do it, if they can hold a pencil. I am going to do this by telling you a way how you can draw anything you want, quite simply by drawing it off your computer screen, it’s that easy.

Easy drawings to draw are so easy they are simple.

Yes, easy drawings to draw are so easy, you just find the pictures that you like, that you can get from anywhere on line or from photographs that you or other people have taken, they could be anything. You can get your favourite Anime or Manga pictures they could be pictures of animals or people the choice is yours and all you really need to do is trace them from your computer screen, it’s that easy.

The method.

If you place a piece of plane printing paper on your computer screen over a picture that you like you will be able to see it through the paper because of the light coming from your computer monitor. This means that you can trace any picture you want if you can get it up on your computer monitor screen and it’s so easy. Most commercial arts, drawing studios have tools that are called light boxes or rather they used to have these because now nearly everything is done on a computer, meaning the light boxes are not used so much anymore. These light boxes are a box with a light inside and a piece of glass or clear plastic over the top, where you place the picture you want to draw and a clean piece of thin paper over the top to draw onto. These light boxes are not as good as a computer monitor because the light has to shine through the image and the paper you want to draw onto, whereas with a picture on a computer monitor the picture is its self the actual the light source.

Any picture you like.

Tracing pictures in this way will help you to be able to draw any picture you like quite easily and once you have got the outline of the picture you want to draw then you can finish it off by doing the shading or colouring it in, but don’t attempt to do this on the monitor remove it first. Many people might think that this is cheating but it is just an easy way to learn how to draw easy drawings and if you do this it will help your free hand drawing improve a great deal.

Easy drawings to draw very time.

Now that you know this you should also know that you can now draw any picture you want easy and get it right every time, the simple way, why make things difficult when they don’t have to be?

Just one thing you need to know first before you do this, if you are using a flat soft screen TFT monitor then do not press hard on your pencil as it will damage the screen, if it is glass then it will be fine and will not get damaged. There is no need to press hard on your pencil because you only need a light line to start out with as you can easily go over your drawing when it is on the table, desk or where ever you do your drawing.

We will not accept any responsibility if you damage your monitor as there is no need to press hard on your pencil and by not doing so it will also help you to become better at drawing.

Naroto, easy drawings to draw from a computer monitor.
This is a quick drawing taken from a paused video on YouTube.

 

Bleach character from a YouTube video easy to draw.
This is another character, Bleach taken from the same place as the one above in the same way.

Easy drawings to draw are so easy, even you can do it when you know how and now you have been told how.

View Gareth Pritchard’s profile on G+

 

Emo cartoons, tips on how to draw them.

First off let’s get an understanding of what Emo cartoons are just in case you don’t know but want to.

Emo is a subculture of main stream culture with a focus on the expression of emotional devastation; it is a fashion, a trend, a music genre, a derivative of the word emotion and as such an attempt at depicting human sadness, they are the elements of Emo cartoons.

Incarceration Heart, Emo Cartoon Heart Behind Bars
Freedom from the struggle to feel love

Emo cartoons tend to closely reflect all of the above by depicting sombre, dark, colorless images often being black and white with a tiny splash of color. There seems to be no definitive explanation of this drawing style other than it being about deep, often dark emotions, Emo cartoons reflect this.

Be sure to give your characters a sad appearance. This essential goes with every mode of Emo cartoons drawing, from anime or manga type drawings to album cover illustrations. More often than not this is conveyed by focusing on creating weepy, sad eyes.

Place your characters in sombre bleak situations.

Emo is easily expressed by drawing someone sitting all alone with their head down. Add some black clouds and a little rain, a few derelict, creepy buildings and you will have created a whole Emo scene.

You can draw figures in silhouette without detail and featureless instead of entirely sketched-out features. The silhouette styles are popular not only with Emo t-shirts, but they can also be seen used as website images, graphics and album covers.

You can employ subdued, muted colors to further express a sense of despair when you draw Emo cartoons. This is a style that is reminiscent of the hardcore music albums by bands in the late 90’s and creates an Emo sensation when combined with grey mono tones.

When doing portrait drawings of your most favorite Emo bands you can make them look cool if you put the effort into taking your art to yet another level by experimenting with new ideas to say something different with it.

It can be very interesting to also experiment with collages depicting iconic images, mixed together with text, ink splats, splatters and splashes as incorporated design elements. Doing this style of image can not only convey an Emo feel, but is also more accessible to those who feel they do not draw well.

This new creative outlet can also help you get through the tough times that you might encounter by helping you to pour out your excess emotions into the drawings.

Dynamic visual devices for portraying gloom and doom, Emo drawings. Some of these items could include religious paraphernalia such as crosses, old churches; death symbols such as coffins, tome stones, skulls, graves, locked gates could portray exclusion. Empty streets and lonely figures Emo cartoons can be interesting and expressive try some.

Emo Cartoons, Hey Joe drawing.
Hey Joe how’s it going?
Emo Cartoon Drawing, Heart Cut With A Blade.
My heart’s been cut with a blade.
Emo Cartoon Drawing, Cut Through My Heart With A Blade.
Emo Cartoons Drawing, Cut Through My Heart With A Blade.
Emo Cartoon Drawing, Up On The Roof.
Emo Cartoons Drawing, Up On The Roof we are so small.
Emo cartoon Girls
Emo cartoons Drawing Girls

 

Emo Cartoon Girl Sitting.
Cartoon Emo Girl Sitting all alone with no one.
The XX, Emo Cartoon Drawing, from the video Crystalised.
The XX, Emo Cartoon Drawing, from the video, Crystalised, X marks the spot, Emo cartoons can be of bands and often convey all the right visual lighting.

View Gareth Pritchard’s profile on G+

 

Composition definition

Composition definition, it’s about putting the elements that make up a picture together.

Composition can also be interpreted as an organizing of art elements according to the principles of art.

According to Wikipedia (The principles of art) are movement, unity, harmony, variety, balance, emphasis, contrast, proportion, and pattern.

Composition principles can also be described as balance, emphasis, pattern, contrast, proportion and gradation.

Composition elements can be described as line, size, color, texture, value, shape and space.

In the image below that was created as scribble heads the composition does not work very well and does not follow the (The principles of art) mentioned above very well at all. You can see the foundation work for this image if you follow the easy cartoons to draw link to see scribble heads.

Let me tell you why the image below does not work by giving you an image that does work and then let you think about what has changed in the drawing to improve on the composition.

Easy cartoons to draw scribble heads final Details Complete.

Composition Scribble Heads Rearranged.

Besides the 3 overlapping circles of composition being added to the image what else has changed?

The first image is unbalanced it is does not have an emphasis or good pattern, although contrast, proportion and gradation are good enough. The line, size, texture and value are fine but there is something wrong with the shape and space, so think about what has changed with the shape and space?

Composition Scribble Heads Rearranged.

Why does the reversal work better, take notice of the direction of the eyes?

What you need to consider is how the lines in a drawing lead your eyes around the drawing so when you place an arrow in a picture it will grab the attention of the person looking at it and they will follow it to the tip. Lines work in a similar way and can be used as capture points but also the direction in which something is pointed can do the same thing, so a face looking to the side will direct your eyes in that direction. Depending on where the eyes are pointed will depend on where your eyes are directed and one of the worst moves you can make is having the eyes looking out of the picture. Now look at the first picture of the scribble heads again and notice that the eyes are looking all over the place with no uniformity, structure or sequence, giving no meaning to the composition.

Easy cartoons to draw scribble heads final Details Complete

In the last image below it is a different story because the eyes and positioning of the heads says things by the direction of the eyes within the drawing, which head is looking at what or who?

The finished and final composition below works best with the arrow being placed as an attention grabbing device to draw your attention to composition.

Composition Scribble Heads Rearranged
View Gareth Pritchard’s profile on G+

 

Easy cartoons to draw

Easy cartoons for most people are just fun to draw, remember when you was a kid. You could draw silly faces, childish faces, childish drawings of faces. Well cartoons do not have boundaries like other types of drawings do and if you are still a kid fantastic, joy all round let’s begin with easy cartoons to draw.Easy cartoons to draw scribble heads final Details Complete

The wonderful world of scribble heads, easy cartoons.

I took a clean sheet of paper and made a scribble on it with my eyes closed, you must have your eyes closed, no cheating but you can make as many scribbles as you like.

I used my second scribble and made them both big scribbles on A3 drawing paper, the trick is at first to not make too much of a scribble and try to space it out, space is cool.

Now you must open your eyes and take a look at your drawing because you want to see if you can see any faces, sometimes you can if you look round the scribble for a few minutes and remember these are kids drawings, cartoons, not grand master portraits, they are better than that because they are easy and fun to do.

Take a look at my first drafts.

These are the shapes I am going to use for my scribble heads.

The fist one is the master scribble and the second is my outlines for head shapes, the third is one with the scribbles removed.

Easy cartoons to draw,scribble heads.
Easy cartoons to draw, take a look at this it will soon be scribble heads.
Easy cartoons to draw scribble heads outlines.
The outlines of the Scribble Heads have been identified.

Then I removed the scribble lines and had a little think about what I should add, and where it should be added, features like ears, nose, mouth, hair, eye brows, eyes, lips, teeth. I thought about it for a little while then drew in the shapes that would give my scribble heads faces and features.

Remember these are cartoons, like the drawings that children do, kids drawings because of this there is a great deal of scope to work with and improve as you go along.

Just draw these ideas, shapes as best you can and remember these are scribble heads, made purely from your imagination using a free line, they could never ever be wrong because they don’t exist until you have drawn them.

The two pictures below are where I removed the scribble lines and drew in the features.

Easy cartoons to draw scribble heads Isolated Shapes With Lines Removed

Easy cartoons to draw scribble heads with added details and hair

Now the lines that are not needed have been removed and the scribble heads are really starting to take shape, so now all that is left to do is add some more detail, and make them seem more three dimensional (3D).

Notice the heavy dark lines around the bottom of the heads in the image below.

Easy cartoons to draw scribble heads overlapping line in hair removed.
Easy cartoons to draw see how the overlapping lines in hair from the outlines of the scribble heads has bee removed.

Easy cartoons to draw scribble heads shading.

Notice how the hair is just made up of lines all flowing in one direction giving the impression of hair and that some areas are darker than others, like the black dots in the eyes and the outer part of the eye being lighter even with a white dot giving the impression of light reflecting off the eye. These are elements that make your drawings look 3D and are so easy to do if you think about it.

Do you know why the composition is poor in this drawing besides the fact that it was drawn as a free line drawing, it can be constructed better as a composition?

View Gareth Pritchard’s profile on G+

 

Pencil art , drawing , things to know, equipment.

The requirements are pretty basic for doing pencil art, pencil drawings, but there are a few essential things you really need know in order to do well.

Here is an overview of the basic kit with a few extras you will need.

Pencil sharpeners.

I personally prefer the old-style two hole metal pencil sharpener.

A receptacle sharpener which keeps the wood chips contained within it is perfect for keeping things tidy.

To reduce wastage and breakage, especially with pencils where the cores are poorly centered, many people prefer using a hobby knife instead of a sharpener. If you choose to use a knife then please remember to be very careful and always cut away from yourself. If you use a lot of pencils often then many people prefer to use a good electric pencil sharpener.

Emery paper.

Very fine emery paper is useful for keeping the point sharp whilst you’re doing a drawing. It can also be used to clean your paper blending stump or Tortillon as they are often called.

Blending equipment.

A tortillon is a tightly rolled paper shaft that is used as a blending stump for smudging and blending your drawings. Use a tortillon instead of your fingers for blending as skin oils will damage your drawing in time, turning it yellow in the areas where you have been blending, making your drawing patchy and irregular, it also makes your pencil marks more difficult to erase if you need to.

Rubber tip ‘color shapers, pastel blenders can be very useful for working other media enabling you to work small confined areas. Chamois leather is sometimes used for applying, lifting out and mixing media.

Kneadable Eraser.

A kneadable eraser is very useful tool for lifting and erasing all types of media. When a surface of the eraser becomes dirty you can stretch and fold it into a fresh clean surface area. The general rule is to use large pieces for large areas and smaller pieces for small areas, you can also shape it to suite your needs. Many people prefer to use “Blue Tack” or similar adhesive poster gum as well or as an alternative.

Plastic Erasers.

Good plastic erasers will be soft and smooth to touch – avoid the cheap ones they are usually crumbly or hard and often come with advertising logos imprinted on them. Mostly it is best to have more than one on the go at the same time because they get dirty, needing to be cleaned often so having more than one means you can have clean ones available when you need them. It is best to have clean ones to erase the light areas and highlights, they can be trimmed with a sharp knife to make a clean surface but again please be careful. Battery and electric erasers are now popular and they enable you to make precise spot erasing and rapid clearance of large areas.

Ruler, T-Square and Flexible Curve.

Drawing a framework around your drawing area will help you with your construction so that that you can better place your subject in the drawing area it also helps for developing better comparison to help work a complete composition as opposed to having your subjects just floating on the drawing surface and creates a border around the drawing that will help when you might come to frame the finished piece. A T-square and straight edged ruler are both important for doing perspective drawings so it is helpful to obtain these in different sizes that are more applicable to the size of the drawing you are doing. A flexible curve is not important, but is often very useful when wanting to create smooth repetitive curves and more so when drawing subjects that have been manufactured and are expected to be perfectly drawn.

The graphite pencil as humble as it may seem is the simplest of drawing tools ever, yet it is unmatched even with today’s technologic advances, but when you visit the arts shops you will be amazed by the massive variety of these simple tools that come in many different qualities, shapes and sizes. If you are a beginner just starting out then a cheap and cheerful option might be best with the quick solution being to choose each of the following grades, 6B, 4B, 2B, H and 2H of fairly good quality. A serious beginner might want to buy a full set in a case or even buy a range of mechanical clutch pencils that can also be found in different sizes and grades, experimentation will help you find what’s best for you.

Line grooving tools.

Many artists use metal tools for drawing groves into the pager to create fine white lines by then lightly shading over the top with a pencil this creates very fine white lines because none of the pencil goes into the groves but some use hard plastic knitting needles as well and for very fine line work you can use a large darning needle with a fairly bunt tip.
What are pencils made from?

Pencil cores are made of powdered graphite (this is not lead as might be assumed because many people still call them lead pencils) the graphite is fired with clay, which varies in different hardness. A relatively soft, malleable type of graphite is used in a pencil which resembles lead and when first discovered it was mistakenly believed to be a different form of lead. Many people still think that pencil cores where once made of lead but they never where, graphite leaves small, smooth particles when used on paper and has a slight sheen because it is reflective.

Pencil Quality Varies.

Pencils can vary greatly in quality. Often the irregularities in substandard or badly processed graphite will lead to unpredictable varying tonal range, and even worse unintentional groves and scratches into the paper surface. Un-centered cores have a tendency to break when sharpening but the better quality pencils deliver a more reliable even tone with carefully graded hardness and are less likely to break.

Wooden-cased Pencils.

These pencils vary in hardness from about 9b (very soft) to a 9H (very hard) depending on brand and most in the beginning will start with a selection ranging from 2H, HB, 2B, 4B and 6B as these are more than sufficient. If you want to be doing extremely fine realistic tonal work then you will want to try the full range of pencil grades that are graded from 9H to 9B you could buy these in a full set but 4H is the hardest pencil I use.

Clutch and mechanical pencils.

Mechanical clutch pencils are very useful the traditional wooden cased pencils change their size, weight and balance as they are used and sharpened, which can be a problem where as clutch pencils have a regular constant weight, size and shape, they where once expensive but nowadays they can be bought very reasonably and the refill graphite sticks come in quantity which makes the even less expensive. They are environmentally friendly because there is no wood in them and they always stay sharp when working with small sizes. They come in a range of varying diameters from 0.5 to 5+mm I prefer these pencils to all others because they are very practical.

Graphite sticks and crayons.

Graphite sticks are thick solid graphite pencils that have no wood casing but have a coating on the outside for handling without getting graphite all over your hands which can be very messy they are helpful when going for broad, expressive work and shadows over lines made with a grooving tool or when wanting a visible paper tooth for a desired effect. Graphite crayons are chunky much like crayons are they are suitable for big, energetic work but they are messy as they have no coating on the outside so easily rub off onto your hand especially the softer grades but are the best for doing tactile, involved mark making on a large scale work or life drawing.

Powdered Graphite.

Powdered graphite is a more hands-on drawing medium, that is often applied with the fingers or a cloth that can be used in drawing to produce soft, loose marks it is also used to make a drawing surface toned for lifting with an eraser.

Carbon Blends.

Carbon pencils are made with carbon black or lamp black which is soot gathered from burning oil, giving it a smooth, very dark black line with variations on this being mixtures of carbons such as charcoal and or graphite. Particles vary in size depending what is the mix, soot has fine particle so is smooth and gives a nice even particle, charcoal is often quite rough. Compressed Charcoal pencils and carbon will be useful when wanting to obtain a true black, which is not possible with graphite because it is never black enough and reflective, always test the compatibility of application before doing your drawing.

Pastel and chalk pencils.

The black conte pencil is made from mixing carbon black and alumina chalk this has is smoother and creamier in consistency than the pastel, you can get hard pastels in pencil format, the manufacturers constantly experiment with the different media. Pencils which are white are either wax coloring pencils or chalk pastel pencils these are made from different combinations of mixed pigment, clay, chalk, gum and wax these other mixed media pencils may not always be compatible in pencil art, pencil drawings with graphite , and you should try them out first on a small test area.

View Gareth Pritchard’s profile on G+

 

How to draw caricature, cartoon drawings.

Before you begin to draw caricature cartoons, it is best to understand the principles of a caricature drawing, this is a drawing of a person whose features, have been exaggerated and it is usually drawn in the same style, as cartoons are drawn. When people draw cartoon characters, they usually draw them as line drawings in a cartoon style, so this is a good place to start. You might even want to try just copying a few cartoons, to give yourself a feeling for drawing in this style and doing this will give you some great results, quite quickly it will enable you, to get a feeling for it.

Cheryl Cole, With Wax Dummy, Spot The Dummy,
Simple cartoon line drawings taken from media to develop a caricature.

Caricature drawings are not just for those who are beginners, many professional cartoonists, make a good living out of drawing caricatures and often use this, as a way of supplementing their income and promoting their skills, in a fun way, you can often see up and coming cartoonists drawing impressive sketches in tourist areas of the passersby and celebrities in a few minutes for a couple of dollars. The caricaturists can often be seen working away their magic at fates and carnivals all over the world, amusing people, but this practice is most common in Europe. It is a fact that we do not all want to be able to draw a caricature in just a few minutes for the most part it is about enjoying the doing a finished product and how long it took does not matter to most of us.

Famous personalities are often exposed to caricatures and cartoons in newspapers or magazine articles. Artists often include props on the drawing to help readers make a connection with the celebrity in question and their caricaturized drawing. Footballers can be depicted kicking a football or a film star can be in a famous scene from a film. Singers can be seen holding microphones or playing instruments, the artist can also choose a minimum for the detailed environment in which the subject maybe sitting in a vehicle or standing on a patch of grass to place them somewhere. It is these little added details that are so important to take into consideration when learning to draw caricatures.

The elements of exaggeration in caricature drawing make them a perfect medium for satirizing what’s going on in current affairs. Images expressed in this way are sometimes created by taking on different aspects of the person’s behavior or personality, as well as the way they look or their appearance. An example of a politician that is regularly seen speaking out of turn can be depicted with a large mouth. An illustrator might even decide to highlight this feature by drawing a politician with their own foot positioned in their mouth, such an example is where the artist as actually thrown in a familiar take on the caricature drawing which describes the person accurately, they have got a big mouth and they are always putting their foot in it.

To discover caricature drawing well the first step to take is to focus yourself on becoming observant at finding peculiarities in other people. You have to teach yourself to be able to pick out their most outstanding, unusual or interesting features so you can exaggerate them in your drawing. Begin with facial features of the person; for example, look for particularly large or unusual shaped eyes, round puffed out red cheeks, peculiar noses that might be long, flat, wide, small or big, a pointed chin, narrow or large toothy grin. Many cartoonists often only draw just the face and shoulders a portrait type drawing but others will extend their drawings  to the full body and use other bodily features such as height or lack of it, small, round and fat with these being exaggerated to make them funny looking. This is often seen as more difficult to draw but can help the novice to produce more useful material, making his subjects more recognizable. Taking the whole figure into consideration is probably a larger part of creating the distinguishing characteristics of the person being depicted. So when looking at how you might draw a caricature, you should also consider what other props you want to use to get the most out of your image.

Spot The Dummy, Cheryl Cole, Draw Caricature, Just For The Crack.
Using news items to create caricatures Cheryl Cole is up for attention.

It is most often good practice to start by taking your subjects from strangers in still photographs. There are an infinite number of images that are appropriate subjects that can be found online or in newspapers, beginning with strangers who will not get hurt if you mock them then as you get better with identifying and drawing the main features of individuals you can move on to draw more familiar subjects.

Politicians are good subjects if you had an interest in politics then you could make political statements based on the news in fact the news is a great source of subject material for caricature drawings.

News story lines can give you plenty of subject material to practice how to draw caricature cartoons as satirical sketches.

View Gareth Pritchard’s profile on G+

 

Learning to draw cartoons

Learning how to draw cartoons is a great place to start drawing, even if you don’t draw that well or you don’t practice much, anyone can draw cartoons, in fact everything we draw when we are children, is in the cartoon style because we draw in line drawings, even if you only draw stick figures they are still cartoons or simple line drawings, cartoon drawing is not really connected in any way, to your ability to draw realistically, in fact it works better if you don’t, as cartoons are usually meant to be funny.

Success at being able to draw cartoons is not based on your ability to draw accurately, so much as being able to convey a message with a simple line drawing because cartoon drawings are meant to be simple drawings, that can be drawn very easily and quickly by the person drawing them, to convey a message, most often a joke or a funny story but not always.

If you are an aspiring artist wanting to develop your drawing skills, then cartoon drawing is a great place to start practicing your drawing skills but in a more relaxed, lighthearted way and many people start out drawing them, in the beginning because as I have said, all drawings when we are children are in a cartoon style.

There is a basic set of principles to drawing cartoons, that enable the person drawing them to convey a message, that is based on facial expression and body language; people really do look down in the mouth when they are unhappy or the opposite when they are happy.

Draw Cartoons Faces, Emoticons, the cartoon code.
Faces, Emoticons, are the basics of the the cartoon code.

When the mouth is relaxed it tends to droop in the corners, although the example above is exaggerated, this makes a face look sad but the exact opposite happens when you smile, the corners of the mouth point upward because of the muscles pulling upward, this makes a face look happy.

This knowledge alone gives the artist two very different forms of expression, one that’s happy, one that’s sad, making it easy for others to understand the message being conveyed. The eyes also change shape with different facial expressions, again when sad they tend to droop at the outer corners and when smiling, showing happiness they tend to squint, so that the actual eyeballs can hardly be seen.

Draw Cartoons Facial Expressions For Using In Your Cartoons.
Different facial expressions to use for drawing cartoons, a little bit more of the cartoon code.

The direction of the look also helps to convey some meaning, to the expressions we make in cartoon drawings but if you think about it, we do in real life as well and in written words, like when we are feeling up, we relate that to feeling good or happy, when we are feeling down, we relate that to feeling gloomy or sad.

Using these different symbolic expressions, help to convey different meanings with your cartoons, aiding the creation of different messages or meanings in a visual way.

There are a lot more than just these few examples but it should give you the basic understanding, of how to draw cartoons and how they really work but one thing for sure, none of these drawings are difficult, anyone of you could draw them easily. You probably make these expressions yourself, in your daily life and even use them as expressions in your emails, every time you write them to some one, as cartoon gestures.

View Gareth Pritchard’s profile on G+

Drawing ideas when bored, this will help you to find them easy.

The problem is that asking the question, what can I draw when your bored is it is not the right question and won’t bring results easy, if at all. It is wasted because even if others tell you what to draw, you won’t do it when your bored. The conclusion to this is easy, the answer is inside you when finding drawing ideas. Just looking and finding ideas stops you from being bored as well. Sorry but you are the only one who can answer that question. It can’t be answered for you because nobody can tell you what you should be drawing. There is some help for you though, the answer is easy because it’s not really a question, it’s a problem. Your bored and your head has nothing inside it to get it excited, you need a way for finding drawing ideas.

Finding the simple answer to being bored and help you find drawing ideas.

The real problem is easy to understand, if you don’t put anything into the box, then how do you think you are going to be finding anything to get out of it?

What this means is?

If you don’t start filling your mind with drawing ideas, then where do you think you are going to get your drawing ideas from?

When your bored you have no ideas, that’s part of being bored, this is because you don’t have anything going on inside your mined. This might sound too simple but you just need to relax and look at photos of things you like. That is what drawing ideas are, they are pictures, finding photos you like is finding drawing ideas. Doing this will get you all the ideas you like plus looking at the pictures that stimulate you because you like them helps you not to be bored.

If you think about the pictures you have drawn in the past and the reasons why you did them, you will find that it wasn’t because you had the urge to do a drawing of a car, a face or whatever. It was a specific car, face or whatever that you wanted to draw, this is often described as inspiration, a desire for drawing it.

Car drawing, How to draw a cars basic construction drawing process, Aston Martin, Vantage.

The realization of drawing ideas.

This is very often because you liked whatever it is, especially when you are not very experienced, young, untrained or self taught because you have not disciplined yourself to just do drawing. You have not thought a great deal about why you are drawing these things, you just draw them because you’re enjoying it, you like it, without realizing, it is that easy. Why wouldn’t you like looking at photos of things that you like? You draw these things because you have a strong wish to draw them and they are never the things that you don’t like but nearly always things you do like a lot.

Inspiration is about what goes on inside your head, the things you think about, the things you dream about, the dreams you think about. Inspiration and drawing ideas are about agitating or stimulating this process into action, to help give you food for thought. Looking at and finding photos stimulates the visual part of the brain obviously because it is looking and helps to stop being bored.

Here’s the best part, we all do this all the time naturally. We have ideas and thoughts but most of it is not channeled because we are distracted by the living of life it’s self. Unless we make time to help nurture and develop this process, our drawing ideas get lost easy in a sea of information overload.

Stimulation is only half of the story, we need to transfer this information from our imaginations into the real world. Into something of substance and this is what you are drawing, your ideas, it is called self actualization. Finding pictures for drawing is much easier than actually drawing them and saving pictures to draw is good as well, there is a tool online that helps you to do both.

Do you remember this statement “If you don’t start filling your head with drawing ideas, then where do you think you are going to get your drawing ideas from?” What this means is, if you don’t help yourself by filling your head with drawing ideas by looking at pictures even only as a way of trying to stop being bored then where do you think you are going to get your drawing ideas from?”

How to help by filling your head easy using the net to find drawing ideas.

Nowadays it’s so easy to get the help you need to find drawing ideas when bored, just go online to find image searches in any of the search engines. You can get all the source material you could ever want and people today don’t know how easy they have got it really. I often wonder how anybody could be bored with all the information they have at their fingertips nowadays.

As a youngster learning how to do drawing there was nowhere near the help you have today. It was lucky if there where 2 Marvel comics or a news paper to get some drawing ideas from, let alone the billions of photos online. Sometimes this can also be a problem known as overkill, information overload or spoilt for choice but that is not the issue that we are concerned with at the moment.

Nobody can really tell you what to fill your head with but this can help you by telling you that if you fill your head with images that you like, then they will help to give you ideas. Just looking at pictures you like looking at will help you to be less bored.

This is how everybody fills their head with drawing ideas and it works like a dream, in fact perhaps this should be for sale but it’s not because it’s free anyway and just plane sense if you think about it.

Using a site called Stumble Upon to stumble for photos of the stuff you like is what I do, this soon fills my head, feeds my brain, feeds my need or feeds my greed, it doesn’t matter because it just works so easy, like nothing else for me. It’s the easy way of finding interesting photos by just pushing a button.

Finding results the easy way, organized stumbling brings results.

For those of you who don’t know what StumbleUpon.com is, then let me tell you. Besides being a fantastic place to store links to your favorite sites as a social book marking tool, it also gives you the option to click a button and view random web pages easy, these can be targeted to your specific interests.

So you can set it to view pictures and then click the button to look at random pictures of interest This is great for finding stuff you wouldn’t usually be finding because you wouldn’t know these sites exist. It is another form of channel hoping but with web pages where you can target images. You can pick broad topics, this really brings unexpected drawing ideas to mind easy, that feeds my need. This has been fantastic to me because please remember, a Marvel Comic as good as they where and a news paper is not much in the way of inspiration.I didn’t get to to do drawings of the things I wanted to when I was younger because there was no easy way of finding good pictures of the things I wanted to draw but I have since.

Then when I have got my drawing ideas off inside my head, I go to Google or Getty Images or any of a hundred other places looking for pictures finding source material to build my next drawing, pictorial illusion.

You people today, don’t know how easy you have it or how much help you really have at your finger tips.

Knowing what to draw can be easy and it is no longer an issue finding pictures for drawing. Join Stumbleupon.com, it is the easiest way I know for finding photos for drawing when bored and it is also good fun stumbling. If you are wondering about what’s in it for me, then don’t bother joining I am only trying help people by making things as easy as possible. There is nothing for me to gain from you joining Stumble Upon.

http://www.stumbleupon.com/

There is nothing in it for me, unless you want to do yourself a favor and stumble http://howtodraweasy.com/ that would help me, to help you, perhaps.

This is one interpretation of what you will be doing: besides just filling your head with visual information, as it will also be, popular, visual, cultural, information, of the times you are living in. It is also a fabulous way of seeing what the world likes by just clicking a button to view random web pages under your topics of interest because the most popular float to the top.

Another interpretation of this method, can be described as being a way of finding the basic subject matter, for the pop art movement, easy research into, popular visual culture, using the nowadays experiential learning rout by looking, what else could be that easy?

My easy StumbleUpon, what to draw method, is as follows.

In settings, Manage Interests, you can have the following selected because you are mostly interested in images. If you have too many topics selected then your time becomes diluted with reading and not looking.

  • Arts
  • Bizarre/Oddities
  • Sculpting
  • Computer Graphics
  • Drawing
  • Photography

You can installed the tool bar into your browser and whenever you are at loose end, not knowing what to do, you can easy just stumble images, related information, on StumbleUpon but to be honest, do this and you will never be stuck for something to be drawing.

I often use this method not to look for drawing ideas or images to make drawings from but develop the ideas already being developed because I have been drawing for about 40 years and developed my discipline many years ago. Using the stumble upon method of web page hopping helps me to get new drawing ideas for what is already worked on as a way of adding more to them. It often throws up some very interesting, potential developments, for these ideas that are in the making as work in progress and is a very easy solution once set up with a button in your browser.

It is also a good place to store Art/Drawing links to related web pages easy at the click of a button as favorites for future reference, without clogging up my browser favorites and keeping everything related easy in one place.

Alternatively if you don’t want to join and use stumble upon then you can go to Google images or where ever your own preference might be, to view photos you like. When viewing images you are actually stimulating your brain into thinking about these, generating inspiration for developing your own images.

Not knowing, not seeing is why your not drawing you have no inspiration, what to draw is often about not being inspired and the best way to inspire yourself, is to look at other peoples pictures, photographs or ideas which will help fill your head and feed your need.

Some images created through stumbling, can be seen below.

Drawing ideas, a picture of a girl, a car, a frog.

 

drawing ideas Image of a dragon stalking a girl.

 

A dragon taken from drawing ideas found online.

All the most well known and loved stories in our lives, are most often filled with elements that we can identify with and recognize. These are personal but also very similar, from person to person, so they are a shared reality. They are most often cultural preferences, with common threads, from one culture to the next and not so personal after all.

This means that stories contain elements that are common to most people, the same can be said of images, people recognize and attach meaning to images, the symbols within them and even the colors used become meaningful. This seems more so with time and maturity, as people age.

drawing ideas girl on tong maker pens and graphite pencil drawing see it on YouTube.

The further you move away from the norms, the more unrecognizable your drawing ideas become and sometimes more outrageous or distasteful, making them less likable to the masses in general.

This has already been said but “the answer is inside you” you are able to create your own drawing ideas by stimulating that thinking muscle they call the brain, with visual images.

You decide what you want to be  drawing  through your own inspiration.

Zeitgeist, spirit of the times, pencil drawing ideas.

Drawing ideas, aerial maneuvers, dragon over the roof tops.

You can find some more videos to watch at these links, how to draw a gun, drawing people and my favorite pencil portrait drawing of Kurt Cobain, all these should help to fire your imagination and perhaps give some drawing ideas.