Dragon | How To Draw

Drawing lines, is not quite as simple, as you might think because the weight and thickness, of the lines we make, have an impact, on the effectiveness of our drawings, to add to this, is the hardness of the line, which I will explain later, is also of importance.

The meaning to thickness of line, should in essence be obvious, it means what it says, how wide or narrow, the line actually is, has an impact, on how our brain, relates to that line in context, of what is surrounding it and the tonal value of the line, also has an impact, on what is seen, when I say tonal value, I am talking about how light or dark, the line is in tone.

If you draw a circle, with a wider, darker line along the bottom area, it will look like it is, the bottom of a sphere and will start to look like, a ball shape, rather than, simply just, looking like a circle. This also gives, the bottom half of the circle or sphere more weight because the wider line, is more substantial, especially, if it is also darker in tone, it will attract the eye, giving more emphasis and importance, to it, this also creates the illusion, of light and shadow, that is often used, to emphasize, the under areas of shapes, we draw, suggesting, the shape, is three dimensional.

Please take a look, at the drawings, of the two circles, 1 & 2 below, to see an example of what I am trying to explain, also take a look at, 3 & 4, these lines and circles, have been made with a 5 mm, a half cm, flat pencil, notice how the line varies in width, giving it the look of a twisted ribbon. Number 5, shows, how lines can go, from a hard, definite edge, to a more subtle, less definite edge, that can be used to great effect, in your line drawings. These different types of line, can be used to create light and shadow, so as to suggest the illusion of form and shape but still maintaining, the quality of being a line, using this, within your line drawing, can start to bring, your line drawings, to life.

The dragon drawing below, was created with pen and ink, it puts very little emphasis on line quality, it is a line that is consistent, in thickness, giving little or no quality, other than just being a line but even so, it does create the image of a dragon, through the use of drawing lines, with nothing more.

In the image below, is an example of how creating depth in a picture can be done, even when looking up into the sky, the buildings create an illusion of depth through their linear structure of lines, converging to a point in the sky, drawing the eye up into the sky, like the perspective construction lines in a drawing, taking your eyes, leading them off into an imaginary distance. This combined with a close fore ground subject, helps the illusion become more believable, in this image there are really only four subjects creating the illusion, the face and building above it, the dragon and the building behind it, all creating a depth of field in the onlookers eye, which tends to be lead from the top middle to the bottom right hand corner and vice versa.

In the image below, although the eye is lead up into the sky by the lamp post and the cranes to observe the big cloud filling most of the picture, the eye is the lead off as other clouds diminishing in size, lead off into the distance, creating the illusion of depth once again in this image, these are two examples of how perspectives, can be created even when looking into something as seemingly empty of structure, like the sky. It is interesting how other structures in the image can help to create the illusion of depth and even something as simple as clouds, can all help when they are reduced in size.

Distance and depth are created by using lines to lead the eye, the reduction of objects in size and making the objects seem further away, less well defined in detail, giving a further impression of distance in your pictures. Although these are not drawings as such, I used them because they give us some very good natural examples, of how distance and depth are created in the world around us, and how this can be utilized to create these illusions in our own drawings, if we think about them, for incorporating them into the drawings we do.

(”Miki Falls”) manga creator Mark Crilley shows us in one of his how to draw videos, Manga backgrounds, an interesting demonstration on, how you can be creating depth in your pictures and how it is achieved by placing an emphasis, on using color and line work to create the illusion of depth, controlling the definition of objects within your picture, making fore ground objects more defined than background objects.

Take a look it will be worth it.

How To Draw

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