Tag Archives: Image

how to draw a easy

Outline drawing.

In the process of drawing images, we often start out with a basic outline drawing, as the foundation, for learning where everything else goes, in relation to the outline and each other. The problem I find with many beginners and well practiced people alike, is they do not always, understand outlines very well, also as in the case of beginners, they do not understand at all, in many instances.

The easiest way to draw and understand outlines, is by using tracing methods of drawing because when you trace an image, you can only, realistically make an outline, as tracing doesn’t lend it’s self to shading. Tracing also gives you a better understanding, of how pictures work, especially when trying to understand, construction drawing.

Wheel images showing perspective distortion.
Car wheel images showing distortion when seen in perspective.
Wheel images showing perspective distortion line drawing.
Car wheel images showing perspective distortion in a line drawing format.

Let me explain, by using a car wheel as an example, we all know that wheels are round but they are only round, when we look at them directly face on, because when we turn them, at an angle, they become, more and more oval, in shape.

The correct term to call this oval shape, is an ellipse and is something many people have problems with, when trying to draw them accurately, to find out more about this, please take look at single point perspective and two point perspective, you will find the both helpful.

Get yourself some pictures that you might like to draw and trace them, so as to be able, to take a look at these images, as only line drawings, you will notice when tracing these outlines, that they are most often, not as you might have thought they are.

Doing this, will help you to understand, that shapes are not often, the shapes we think we see and that wheels, are most often not circular but oval, along with many other shapes we see but actually, only think we see. This is because our brains tell us that wheels are round or that a shape is this shape or that shape, when in actual fact, many shapes are not what we think they are because our brains are telling us what we see, rather than actually, seeing what we see.

how to draw a easy

How to draw easy, creating depth.

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.

Dragon in the sky.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.

 

Distance in the sky.(”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 a easy

Two Point Perspective.

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The two point perspective or linear perspective, as it can also be called, is a construction drawing technique that is made up of vanishing points, which are the points placed along an eye line or horizon line, as it is some times called, these are the elements that make up perspective drawings, like the ones below. Although the first drawing is quite nice, it is just made up of simple straight lines and curves, using a straight edge or line rule to place the guide lines from the vanishing points, it is much easier to draw perspective, when using these techniques.

As can be seen in the drawings below, the horizon line or eye line, is just a horizontal line drawn across the page, to represent where the horizon would be or the place your eyes would be level with, when you are looking at some thing, by drawing all subjects in relation to this line, it creates the effect of there being distance in the image and between the object in it.

In the drawing below you can see the horizon line, vanishing points, construction box and perspective lines, that make up the 2 point perspective much easier and should assist you, in understanding how perspective drawing works. The vanishing points create the points where an object would taper off into the distance, to create the impression of something being three dimensional and this technique is sometimes called, true perspective as well as linear and two point perspective.

The horizon line and vanishing points are used to construct boxes, to use as guides and enable you to draw an object that looks like, objects in life that taper off into the distance, the best way to see this is by looking down a long street, where you can see the building close by above your head but the further into the distance, they go the smaller the further away they become and the road also gets smaller, another example can be seen on railway lines, when you look at them, they seem to meet in the far off distance.

Image of two point perspective drawing.
Image of two point perspective drawing of a child’s toy.

 

In the image below, I have drawn a wheel type shape in a box, to show how the same effect can be created with circular objects like wheels but I have also used, a very low horizon line, to give the impression of looking up at something, making it seem very big and above your head, even though it is just a simple drawing on piece of paper. There are lots of ideas you can create when you draw perspective and these types of drawings, always look dynamic, giving a great deal of impact to any drawing, so it is well worth experimenting with this 2 point perspective technique.

A two point persective cube image.
The horizon line has two points from which to draw perspective in this example.
Image of a big perspective
A big perspective with a low horizon line giving the impression of looking up.

The horizon line has two points from which to draw perspective, in the above example.

A big perspective with a low horizon line, giving the impression of looking up at something, can be very impressive, expressing an image of power and dominance.

You can do this with a single, one point perspective or two point perspective, as well but the single point is a little limited because it often only works well, when looking at something directly from the front.

how to draw a easy

Modern mark making, in the context of drawing, a point of view.

I took the charcoal drawing of a 1967, Austin Healey, 3000 Mk III, sports car and super imposed it into another image of a thumb and finger, using GIMP photo editing software, I fused them together to compose the image below, about understanding perspectives and using mark making, as a visual dynamic for tricking the eye.

Pencil drawing photo image of a thumb and finger.In the drawing above you will see two different pencil techniques, one is called hatching and the other is called tonal modeling, both are used often, as drawing techniques for different reasons mostly. The hatching or also called cross hatching technique, is often used to draw subjects, that lend themselves to that type of mark making, like hair, grass and other textures, that can be described with lots of little lines or dashes going all in one direction or differing directions, and is a natural way to use a pencil.

The other technique is tonal modeling, which is where the pencil is smudged or modeled using graded tones, to create soft edges and shadows, most often seen in the drawing of skin tone, and clouds but in the drawing above, you will notice that both are being used in the same drawing.

The finger and thumb of the hand is drawn using hatching and cross hatching, whereas the back of the hand is drawn using a tonal modeling technique. The example is used to show how these techniques, can be used in this way and although they lend themselves to best describe textures that have been mentioned, they can also be used effectively to describe textures, that would not really lend themselves to these techniques, like with the finger and thumb.

This is also an example of how you can take already existing drawings and with photo editing software, fuse them together as a means of generating new ideas, bringing very different tools together to aid the creative process.

The image below, is almost completely created using tonal modeling and is a example of use, where it would accurately describe the fleshy textures of the baby’s skin tones, as well as, the bone textures of the skull, with the only hatching type marks, being around the word zeitgeist, which are again smudged pencil lines, with slightly modeled edges, that are not sharp or well defined. Mark making is also found in painting as well as drawing and is an important part of all kinds of art, where sometimes they are not lines, dashes or modeled areas but can be splashes, scribbles or pointillist type marks.

Zeitgeist, spirit of the times, pencil drawing.
The Zeitgeist, is the spirit of the times, this is a pencil drawing of life and death, called Zeitgeist .

A hand and the artificial creations, born from its great ability, to manipulate the world around it, isn’t all intelligence artificial because we only think we know, when we recognize the mark making?