Tag Archives: Shape

how to draw a easy

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.
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How to draw

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
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Draw cartoons

Learning to draw cartoons

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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.

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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.