Learn to Draw a Horse at Drawspace

Here's another of my drawings from a lesson at Drawspace.

Grendel Gremlin - Lesson at Drawspace

Here's a one of my drawings from a lesson over at Drawspace.

Drawing the Structure of the Head and Face

Proportions of the Human Head

To draw the human head accurately, first become familiar with the basic proportions. Traditional rules of proportion show the face divided into six equal squares, two by three. The upper horizontal division is roughly at the 'third eye' level mid-forehead, the lower at the base of the nose. The eyes sit on the horizontal centre, the mouth on the centre of the lower third.



If you are skeptical of such simple mathematics, try it out on some models in magazines - it works! While this is an ideal which does not account for racial and individual variation, observing these basic proportions gives you a starting point to measure against.

By ensuring your basic proportions are correct to begin with, you will avoid major re-draws at a later stage of the drawing.

To construct a well-proportioned head, follow these simple steps.

• Begin with a ball. 
• Drop a line from mid-forehead to the chin. 'Slice off' a circle at the side of the head, and from the front of this circle, curve a line down to the chin. Complete the plane of the face with a line on the other side. Now add the jawline. 
• Construct the nose, indicate mouth and chin position and elongate skull slightly. (The distance from chin to crown is almost the same as from forehead to the back of the skull).

Drawing Tips - Top 10 Mistakes Beginners Make

Common Drawing Errors and How to Fix Them

By Helen South

Because drawing is often self-taught, you tend to keep making mistakes much longer than when a teacher is available to help. Here are the 10 most common mistakes beginners make when they learn to draw. Some big, some small, all fixable. Check and see whether these errors crop up in your drawings, and get some tips on fixing them.

1. Drawing With a Hard Pencil

If you have no very dark shadows and the whole picture is rather pale, check your pencil. Are you using a Number2 (HB) pencil? These are too hard to draw with (though they are handy for light shading). Get a B, 2B and 4B for darker values.

2. Portraits from Flash Photography

This is the major cause of beginner drawing problems. Using flash photography flattens the features, giving you nothing to work with. When the person is facing you, it is very hard to see the modeling of the face, as the perspective vanishes behind their head, and add a cheesy snapshot grin and you make life very hard! Have the person turning slightly to one side so you can model their face, with natural lighting to give good skin-tones, and a natural expression to show their real personality.

3. Incorrect Head Proportions

Because of the way we focus on a person's features, we usually draw them too big and squash the rest of the head.

4. Twisted Features

Because we are used to looking at a person straight-on, we naturally try to make their features look level when we draw them. If their head is on an angle, this results in strange distortions in the picture. Sketch guidelines first to ensure that the features are on the same angle as the rest of the face.

5. Pet Drawings from Human Eye Level

When you take a photograph standing up, you are looking down at your pet. They have to look up, and you end up with their head seeming much bigger than their body, and a rather odd expression on their face. Have someone distract them so they aren't staring down the lens, and squat down so the camera is at their head level, and you'll get a much better reference photo.

6. Being Afraid of Black

Often when shading, the shadows don't go past dark gray. If your value range is restricted to in some cases half what it ought to be, you are limiting the modeling and depth in your drawing. Put a piece of black paper at the corner of your drawing, and don't be afraid to go dark. Really dark.

7. Outlining in Value Drawings

When value drawing, you are creating an illusion with areas of tonal value. When you use a hard drawn line to define an edge, you disrupt this illusion. Let edges be defined by two different areas of tonal value meeting.

8. Drawing on the Wrong Paper

If your drawing is pale, it might be the paper. Some cheap papers have a sheen on the surface that is too smooth to grab the particles off the pencil. A thick notepad has too much 'give' under the pencil to allow you to apply enough pressure. Try a basic photocopy/office paper, or check the art store for cheap sketch paper. Place a piece of card under a couple of sheets to give a firmer surface. If you are trying to do even shading, some sketch papers can be too coarse, giving an uneven texture. Try a hot-pressed Bristol board or similar smooth drawing paper.

9. Scribbled Foliage

Don't use circular scribbles to draw foliage. Use more convex shaped scumbling - like crescent shapes and scribbly calligraphic marks - to draw the shadows in and around clusters of foliage, and your trees will look much more realistic.

10. Wiry, Pencil-Line Hair and Grass

If you draw every hair or blade of grass as a pencil line, you'll end up with a horrible, wiry, unnatural mess. Use feathery pencil-strokes to draw the shadows and dark foliage behind areas of grass.

How To Draw Caricatures

How To Draw Caricatures - Quickly and Easily!

• Easy Step By Step Video Guide
• 7 Day Home Learning Course
• Fun Video Lessons To Follow
• 30 year veteran artist, Mr Graeme Biddle.
• Now only $29.95

Graeme Biddle is a highly successful caricature artist with over 30 years experience and would like to share with you his secrets that he is about to take with him into retirement. 

Mr. Biddle has made a tremendous career out of knowing how to draw caricatures for over 30 years and he has been paid very richly for something that is fun and easy to do. You'd be amazed at just how many secret markets for this sort of work he has had to himself. So since he is about to be off the scene for good, he thought it might be a worthy idea to pass on his TRADE SECRETS, so some other up and coming artists like yourself could benefit from all his hard-earned wisdom, tips, tricks and techniques.

Learn To Draw Caricatures

Whether you just want to learn to draw in an easy way to make people laugh and have fun when you draw their face in a fun way, or you want to learn some of the tricks that Mr. BiddIe have made a lot of money from, then "Fun With Caricatures" is the product you have been looking for.

Suppose you could find a way that guaranteed your artistic success with a constant flow of work that most other commercial artists or illustrators miss out on or overlook completely, what would that do to the lifestyle you could be leading, just by learning his secrets on how to draw caricatures?

Imagine … being able to find out the secret formula to caricature success, from someone who has built a solid career over the past 30 years as you share in his secret ways
to learn to draw caricatures and make a little money if you fancy as a caricature artist.
Imagine ... having the skills to draw caricatures that most people will not believe you could do!
Imagine … the way you are going to feel when you uncover a stream of work that is constant, consistent and shows no sign of going out of fashion anytime soon!
Imagine … making extra money for drawing funny faces that is really easy to do!

So What’s Included In the Total Package?

You get the following incredible package of STEP BY STEP resources:

• 7 days of tutition, tips and tricks from the master artist himself guaranteed to raise the profitability of your art business
• 10 Videos showing you step by step just how to create show stopping caricatures
• Exclusive! 3D Poses engine that works right on the page of the ebook, helping you to master the art of drawing hands, feet and heads from any angle you choose
• Over 400 drawings and poses for you to learn every detail and trick of the masterful art of Graeme Biddle
• The entire 90 page ebook delivered by immediate download to your desktop for you to begin changing the course of your art career today!

Just take a look at one of the videos in the learn to draw caricatures home study course, to get an idea of the type of instruction provided for you to learn to draw caricatures.

Product Website: How to Draw Caricatures

Product Creator: Graeme Biddle
Starting Price: $29.95
Product: E-Book
Refund period: 60 days (100% money back guarantee)

Click Here!

Show off your Drawings

Here's one of my drawings. Please feel free to comment and if you would like to show off a drawing, please leave me a comment.

Drawing Shading Exercise

Have you been practicing your techniques? Well, I have a drawing exercises for you today.

What you'll need is a light colored rock, ping-pong ball or something that is light in color and round in shape so you can get some shadows. A piece of copy paper and a 2B pencil.

Now place your object on a table where there is some strong, directional light. You can use a single lamp or window as your light source. Adjust your light as needed so that your highlights and shadows are clear. Do you see how the light source is casting shadows on your object. Look at the shadows, highlights and the reflected light that is bouncing back from the table. You may not have any reflective light if your table is dark.

Observe the diagram to the right. You may even use this if you can not find an appropriate object. Notice the shapes that the shadows and highlights create. Very lightly sketch the outline of the object and the shapes that are created by the shadows and highlights.

Let's start with the darkest shadow first. Without lifting you pencil, use a continues back and forth shading technique to cover the area. So as not to create just a solid band of stokes on your paper, vary your stroke lengths and as you're going back and forth, use a rounding motion at each end.

Continue shading the reflective light and other highlights with lighter stokes, but remember to use directional lines or curve your stokes so that it appears as if the shadows are wrapping around your object.

To give your overall object some texture, try an overhanded grip and shade very, very lightly with the side of your pencil.

Finally, use a kneadable eraser in a dabbing motion to lift out, rather than rub, the graphite where you've applied to much pencil and to re-work some lighter areas.

Remember to draw what you see!

Learning to Draw

I think anybody can draw. It's just a matter of seeing the world differently. You need to look at the world in terms of lines, shapes, colors and the way they relate to each other.

Everyone has two modes of thinking: Your left side which is logical, analytical, objective and rational. Your right side which is random, intuitive, creative and subjective. As we develop, one side will be dominate and we will have characteristics and areas of interest in correlation to that mode of thinking.

But for those of you who have a dominate left side and still want to draw, I believe you can. Remember when you were young and the fun you had drawing. It didn't matter that what you drew didn't actually look like what you were seeing, but you knew what or who it represented and that's what mattered. Yes, as we get older we want to be more exacting, but that is what exercises are for.

Here are some of the exercises I completed over at Drawspace:

Drawing with Spaces -

Faces and a Vase -

Seeing Values -

Remember when your doing exercises try to suppress your logical mode and begin drawing what you see and what you feel. And don't skip exercises because they don't look appealing to you. We want to have fun in everything we do.

I, also, realize we don't always have access to the internet and therefore Drawspace exercises. So, here are a few books I recommend for the beginner that you can take with you anywhere.

Introduction to Pencil Drawing Supplies and Techniques

Don't go out and spend a ton of money on your drawing supplies in the beginning. It would be a mistake and having to much supplies to choose from might cause you to want to give up.

A number 2 pencil, A4 copy paper, an eraser and a pencil sharpener will do fine in the beginning.

And two little tips, don't skip exercises. They may look like scribbles, but the exercises will help you learn techniques. And number two, don't think you are going to start out creating masterpieces. You're not and I wouldn't want you to be discouraged. As I tell my son, patience – it will all come together in the end.

When you are more comfortable with drawing, you can then forge ahead and spend money on better supplies.

For those who cannot resist that itch to go out and buy some supplies – remember I'm dealing with a child at home – here's some additional information that I hope is helpful.

Graphite Pencils

I see a lot of artist giving you their manufacturer recommendations or what is popular in the artist community. I am not going to – because what manufacturer's product that may work for me may not work for you.

What I will tell you is that graphite pencils are labeled from 9B to 9H. The B stands for soft  and the H stands for hard. The higher the number is in front of the B the darker the mark and the higher the number in front of the H the lighter the mark . When you start drawing, the best pencil is a 2B, it can produce soft grays and strong blacks, it should be of good quality and free of any grit.

Drawing Paper

As you progress in drawing, what supplies wouldn't be complete without the paper of your choice and there is a huge variety of paper available to artist now.

But as I stated earlier, in the beginning copy paper is the best choice. You can erase and erase and not do to much damage to your paper. There's also newsprint paper, but I don't care much for it.

Now, your sketchbooks come in all sizes and grades. Again, I am not going to tell you who I prefer as you should experiment with them and find the most suitable one for your drawing style. Sketchbooks are reasonable priced and believe me they won't go to waste. 

Erasers

In the beginning try to find a good quality, but ordinary eraser. Also, try eraser pencils. They can be sharpened and are good at getting into smaller areas.

As your experience increases, you'll want to take a look at kneaded erasers. These are soft pliable erasers that can be formed in any shape to pick up pencil or charcoal and don't leave a residue behind. But for smaller details you might want to continue with the eraser pencil. Again experiment, a bad eraser can ruin your drawings.

Pencil Sharpener

One of the last items you need in your beginners drawing supplies is a good sharpener. Don't waste your money on inexpensive sharpeners. We want to get the last drop of graphite we can out of that pencil. Also, don't make the tip of your pencil to sharp. A sharp point can dig into your paper and ruin your drawing or the tip can easily snap. Being female, I have an emory board in my drawing supplies to dull the tip. If your male, you probably have sandpaper lying around your garage that you could use.

Summary

Remember, you need to experiment when choosing your drawing supplies. As you are trying different effects and techniques, you'll soon develop a partiality for certain drawing materials.

        

Product Review: Realistic Pencil Portrait Mastery Home Study Course

Today I’ll be reviewing Christopher Sia’s “Realistic Pencil Portrait Mastery”, a home-study course that will teach you how to draw realistic portraits. Now let me begin by saying that I care very little for so-called “pitch sites”, but I do love to draw, as you can see from some of my work on Drawspace, and there are always new and wonderful techniques to learn while drawing, sketching or doodling.

The author goes into thorough detail on all the essential shading and there are useful little tips dispersed throughout. The process maps are very helpful for dealing with a particular feature that you are looking to draw. And the reference pictures are useful with the lessons and are great for getting a sense of how individual features vary from person to person

So, you could be learning or improving your skills in pencil portraits with this course in the comfort of your own home and be well on your way to creating stunning pencil portraits.What you get is 5 e-book lessons, 5 process maps, 100 high-resolution reference pictures and 12 weeks of exercises.

 

Product Website: Pencil Portrait Mastery
Product Creator: Christopher Sia
Starting Price: $47.00
Product: E-Books with Lifetime updates and bonuses worth $997
Refund period: 60 days (100% money back guarantee)

Click Here!