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← Drawing, Again

Drawing, Again

Five short lessons for anyone who stopped drawing: draw one thing, three ways of seeing it, then draw it again and put the two side by side.

Spark & Whetstone · sparkwhetstone.org/learn/drawing-again · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Answers are at the end, so you can try each question first.

Lesson 1. Draw it once

Put a kettle, a mug or a shoe on the table in front of you. Sit where you can see all of it. Take a pencil and any paper.

Draw it for five minutes. Do not fix anything and do not throw it away. Write the date in the corner and put the drawing somewhere safe, face down.

This drawing is not a test. It is the "before". In the last lesson you will draw the same thing from the same chair, and put the two side by side.

Question. Why draw the object before learning anything?

  1. To practise erasing.
  2. To have a "before" to set beside the drawing you make at the end.
  3. To find out once and for all whether you have any talent for drawing at all.

Say it back. In your own words: what will you do with this first drawing, and what will you not do?

Lesson 2. The edge, without looking

This is called blind contour drawing. Rest your pencil on the paper. Look at your other hand, not at the paper, and draw its outline as slowly as an ant would walk along it.

Do not look down until you finish. The drawing will look strange, and that is the point: for a few minutes your eyes did the drawing instead of what you think a hand looks like.

If you want, set the gentle timer below for thirty seconds, a minute or two. It only shows time passing; nothing happens when it ends.

Question. In blind contour drawing, where do you look?

  1. At the paper, to keep the line neat.
  2. Back and forth, every few seconds.
  3. Only at the thing you are drawing.

Say it back. Say it back: what did your blind drawing show you that a careful one would not?

Lesson 3. The gaps between

Look at a chair. Now look only at the empty shapes between its legs and rungs, and draw those shapes instead of the wood.

Gaps are easier to see truly, because you have no name for them. You know what a chair leg "should" look like; you have no idea what the space beside it looks like, so you draw what is there.

Shade the gaps lightly. The chair appears around them.

Question. Why can the empty shapes be easier to draw than the chair itself?

  1. You have no fixed idea of what they look like, so you look.
  2. They have no edges.
  3. They are smaller than the legs, so there is less of them to get wrong.

Say it back. In your own words: what are the "gaps between", and why draw them?

Lesson 4. The measure

Hold your pencil at arm's length, upright, with your elbow straight. Line its tip up with the top of the kettle and slide your thumb down to the bottom. That is one "kettle".

Now turn the pencil sideways without bending your arm: how many of those is the kettle wide? Use the same pencil to check where the spout starts, or how big the handle is.

You are comparing one part of what you see with another part. Size on the paper is up to you; the proportions come from looking.

Question. Why keep your arm straight while measuring with a pencil?

  1. So the pencil does not slip out of your fingers while you slide your thumb along it.
  2. So every measurement is taken from the same distance and can be compared.
  3. Because it is more comfortable.

Say it back. Say it back: how do you find out how wide something is compared with how tall?

Lesson 5. Draw it again

Put the same object in the same place and sit in the same chair. Draw it for five minutes, using any of the three ways of seeing: the edge, the gaps, the measure.

Now turn the first drawing over and lay the two side by side. Do not score them. Say out loud one thing you noticed this time that you did not notice the first time.

You did not stop being able to draw. You stopped looking, and looking comes back with use.

Question. What is the before-and-after for?

  1. To grade your progress.
  2. To prove to whoever is watching that you have become better at drawing.
  3. To see for yourself what you noticed the second time.

Say it back. In your own words: what did you notice in the second drawing that was not in the first?

At the table: Draw each other's hand

Players: two people, 7 or older. You'll need: paper and two pencils.

  1. Sit facing each other. Each person puts one hand on the table.
  2. Draw the other person's hand without looking at your paper, slowly, for one minute.
  3. Swap the drawings and look at them together. Strange is good.
  4. Do it once more, looking this time, and lay all four side by side.

Answers

  1. To have a "before" to set beside the drawing you make at the end. — The first drawing is a "before". At the end you draw the same thing again and look at both together.
  2. Only at the thing you are drawing. — You look only at the thing you are drawing. The paper is left to the pencil.
  3. You have no fixed idea of what they look like, so you look. — You carry an idea of a chair leg; you carry none of the gap, so you draw what you see.
  4. So every measurement is taken from the same distance and can be compared. — A straight arm keeps the pencil at the same distance each time, so one measurement can be compared with another.
  5. To see for yourself what you noticed the second time. — The two drawings side by side show you what you looked at differently. Nobody marks them.