Creative Drawing: Body shapes and summing it up

David Phan

Drawing: The Only Drawing Book You'll Ever Need to Be the Artist You've Always Wanted to Be by Kathryn Temple

In my last blog, we learned how to draw a face. In this blog, we’ll continue and learn how to draw the rest of the body. In Kathryn Temple’s book Drawing: The Only Drawing Book You'll Ever Need to Be the Artist You've Always Wanted to Be, she delves into the idea in depth. In chapter seven of her book she says, “Simple shapes will help you draw the human body…Their necks, arms, torsos, and legs are all a series of tubes. The hips, shoulders, and elbows – all of the joints – are made out of spheres” (Temple, 92). Temple continues by showing simple steps on how to draw these tubes and spheres, outlining them, and adding finishing touches to create a more detailed body.

In my attempt, I’ve decided to draw a body, but add on to it by combining the skills I’ve learned like landscape and shadowing. First, I start by building the body. I use the tubes and spheres as Temple described to make a skeleton of the body. After I had the shape I desired, I outlined the body and added details such as clothing, curves, and finishing touched to smooth out the figure. Then I created the landscaping in the background with the landscaping rules I learned from one of my previous blogs. Finally I finished the tree upon which my figure had been resting on.

How would you combine your drawing skills from my previous blogs to create something new? What would you draw, and why?

Works Cited

Temple, Kathryn. Drawing: The Only Drawing Book You'll Ever Need to Be the Artist You've Always Wanted to Be. Sterling Children's Book, 2014.

Creative Drawing: Drawing Faces

David Phan

Drawing: The Only Drawing Book You'll Ever Need to Be the Artist You've Always Wanted to Be by Kathryn Temple

The face, and particularly the eyes, can be the most difficult things to draw due to the complexity of every individual’s unique facial features. To help with this difficult task, I’ve used the help of Kathryn Temple’s book Drawing: The Only Drawing Book You'll Ever Need to Be the Artist You've Always Wanted to Be to understand the hidden quirks that seem to hide beneath these intricate illustrations. In chapter six of Temple’s book she iterates, “The endless variety of the human face makes it even more amazing that most faces follow some basic rules of proportion and shape” (Temple, 76). Temple goes on explaining the basic rules around the drawing of faces, and focuses on the idea of drawing simple shapes like lines and circles (from my previous blog) to create the complex illustrations that she shows off (Temple, 80).

My attempt at the drawing shows the guidelines of the steps she takes. I took a different approach by drawing the eyes first as I would rather change the face shape than change the eyes if the proportions are wrong. Then I create a rough outline of the head by drawing circles and ovals, making the round head shape. Next, I draw the nose, the mouth, and the ears, crating shadows and textures along the way and smoothing out the edges if the proportions don’t seem right. Finally, I add the hair and the finishing touches to my piece, and changed the curvature of the chin a bit to make the proportions look cleaner.

With the idea of using simple lines and circles to make complex drawings, do you think you could draw something as intricate as a face? And if you were to draw a face, would you draw your own face, someone else’s face, would you create a face based off of your idea of an ideal face shape, or something more creative?

Works Cited

Temple, Kathryn. Drawing: The Only Drawing Book You'll Ever Need to Be the Artist You've Always Wanted to Be. Sterling Children's Book, 2014.

Creative Drawing: Landscape and Perspective

David Phan

Drawing: The Only Drawing Book You'll Ever Need to Be the Artist You've Always Wanted to Be by Kathryn Temple

In order to be able to draw, you'll need to know where you're looking from, or your perspective. In Kathryn Temple's book, Drawing: The Only Drawing Book You'll Ever Need to Be the Artist You've Always Wanted to Be, Temple talks about different perspectives and their purposes. The one I'd like to highlight here is landscape perspectives. Temples delves into the process by stating, "I used these tricks of what's called atmospheric perspective to create the illusion of open space: Things get fuzzier the farther away they are; Things tend to appear lighter in value the farther away they are; Things appear to get smaller the farther away they are; Things appear closer together the farther away they are" (Temple 74). These four rules of landscape drawing allow the piece to show where everything is exactly, and allows you to judge the distance between each object in your drawing.

In my drawing, I've decided not to use a picture this time. Instead, I'll use what I know of my own surroundings (living in Washington means there's plenty of trees to look at!) and Temple's advice on landscape drawing to create an image of a meadow with a forest and mountain backdrop. I decided to contrast the image with a wild fire as well to make it more interesting. Here, you'll see I used the landscape techniques by blurring the background, defining the foreground, and shrinking the backdrop. I also used the shadowing and realism techniques from before to give it a final touch.

Do the landscape techniques really seem to allow you to judge different distances in the drawings? How do you think the blending of shadowing and landscape techniques helps give the drawing better depth?

Works Cited

Temple, Kathryn. Drawing: the Only Drawing Book You'll Ever Need to Be the Artist You've Always Wanted to Be. Sterling Children's Book, 2014.