Learn Drawing Quickly: Combining Different Drawing Styles

Welcome to my final blog post. In this blog post I am combing all the previous skills I have learned throughout this experience. I will be drawing gestures with an angle and tone added to it. When drawing, you want to add different kinds of techniques. If you don’t, your drawing will look very bland. I decided to draw a coffee pot, a coffee bean bag and a bottle of pills. Something you may see in your everyday life.

 For the coffee pot I added tone to where the shadows would naturally hit. And for the coffee bean bag I made it a gestural drawing, not adding much detail. But enough so the person looking at the drawing can tell what it is there for. When drawing these, you have to have an open mind (Finmark 71). In Learn Drawing Quickly the author says “Once combining your drawings, you are able to get a look into the real world. You should be free when drawing and have fun with it. It makes or breaks the natural feel of the drawing” (Finmark 71). Looking back, I can definitely see that I improved. And I’m proud of it!

Are there any skills you have improved in or want to improve in? If so, what are they?

Learn Drawing Quickly: Gestural Drawing

Welcome back to my fourth blog post! In this post I will be talking about gestural drawing which is a type of drawing you speed through, like a doodle (Finmark 68). This drawing has been the easiest for me so far because it requires the least amount of work than the other drawings I have done. This drawing is mainly used if you have a lot going on in your drawing, such as people walking in the background. You don’t have time to add every single detail to an individual person so sometimes artists use gestural drawing. In Learn Drawing Quickly, the author says “Gestural drawing is a way of speeding up as you can’t focus on details, so it’s useful for making rough sketches of groups of people” (Finmark 68).

One example of how you can sketch a gestural drawing

Gestural drawings are very simple as you can see. You just draw the outline of the object you want in your drawing, without adding much detail and you’re already there. 

What do you guys think? Have you ever used gestural drawings but never realized it until now?

Learn Drawing Quickly: Angle of View

For my third blog post, the next step to learn how to draw was to understand shapes and how they change to the human eye depending on the point you’re looking at them from. The example I decided to draw was the cup. The cup is an easier example to show the way it changes when looked at. When viewed from the top, it’s circular. But when looked at from a lower level the circle becomes an oval. In the book Lean Drawing Quickly, the author says that this gives your shape more of a realistic feel (Finmark 30).

In Learn Drawing Quickly the author says, “Basic shapes appear to change depending upon the angle from which you look at them- this gives your drawing the realistic appearance” (Finmark 30). So I drew some examples of what it would look like staring at a cup from different perspectives. This is my final product, I think I did pretty well, but I can improve and make the drawing look more as if you are looking directly at it.

Do you think drawing shapes as if you were looking at them are crucial to making the drawing look more realistic rather than adding the tone?

Learn Drawing Quickly: Texture With Color

Welcome to my second post! In this post I'm going off of what I have learned from my previous blog post. I've learned how to add texture to my drawings just by using a pencil. But adding in more than one color and making it look somewhat realistic is hard. I decided to use my last drawing; the clove of garlic to test out using texture with colored pencils.

This was my first attempt at using colored pencils to create texture and make the drawing look more realistic as the book says (Finamark 18). In Learn Drawing Quickly the author says, "By marking or smudging with color, you give the appearance of a more realistic object" (Finmark 18). Although it was my first try, it wasn't very bad for someone who hasn't done this kind of thing before.

What do you think? Is there anything I can improve on in making my drawing more realistic when I use color?

Learn Drawing Quickly: Texture

For the IRP Quarter 2 project, I wanted to incorporate a new skill into my life. I have done many drawings in the past. Mainly very ground based sketches such as stick figures. Over the years, I began to be less interested in drawing. For one thing, I became discouraged because I'm not the best artist. Second, I didn't have as much time to keep drawing and it wasn't my number one favorite thing to do in the first place so I just disregarded it.

In this quarter, I hope to improve. Not necessarily becoming professional by all means, but just to gain a few new skills and be able to draw more than just stick figures. One specific area I look forward to in this project is seeing my overall development in the artistic field.

In my opinion, I think that art carries a deeper meaning beyond just the portrait itself. What I like about art is that anyone from anywhere can interpret it through their own experiences in life. To add on, I believe art isn't something one can achieve overnight. It is a skill in which it takes time and practice in order to see the progression.

For my first sketch, I drew something really simple. A clove of garlic. I did a scratch like surface to show texture in the drawing, as it says in Learn Drawing Quickly (Finmark 15). Drawing lines over and over again to show that the garlic had more of a feel to it, even if it’s on paper. Learn Drawing Quickly says, “Using pen or pencil, you can make scratchy lines to show a surface, building up to overlapping lines to indicate the darker tones” (Finmark 15).

In any new skill one partakes in, I strongly feel you have to put your all into it. Even if you feel like it isn’t to the best of your abilities. Art aids in the growth of patience and gives you more of an understanding of the world around you, even in the simplest drawings.

Does art make you think beyond just aesthetics?