This week's drawings
In week 4 we had lessons for drawing the human body and head. This week we'll be drawing features of the human body:
Whether you enjoy drawing cartoons, doodling, making portraits, or creating fantasies, the time you spend learning to draw people will be time well spent.
We'll continue learning about perspective by drawing
In previous weeks we've explored primary and secondary colors. This week we'll look at
- Day 50: tertiary colors
For texture, this week we'll explore:
- Day 51: watercolor texture
Materials:
- pencil
- eraser
- paper (printer paper, notebook, etc)
- pen
- colors (colored pencils, crayons, watercolor, etc)
- alternatives to the above: smart phone or tablet drawing app
Day 45: a city in one-point perspective
Next you make a mark on the center of that line which is your vanishing point.
By making lines through the vanishing point you can create guidelines for your streets, buildings, vehicles, mailboxes, trashcans, and any other boxy object you want to put in your city. Mark talks about using a ruler to make these guidelines, noting that you can make the lines by hand. He makes the point that a ruler is just another tool that you can use or not use to make your drawing. I suggest that you try both ways as you explore using perspective.
Mark guides you through making box shapes and openings between them and in them to turn them into buildings.
You can watch Candy Brush build a city in 15 minutes in her video How to draw a city in one point perspective: Day 23. She places her horizon closer to the top of the page which places you, the viewer, at a higher elevation, able to see the tops of some of Candy's building.
How do you define ‘city’? I decided to go small, 19th century, and western using tertiary colors. Here is the video:
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Day 46: the human face
The head is 3 and one-half units tall. The distance from the chin to the bottom of the nose is one unit. The distance from the bottom of the nose to the eyebrows is one unit. The distance from the eyebrows to the hairline is one l unit. From the hairline to the top of the head is 1/2 unit.
The eyes are located on the horizontal line at the halfway point between the chin and the top of the head. Each eye is one fifth the width of the head (minus the ears).
If you divide the space from the bottom of the nose to the chin by 3, the mouth is located the first third down from the bottom of the nose. The mouth mouth is almost as wide as the distance from the pupil of one eye to the pupil of the other eye.
In his book, you can draw in 30 days, Mark's approach to teaching the human face is based on tracing Leonardo da Vinci's Angel of the Madonna of the Rocks.
Florian Erb (a.k.a. Lazy Arts) has a 10 minute video, Face: Basic Proportions, that has some valuable drawing techniques:
- notice how Florian holds his pencil when he's drawing circles. It allows him to take advantage of his whole arm.
- watch how Florian finds the halfway point on his circle's diameter and then the halfway points on the circle's radii.
- see how he measure 3/4 of his circle to mark a point for his smaller circle.
- notice how he locates the marks for the center and corners of the eyes.
Day 47: a castle in two-point perspective
Mark Kistler begins drawing a castle by drawing the horizon, establishing two vanishing points, and drawing a box. He then walks us through drawing the turrets, the windows, the buttresses, and the doorway. His step-by-step instructions begin on page 193 of you can draw in 30 days.
Circle Line Art School's Draw a castle in two-point perspective: Day 25 shows how to draw the castle with a moat instead of buttresses, approach roads, bridges, and soldiers.
Here is the video of my drawing, using tertiary colors:
Day 48: the human eye
Mark’s step-by-step of drawing the eye starts on page 227 of his book, you can draw in 30 days
Day 49: hands
Here are 3 videos showing how to draw hand:
- This first one is the best. Proko takes you through his method for drawing hands from your IMAGINATION (13 minutes, 430K views)
- In this one, you'll get some help from SpongeBob SquarePants: How to draw Hands in 10 minutes by Draw Like a Sir (10 minutes, 1.4M views)
- In this one, I enjoy seeing the easy marks that Chommang makes creating hands: How to Draw Hands/Useful Tips by Chommang_drawing (14 minutes, 1.4M views)
- Proko has a playlist of 14 videos that will teach you to draw hands
Lesson 30 page 233 you can draw in 30 days
Day 50: tertiary colors
- red + orange => red-orange
- orange + yellow => yellow-orange
- yellow + green => yellow-green
- green + blue => blue-green
- blue + violet => blue-violet
- violet + red => red-violet
So what do we do with these tertiary colors?
I think they look kind of playful. Why not get out a piece of paper and let the tertiary colors play together.
I used tertiary colors for this week’s perspective drawings.
Day 51: watercolor texture
Let's explore 8 Ways to Add Watercolor Texture by Dr Oto Kano (18 minutes, 159K views). I've listed the extra materials you'll need below.
I did the 8 ways and I learned a lot.
On my water spray, the drops worked but the water spray didn't. My spray was too fine. I needed a spatter instead of a mist. I used the bottom to experiment with watercolor pencils.
The salt worked great. I could see this technique used to create a creature with matted fur or a coral bed or trees from above.
The watercolor pencils I used (Derwent Inktense) didn't spread as much as I thought they would so I tried the regular Derwent watercolor pencils on the water spray card. One line spread more, but the other line didn’t. I'll need to experiment with a different brand.
The Frisket worked well. I also tore up masking tape to make the two white spots near the bottom. Oto did another video, 8 Watercolor Resist Techniques (28 minutes), if you want to learn more about resist techniques.
The plastic wrap worked great. I could see a character wearing a cloak with this design; or a tree with this bark texture.
The credit card was fun to work with, especially after I cut a small piece off the card. I could see creating all kinds of bug possibilities, or ghostly creatures.
The tissue paper worked okay for me. I was hoping to get more contrast. I think my problem is the color I used was a staining color.
The palette knife and scraper worked okay but would have been better if I had waited for the paint to be completely dry.
Like I said, a lot of learnings! I think I learn more from my disappointments than from my successes.
Here is the extra Materials you'll need for your watercolor texture explorations:
- watercolor paper
- salt
- watercolor pencil (many manufacturers including Prismacolor, Derwent, Faber-Castell, Crayola)
- plastic wrap (a.k.a. cling film in the UK)
- sprayer filled with water
- frisket
- cup of water with couple drops of liquid soap
- NOTE: if you want to skip the ads in these videos, do the following:
- make a note of where you are (minute 7:15)
- use the YouTube controls to fast forward (this takes you to the next video
- use your browser to go back once (this takes you to the beginning of the video you were watching)
- use your mouse to move the video progress to a little past where you were
- tissue paper (a.k.a. kleenex)
- palette knife
- exacto knife (to be safe, it's best to have an adult with you when you're using sharp tools)
- an old credit card or used gift card or stiff plastic with straight edge
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