Monday, June 26, 2023

100 Days of Drawing (week 10)

This week’s drawings

Day 66: shojo manga

Day 67: a building in 3-point perspective

Day 68: blind contour drawing

Day 69: the ear

Day 70: the leg

Day 71: color harmony: complementary colors

Day 72: texture: using pen and ink

Materials:

pencil
eraser
paper (printer paper, notebook, etc)
waterproof ink pen
colors (colored pencils, crayons, watercolor, etc)
alternatives to the above: smart phone or tablet drawing app

I’ve added a waterproof ink pen to our materials. We’ll be using this for drawing manga. Here are some options based on The Proof is in the Water:

Sakura Pigma micron pen - I suggest an 05 (.45 mm) or an 03 (.35 mm)
Una-Ball Signo RT (Wallmart, Michael’s, etc)
Speedball India ink
DeAtramentis Document Black ink
Platinum Carbon Black ink

You can follow the process used by The Proof is in the Water to test of pens around your house.

Here’s further guidance for The Best Waterproof Pens and Inks for Watercolors

Day 66: shojo manga

I saw this book, Manga Art for Everyone by Danica Davidson and Rena Saiya, at the library and though it would be a good jumping off point for a drawing. I choose the four characters in the book that appealed to me:

shojo manga (shojo girl in Japanese; manga targeting teenage girls)
shonen manga (boys’ comics; manga targeting adolescent boys)
nekojin (cat person)
yokai (beings from old Japanese folklore)

I then looked for youtube demonstrations of these four and suggest we do one a week.

Classic shojo ma,. nga by Ponshadama (13 minutes, 3.6K views)

Ponshadama compares two different manga styles in another video How to draw manga - Shouen vrs Shoujo.

Day 67: a building in 3-point perspective

Circle Line Art School does a good job demonstrating drawing a building in 3-point perspective. As I watched I was impressed how easily the artist created his building, indicating he has a good deal of experience. With that in mind, once you make your guide lines to the three vanishing lines, experiment with creating your own building if the artist’s building is more frustrating than fun.

How to Draw in 3-Point Perspective for Beginners by Circle Line Art School (6 minutes, 117K views)

Here are two more videos to use as guides if you are hungry for more 3-point perspective drawing:

How to Draw in 3-Point Perspective - Skyscraper by Circle Line Art School (5 minutes, 68K views)
How to Draw in 3-Point Perspective by Circle Line Art School (9 minutes, 1.6M views)

Day 68: blind contour drawing

Blind contour drawing is very similar to the contour drawing that we did last week, except for one thing. You do not look at your drawing! You keep your eyes focused on the object until you’ve completed at least one contour around the object.

The purpose of this is to train your eye and hand to work together.

Here are a couple of videos that will show you how it’s done if you need them:

The Best Exercise to Learn to Draw by César Cōrdova (4 minutes, 241K views)

Blind Contour Drawing by OnlineDrawingLessons (3 minutes, 279K views)

Day 69: the ear

I am giving you links to 2 step by step instructions for drawing the ear. The first, by Frajana, is for beginners. The second, by Proko, encourages you to do more shading to make the more three dimensional.

I’ve also provided a link to Proko’s video on ear anatomy.

How to Draw the Ear for Beginners by Frajana Drawing Academy (6 minutes, 810K views)

How to Draw the Ear - Anatomy and Structure by Proko (6 minutes, 427K views)

How to Draw Ears - Step by Step by Proko (8 minutes, 505K views)

Day 70: the leg

How to draw legs by Chommang_drawing (23 minutes, 311K views) is a good place to start learning to draw legs. Chommang gives us a box to model the pelvic, tubes to model the upper legs, and tapering tubes to model the lower legs. He then guides us as he draws 7 sets of legs from imagination. He then draws 2 figures from photograph references.

How to Draw Legs by Mikeymegamega (18 minutes, 318K views) is the next level up for drawing legs. Mikey leads us through modeling legs with a bowl for the hips and balls for the knee.

How to Draw Legs by David Finch (18 minutes, 230K views)

Day 71: color harmony: complementary colors

Complementary colors is a color harmony made by using colors directly opposite from each other on the color wheel.

Jacob Olesen’s article, What are complementary colors? Learn how to use them the right way, lists the complementary color pairs and provides a couple of recommendations on making them work:

make one of the colors the dominate one and use the other one an accent color.
mix the colors to make dynamic shadows

Riekreate talks about color harmonies and focuses on Complementary Colors in her video (7 minutes, 106K views)

Anne Kerr shows us how to mix colors so they are bright and not muddy in her video Complementary Colours Explained by Anne Kerr Art Studio (17 minutes, 4K views)

I used complementary color pairs for the drawings on day 66 and 67.

Day 72: texture using pen and ink

Today’s drawing is to make 4 circles and shade each with a different pen and ink technique to turn them into spheres. The virtual drawing instructor and I used:

contour lines
cross-hatching
scribbles
dots and dashes (mainly dashes)

How to draw with pen and ink by Drawing & Painting (7 minutes, 448K views)

Alphonso Dunn’s video show you how to draw other textures. You might want to try one of those textures on your spheres.

How to Create Realistic Textures by Alphonso Dunn (12 minutes, 1.2M views)

How to Create Realistic Textures - Part 2 by Alphonso Dunn (8 minutes, 548K views)

Table of Contents & INDEX

Friday, June 16, 2023

100 Days of Drawing (week 9)

WHY DRAW?

There are many reasons why people draw. Here are some of the most common benefits of drawing:

Improved visual thinking: Drawing helps us to see the world in a more mindful and observant way. It can also help us to better understand the relationships between different objects and concepts.
Increased creativity: Drawing can help us to tap into our creative side and come up with new ideas. It can also help us to solve problems in a more innovative way.
Enhanced communication: Drawing can be a powerful way to communicate our thoughts and feelings to others. It can also help us to better understand the messages that others are trying to convey.
Reduced stress: Drawing can be a relaxing and therapeutic activity. It can help us to focus on the present moment and let go of our worries.
Increased self-expression: Drawing can be a way to express ourselves and our unique perspectives on the world. It can also help us tobuild self-confidence and self-esteem.

Of course, these are just a few of the many reasons why people draw. Ultimately, the reasons why you draw are up to you. But if you're looking for a way to improve your visual thinking, boost your creativity, communicate more effectively, reduce stress, or simply express yourself, then drawing is a great option.

Here are some additional benefits of drawing:

Improved hand-eye coordination: Drawing requires us to use our hands and eyes in a coordinated way. This can help to improve our fine motor skills and coordination.
Increased focus and concentration: Drawing can help us to focus on the present moment and let go of distractions. This can be especially helpful for people who have trouble focusing or who are easily stressed.
Enhanced memory: Drawing can help us to remember things better. This is because when we draw, we are actively engaging our brains in the process of observation, analysis, and creation.
Improved problem-solving skills: Drawing can help us to solve problems in a more creative and innovative way. This is because drawing forces us to think outside the box and come up with new solutions.

So, if you're looking for a fun, rewarding, and beneficial activity to add to your life, then I encourage you to give drawing a try. You might be surprised at how much you enjoy it!

(the above was contributed by Google’s Bard)

This week's drawings

We shift our focus from drawing from the imagination to drawing from life. Four of this week’s topics are aimed at improving your drawing from life skills:

sketching - this week’s sketching gives you a warm up exercise that reminds you that drawing is simply making marks
contour drawing - contours are a key component of drawing from life. This week’s exercise gives you a way to hone your eye/hand coordination skills whenever you think them dull.
the mouth - like the eye and nose in previous weeks, we’re investigating the facial features individually in preparation for drawing realistic faces
the arm - similar to the facial features, we are examining the limbs in preparation for figure drawing

Here are this week’s topics:

Day 59: a city in two-point perspective
Day 60: learning your character's views
Day 61: sketching
Day 62: the mouth
Day 63: the arm
Day 64: color harmony: analogous colors
Day 65: contour drawing

Materials:

pencil
eraser
paper (printer paper, notebook, etc)
pen
colors (colored pencils, crayons, watercolor, etc)
alternatives to the above materials: a drawing app on a tablet or smart phone

Day 59: a city in two-point perspective

Mark Kistler gives step-by-step instructions for drawing a city in two-point perspective beginning on page page 203 of you can draw in 30 days.

Mark’s city straddles the horizon and includes buildings in the foreground with tops below the viewer’s line of sight. Two good twists to learn.

In my version, I included two of my very young cousins to add interest and a little giant fun (or maybe they’re just sitting among boxes : )

I think that two perspective drawing requires attention to detail. Based on this, here are two more examples:

Tom McPherson does a marvelous job showing us How to draw a city in two-point perspective as he creates a fascinating intersection and as an aside, a canal with long boats. Additional shadows would have made Tom’s city more 3-dimensional.
In How to Draw a City in Two-Point Perspective for Beginners by the Art Academy you’ll see how the artist uses a ruler and the vanishing points to find the appropriate line slope.

Finally, here is my Procreate video:

Day 60: learning your character's views

Character design requires your attention. You’ll be developing characters that reflect good design and be appealing. First, what is good character design? StudioBinder gives us a whole course on their page: What is Character Design - Tips on Creating Iconic Characters. Let’s just focus on their key elements of character design:

silhouette
palette
exaggeration

Tom Bancroft offers some ideas on character design starting on page 54 of Creating Characters with Personality. And on page 132 in his "It Takes Two", Tom has a couple of tips if you are creating a pair of characters.

Day 61: sketching

This may seem like we’re going backwards, but learning, in general, is very much a two step forward, one step backwards process.

The key to sketching is developing eye-hand coordination. The following warm-up exercises will help (starting at minute 2, watch Drawing for Beginners, Day 1 by Abhishek).
draw horizontal lines across the paper, left to right - 40 times
draw horizontal lines across the paper, right to left - 40 times
draw vertical lines down the page - 40 times
draw vertical lines up the page - 40 times
draw 40 circles clockwise
draw 40 circles counter clockwise

Another way to warm up is to do texture doodles. I started off my warm-up doing just that. Here are two tutorials on drawing various textures:
How to Draw Texture - Part 1 by Candy Brush (14 minutes, 498K views)
How to Draw Texture - Part 2 by Candy Brush (11 minutes, 207K views)
And, probably more fun, here is a demonstration on doing 24 doodle/zentangle/mandella patterns by Charvi Ashtekar.

Here is my Procreate video of this week’s warm up:

Day 62: the mouth

Proko gives us a step-by-step demonstration for drawing the mouth.

He starts with a photograph that we hwill use as a model
He sketches the mouth’s contour
He adds the shadows of the two lips
He adds halftones to match the shading of our model
Finally, using a halftone, he draws flesh on the upper lip and the philtrum

How to Draw Lips, Step by Step by Proko (8 minutes, 1.2M views)

If you want to explore the anatomy of the lips, view Proko’s How to Draw Lips - Anatomy and Structure. (6 minutes, 627K views)

Day 63: the arm

In his tutorial, beginning at minute 3, Xabio gives us a series of shapes:

a triangular shape at the shoulder for the deltoid buldge a elongated rectangle for the biceps
a tapering shape for the forearm
a small triangle for the hand
small triangles for the fingers and thumb

Finally, he gives us a sample drawing of a woman’s arm.

Easy Anatomy - How to Draw Arms by Xabio Arts

In his video, How to Draw Arms - Beginner to Pro, Kenzo (a.k.a. Love Life Drawing), gives us guidance on how to use the size of the head to get the proportions of the arms correct (the arm is 3 heads long). He also suggests using tapering lines as a way to start learning how to draw arms. He introduces the deltoid muscle that forms the front of the shoulder and transitions into the upper arm. Finally, for beginners, he shows how the arm can be thought of a series of forms: the upper arm as a cylinder; the upper forearm as an elongated egg; and the wrist as a boxy form.

Kenzo encourages you to learn the anatomy of the arm when you’re comfortable including more details in your drawings. When you get to this stage, consider these two videos by Proko:

How to Draw Biceps - Upper Arm Anatomy for Artists by Proko (9 minutes, 305K views)
How to Draw Forearms - Arm Anatomy for Artists by Proko (16 minutes, 305K views)

Day 64: color harmony: analogous colors

Sarah Renae Clark in her 7 minute video, Color Theory Basics, introduces us to the 4 qualities of color:

Hue - the location of a color on the color wheel.
Saturation - also known as intensity or chroma, is used to describe how vibrant a color is
Value - is used to describe the darkness or lightness of a color. We use white and black to vary the value by making tints and shades of a color.
Temperature - refers to colors being warm or cool and how various hues of the same color can be warm or cool.

She gives an overview of the Color Harmonies:

Monochrome
Complementary
Split complementary
Triadic
Tatradic
Analogous

And gives us a couple of tips:

Choose a dominate color
Keep it simple

In short, Sarah crams a lot into 7 minutes!

Make a drawing using the analogous color harmony, 3 to 5 colors which are adjacent to one another on the color wheel. It is recommended that the colors be all warm colors or all cool colors. I used analogous color scheme (yellow-orange through red) in the Day 60 drawing.

The analogous color scheme chart was made by Michael Stillwell.

Here is a 3 minute video by Riekreate on Analogous Colors.

Finally, here is a 13 minute video by Mikko in which he chooses analogous colors; talks about mixing the tints and shades; and makes a painting using his analogous color palette.

Day 65: contour drawing

Contour drawing is one of the best ways to train your hand and eye to work together.

The tutorial uses your hand as the model.

As you look along the edge (contour) of your hand your drawing hand is making a mark that mimics what your eye is focused on.

In a blind contour drawing you would keep your eye focused on the contour line around the edge of the hand and not look at the line you’re making. But for this drawing, you’ll glance at the pencil mark and make course adjustments as needed.

Once you complete the contour line to make the outline shape of your hand, you can add the interior contour lines of the fingers.

Finally, if you wish, you can add the contour lines for the edges of the shadows.

Contour Line Drawing Tutorial by OnlineDrawingLessons (4 minutes, 334K views)

Contour Draw,ing by That Art Teacher (14 minutes, 84K views)

Table of Contents & INDEX

Wednesday, June 14, 2023

100 Days of Drawing: TOC & Index

Week 1: Introduction

Week 2: Rules of Art

Week 3: Art's Axiom

Week 4: Elements of Visual Art